A young girl who spends her mornings helping her father milk the cows in the barn tries to stop time so that she can hold onto each vivid moment.

A young girl spends a day helping her father milk their cows, as she does throughout the year.

Mark Kurlansky's first global food history since the bestselling Cod and Salt; the fascinating cultural, economic, and culinary story of milk and all things dairy--with recipes throughout. According to the Greek creation myth, we are so much spilt milk; a splatter of the goddess Hera's breast milk became our galaxy, the Milky Way. But while mother's milk may be the essence of nourishment, it is the milk of other mammals that humans have cultivated ever since the domestication of animals more than 10,000 years ago, originally as a source of cheese, yogurt, kefir, and all manner of edible innovations that rendered lactose digestible, and then, when genetic mutation made some of us lactose-tolerant, milk itself. Before the industrial revolution, it was common for families to keep dairy cows and produce their own milk. But during the nineteenth century mass production and urbanization made milk safety a leading issue of the day, with milk-borne illnesses a common cause of death. Pasteurization slowly became a legislative matter. And today milk is a test case in the most pressing issues in food politics, from industrial farming and animal rights to GMOs, the locavore movement, and advocates for raw milk, who controversially reject pasteurization. Profoundly intertwined with human civilization, milk has a compelling and a surprisingly global story to tell, and historian Mark Kurlansky is the perfect person to tell it. Tracing the liquid's diverse history from antiquity to the present, he details its curious and crucial role in cultural evolution, religion, nutrition, politics, and economics.

Milking Machines: A Comprehensive Guide for Farmers, Herdsmen and Students is a comprehensive guide on milking machines and covers topics ranging from milk recording and milk transport to circulation cleaning and work routines practiced on a particular farm. The components of a milking machine are also described, including the power unit, belt drive, vacuum pump, vacuum line, and the interceptor trap. Comprised of 20 chapters, this book begins with an overview of some basic facts about a milking machine, followed by a discussion on the parts and components of a milking machine such as the power unit, belt drive, vacuum pump, vacuum controller, and the pulsation system. Subsequent chapters focus on milk recording and milk transport as well as rubberware, along with automation of milking efficiency and cow throughput. The book also describes parlor layout and design before concluding with an evaluation of the ISO Standards for milking machines in the the European Economic Community. This monograph is designed to be read by farmers, herdsmen, and agricultural college students, who all have an interest either directly or indirectly in milking machines.

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The milk-quality improvement program outlined in this publication is designed to acquaint members of 4-H dairy clubs and other junior clubs with the importance of quality in milk, both from the economic standpoint of the producer and from the health standpoint of the consumer, and to teach these young people the essentials in the production of high-quality milk.