In a single day on the farm, you can encounter endless examples of dirty, disgusting situations that would surely make most people queasy. There’s no shortage of nasty possibilities, including encountering all sorts of bodily fluids — like from flipping a calf during its delivery, getting splattered in the mouth with manure while sorting cows, getting doused with urine while prepping a cow to get milked, or encountering puss, blood, and so forth, during some sort of medical situation. Not to mention the stench of cleaning up piles of manure and old feed or cleaning out plugged sewage drains.
I have a relatively strong stomach compared to the average person, but I have nothing on my dad, brother, and husband, who will step into any situation and not think twice about it. Stitching up a gash? You got it. Hopping into the trench where manure and waste make its way to the manure pit to unplug the pipeline? No question. Draining and abscess on a calf? Hurry up. Maneuvering a calf into the correct position in the birth canal? Obviously.
I don’t think much of the grotesque occurrences throughout our days on the farm because they simply come with the job. But when we have family or friends visiting, I’m reminded that seeing or discussing some things we consider our normal can be a bit jarring and nausea-inducing for the general population.
After an extremely rare, bloody, desperate attempt to save a cow a while back, other farming family members and I walked into the house and sat down to eat cheeseburgers off the grill with our visiting family without batting an eye. As we recapped the situation we’d just worked on, I was reminded that farmers have a way of moving on from gross and unsettling situations much faster than those with more traditional occupations — and we also talk about it more casually than we sometimes realize.
It's a dirty job and that’s that. While parts of the scenarios I mentioned are blatantly gross, there are also reasons those nasty smells, sights, and more are well worth it. For example, delivering a calf can be gross, but it’s also a beautiful miracle. Sewing up an injured animal may be a slippery task, but you could also be saving a life. Draining an abscess is no doubt nasty, but you’re also helping an animal out. Smelling manure as you spread it on the field isn’t the most appealing thing, but you also get to watch the sun set on the horizon.
The author dairy farms with her parents and brother near Hawkeye, Iowa. The family milks approximately 300 head of grade Holstein cows at Windsor Valley Dairy LLC — split half and half between a double-eight parallel milking parlor and four robotic milking units. In the spring of 2020, Molly decided to take a leap and fully embrace her love for the industry by returning full time to her family’s dairy.