It’s not that I miss the glu-glu-glug of the pasteuriser, or having to fill the jugs of milk everyday from the gallon of milk brought in from the parlour. In fact, January is a bit of a break all around – for the farmer’s wife included. I do, however, miss having milk on tap, as it were, to answer the ”I’m hungry” call from the three small boys who might actually believe my name is hungry. "Hungry, what’s for dinner? Hungry, I’m starving. Hungry, did you mention dessert?"

So, in January, when the cows are dried off, I come to learn the price of milk. I would never do well on a pub quiz on the subject – how much is a litre of milk? I might have known before marrying a dairy farmer in the glorious “a litre of low fat milk would stretch for-days” days. But not now. Not now in the seriously “how much can young boys drink before they burst” days.

No, I tell a lie, like any good farmer, I know how much we are paid for producing a litre of milk. And it ain’t pretty. However, I wasn’t quite prepared for the disparity between our figure and the one marked on the shop shelf when earlier this month I picked up my first litre (of three a day) to feed the champion milk guzzlers. I nearly had to sit down. You mean we are paid this and they charge that? Or that? I marched home, a woman ready to take to the streets of the capital in protest, ready to deliver a lecture I had rehearsed in the car on the way home to the dairy farmer. He agreed. It might have been a subject he had thought on before. My lecture did not fall on deaf ears but on ears much resigned to the price of milk. Why?

They are the ears of a man who doesn’t have the time to lobby for better milk prices because, like the rest of the country, he is busy. He’s so, so busy producing the milk at the lower price. I remember why we have to buy milk in January – the cows are dried off. Giving himself and the cows a rest before the silly season is upon us again. Before we start the year off producing that special white elixir that fills the tummies of young boys and girls all over the country and beyond.

Maybe it is an age-old story – maybe we should be resigned to accepting the low price that the markets dictate. But why should we? Perhaps those speaking for us should be shouting louder on our behalf. To speak the angst of the ordinary dairy farmer so swamped with work, sleep deprived in spring and frustrated with the low return for a hard day’s work. Is anyone listening?

There, I’ve said my piece and, besides, the youngest milk guzzler has just called me: ”Hungry.”

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