by Victoria Moss

Created on: August 02, 2008   Last Updated: August 04, 2008

Yes, life was simple once, but it seems so long ago.

During my childhood, I lived on a small dairy farm. We were undoubtedly amongst the "strugglers" at that time, as our small piece of land was a Soldier Settlement granted to my father following his return home from active duty after the First World War, yet this was never apparent to us as children. We had all that we needed - caring parents, warmth and shelter, good food to eat and a never-ending supply of things to do.

We lived in a fairly self-sufficient manner: this seemed to me at that time to be a sensible way to live and it never occurred to me that it was necessity rather than choice that directed our existence. Besides, our friends and neighbours lived the same way economically, prudently, cautiously. Our lifestyles were, indeed, simple!

Our cows provided a meagre income: my father sold the cream which was separated from their milk in a little concrete room at the end of the milking shed. The cream poured continuously into a two-handled steel can throughout the course of the evening milking. The can was sealed with a matching lid and stayed without refrigeration until another can was filled at the following morning's milking. Afterwards, the labelled cans were lifted onto a low trolley and pulled by hand to the milkstand at the front gate from where they were collected soon after by the truck with its rows of similar shining cans picked up from neighbouring farms. Eventually, after a few more calls, it made its way to the Butter Factory in the nearby town.

Our morning and evening routines were closely tied to the milking process and everything that we did had to fit in with that procedure it was never altered to suit our commitments.

"Cows will not wait!" my father explained again patiently when we found ourselves running late for school for the umpteenth time or having to eat our evening meal when it was already way past our bedtime because of some drama that had occurred at the milking shed.

I used to love standing in the dim, cool separating room watching the thin, yellowy-white stream pouring into the can as the milking machines hissed and thumped their pressured cups around the cows' teats. The skim milk ran off much faster than the cream and frothed and swirled in a large steel vat.

Later we children would carry buckets of skim milk to the pigs' trough and watch, fascinated, as the large pink creatures stood with their front feet in the milk and slurped and gulped greedily. The pigs thrived and fattened

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