AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"See ya," Jeremiah told her.
"Now, you ever milked a cow before?"
"Milked a cow?" She shrieked. "Heavens no…"
"Well, you will learn here. Come on."
He took a stool down from the wall of the barn and brought it beside him. He stopped at the first stall. "This is Clarabelle. She gives a good pail of milk each morning. Now watch what I do, and how I do it."
"Okay." She bent to watch him as he sat on the stool and took his hands after warming them by rubbing them together and placed them around the utter. "Just gently pull at an angle and squirt it into the pail. Don't pull too hard, but hard enough to get the milk out."
He demonstrated several times. "Now, you try."
She sat down on the stool and warmed her hands, then reached to pull on the utter, nothing happened.
"Pull at an angle, a little harder."
She did so and the milk squirted out. She laughed aloud. "Wow…I don't believe it. I’m milking a cow!"
He laughed with her. "You sure are. Now keep doing that until the pail is nearly full."
She nodded. Clarabelle gave her an appreciative look every now and then.
He watched her for a while, then went to another stall and was working while she milked. She was fascinated at how it all worked. She'd never done anything like it. What was even stranger, she liked it. She felt like she was doing something worthwhile here. Of course she wouldn't be telling them that.
When she had nearly a pail full, she stopped and looked for him. "Okay, now what?"
"Take the pail into the house and set it on the counter and come back out."
She nodded.
When she set it on the counter Carol glanced at her, "So how did the milking go?"
"I'm a natural, Jeremiah says." She smiled.
"Good. Some make the dangdest messes." She chuckled.
She went back to the barn, "Now what?"
"Now comes the dirty work."
"Yeah, what?" Leah challenged.
"Mucking the stalls out." He looked at her and handed her a rake and a shovel.
"How do I do that?" She asked innocently.
He showed her what she had to look for in the hay on the floor of the barn stalls.
"You pick up all of their poop and put it in that wheel barrow." He told her. "Try not to take all the hay around it too."
"Yuck, poop?"
"That's what it is, alright." He smiled. "But don't worry, most of it is dry so it's not hard to find. Use the rake to sift the hay through and the shovel to pick the poop up and into the barrow." He told her. Then he demonstrated how it was done.
She grimaced, this was not what she wanted to do, but she had no choice and she wouldn't look like some sissy. Determined, she copied his movements.
After half a day of scooping up, she was tired and hungry.
