the milking parlor

In anticipation of Daisy’s due date — we’re about two weeks out now — my younger son has transformed our little shed into a milking parlor. 

“Milking parlor” is, admittedly, a bit high falutin for the reality, but considering that we had nothing before, I think the new digs are pretty darn posh. 

Now the shed has shelves mounted on the wall, and a milking stall: there’s a “door” to close her in (she fits, but just) and an open spot along the side for easy milk bar access.

There’s even light!

In his words (mostly): I bought a charge controller for 32 dollars. Then I hooked a car battery up to the charge controller and bought two LED, 12-volt lightbulbs which I hooked up to the charge controller and the light switch. I used the wires from Christmas tree lights to hook the charge controller up to the lightbulbs. Now I need to get a solar panel that can produce 20 volts and a few amps of power so that it can plug into the charge controller to charge the car battery.

He keeps badgering my husband to take him shopping — rattling on about filters, iodine, lanolin, and stainless steel buckets — and he’s slowly working on digging a trench to get water to the shed.

He’s also been practicing with Daisy to get her comfortable walking into the stall and then backing out of it. As long as he has grain, she’s pretty good with following him wherever.

Soon, if everything goes well, we’ll be swimming in fresh milk.

I’m beginning to get excited.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (3.16.20), the quotidian (3.16.15), smiling for dimples, warmth, my reality, enhanced, bedtime ghost stories, a religious education, butterscotch pudding.