Putting Moms on Pasture

My mom was arguably the best mom ever – bar none. And as a mother of five with a full-time career long before daycare was the norm, she was definitely stretched pretty thin. I suspect she discovered early on that the easiest place to cut corners was with food shopping and meal preparation. To save time, she ordered large quantities of everything and cooked while she did a myriad of other things. She was truly the queen of multitasking. She could make business calls, take notes, keep track of whatever we kids were doing, snap her fingers and furrow her brow to redirect us, and with her free hand, cook us all dinner.

Somehow, she always managed to get a meal on the table, and she never asked for our help. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, she effortlessly navigated all our culinary quirks. “Eat it - or make yourself something else” was said with such a loving smile and gentle shrug of the shoulders – that there really was no room for arguing. It just was what it was.

These days with ultra-pasteurized milk, she could have easily bought a three-month supply and left it on the counter all week - and it would have still tasted fine. (I’m all for pasteurization, but there is something odd about milk that never goes bad.) Ultra-pasteurized dairy, though, just like daycare, wasn’t an option when I was a kid and our milk, as often as not, seemed to be forever on the verge of going bad. My mom’s response was always “No, its fine - the farmers just let the cows back on pasture – that always makes the milk taste a little funny. You’ll get used to it.” I was probably in my teens before I thought about the fact that cows were not brought on and off pasture every other week - and it took me well into my 30s before I could pour myself a glass of milk without sniffing it first.

This week, just in time for Mother’s Day, we moved all our sheep back out to pasture. Watching the ewes and their still nursing lambs, I can’t help but wonder if the lambs have noticed a difference in how their mom’s milk tastes. I’m sure if they complained at all, their overworked mother’s response would be just like my mom’s always was “Hush child, you’ll get used to it.”

Happy Mother’s Day - to mine and to all.