Category: Stories

As the year draws to its quiet end, we want to say thank you. Not to customers, though we are grateful for you. Not to the farmhands, though they are the finest. We want to say thank you to the cows.

Thank you, Bernadette, for your convictions. Thank you, Mabel, for being large. Thank you, Clementine, for your patience with the goats. Thank you to all eleven of you, for standing in the cold at dawn, for your steady brown eyes, for the long slow gift that you give us every day.

The pasture is gold now and the barn smells of hay. We are all together. It is enough.

As the nights draw in, the old hands at the dairy like to tell tales. The best one is about the cold room, and the milk maid who is said to walk there on stormy nights, wearing a white apron and carrying a lamp.

She is not frightening. She only checks the pans, one by one, and skims the cream if it is ready. Then she vanishes. Wren has seen her three times and says she is very efficient.

We cannot confirm any of this. But we can confirm that in the morning the cream is sometimes already skimmed, the pans washed, and the floor clean. We leave a small saucer of milk out for her, just in case. It is always empty by dawn.

Last Saturday the big silver pail vanished from the milking shed. We searched the barn, the lane and the orchard. Ottoline looked in the well. Dumpling looked unconcerned, which was suspicious in itself.

At last, at dusk, a small clue appeared. A trail of little paw prints, in spilled cream, led from the shed across the yard to the old chicken coop. And there in the corner sat Pudding, curled inside the pail, fast asleep, looking like a king in a silver boat.

We did not have the heart to move him. We bought a second pail. This one has a dent and a name, and the name is Pudding’s Throne.

A customer asked recently if we might carry oat milk, and Ottoline gave a long, sad look out of the window. We do not carry oat milk. We have nothing against oats. Oats are a fine and honest grain. But a saucer of oat milk is an unconvincing thing, and a cat knows it.

Pudding, when consulted, walked slowly to the pantry, pulled down a box of oats, and sat on it. Then he looked at us. We understood.

We do however sell a cereal flavored cream, made with a few drops of vanilla and a tablespoon of toasted oats, for those who want a hint of the field. It is rather lovely and Pudding allows it.

Mabel gave us a letter, and Wren translated it from the Moo. It reads, in part: ‘Dear Dairy, the grass is long today and my heart is full. I would like to report that the new fence post is warm and good for scratching. I would like to report that the dog is nonsense. I would like to report that I am a cow and that is all.’

She goes on to complain about the flies and ask if there might be more apples. She ends with ‘Kind regards, Mabel, who is large.’

We have framed the letter and hung it in the shop. Visitors tend to stand in front of it for a while, nodding.

There is a quiet hour at the end of the day when the house settles, the clock ticks slower, and a little warm milk makes everything right. We believe in this hour. We have built a whole dairy around it.

The best bedtime milk is warmed gently, just until it steams, never boiled. Pour it into a wide saucer with a thin blue rim and set it on the kitchen floor beside the radiator. Then sit, and say nothing, and listen to a cat lap.

It is a small, steady sound, like rain in a far off garden. It is, I think, the sound of all being well. It is the best thing we sell, and we cannot bottle it.