According to Wikipedia, “wellerisms are sayings of Sam Weller in Charles Dickens’ novel The Pickwick Papers that make fun of established clichés and proverbs by showing that they are wrong in certain situations, often when taken literally.” One wellerism I heard many times while I was growing up was ‘”Each to his own”, said the old woman as she kissed the cow.'” The official wording of this wellerism is “‘Everyone to his own taste,’ the old woman said when she kissed her cow.”, but the meaning is the same.
The funny thing is that for fifty-some years, it was just that…a funny saying. But in 2015, that wellerism became a reality for me at de Good Life Farm. In March of 2015, we brought home our first bovine. She was actually classified as a heifer at the time which is a female bovine over one year old who has not borne a calf or has borne only one calf. Mocha was fifteen months old and pregnant when she came to live with us. I had known her a since she was a couple of weeks old. She was a beautiful calf and I fell in love with her. I remember one time pulling in and I couldn’t find her…then saw her little tannish ears peaking out from the bean field. She had escaped the electric fence and was enjoying a little freedom! She was so adorable and quite proud of herself!
Each time I saw her, I tried to gain her confidence. I would stick my hand out toward her and talk sweetly to her, but she was pretty skittish and really wanted nothing to do with me. By the time we were ready to bring her home to the farm, I had only been able to coax her within twelve inches of my hand. She had no idea how much I loved her but soon she would!
Mocha’s life experiences had been pretty limited until we loaded her on the trailer to bring her home. She had been with her mama, Jersey, from the day of her birth. It’s all she had known. Not too long before she became ours, the farmer bought some jersey heifers. It was so comical to watch her assert herself over them. There were two of them and one of her and she ruled the roost, so to speak. The farmer would feed the heifers and she would chase them away from their feed. He would then put feed out for her and the heifers would go eat her feed since she was eating theirs…and when Mocha saw what they were doing (when she would eat, she would position herself so that she could keep her eye on the other heifers) and she would literally run (more like bound) over to them and push them away from the feed.
On the day that we brought her home, we loaded her up on the trailer and as we pulled away, she began mooing loudly…and I could hear Jersey mooing loudly back at her. Her baby was leaving in a trailer! Mocha mooed all the way through town. Every time we came to a stop, the sound of her mooing filled the air. It broke my heart.
We got her home and put her in the stall in the barn. Several times each day, I would go out and spend time with her in the stall, trying to gain her confidence. She had no idea how much I loved her. I brushed her, talked sweetly to her and just spent time with her so she would know she could trust me.
That is when I realized WHY the old woman in the wellerism kissed her cow. Mocha’s fur smelled like cinnamon! I kid you not!!! I would nestle my nose in her neck or back and the faint, sweet scent of cinnamon filled my nostrils. I began to realize that she liked it when I nuzzled her face or buried my face in her fur. She began to trust me and I grew to love her more and more.
Now, don’t get me wrong. She is still that stubborn, silly girl when she wants to be! But she knows I love her and I believe she loves me too! And, even when the barn doesn’t smell sweet, burying my nose in her fur still fills my nostrils with the sweet scent of cinnamon.
I’m loving this! I said if I ever married, I would marry a farmer. I love the outdoors. This is as close to what could have been I will get. Thank you for sharing!