NextBackThe milking being done, the cows tossed out to graze and the cowsheds duly mucked and washed out, Henry could concentrate on the particular tasks of the day.
Meanwhile the milk had to be delivered. Whilst tractors ruled the farm, Dolly the horse ruled the milk Float. Living in half of a wooden tumbledown stable next to the duck pond, the other half provided shelter for the trap and harnesses. A two wheeled, flighty little contraption with cheeky curved mudguards, it carried two or three churns with ease. In charge of the whole operation was the equally flighty Molly Aubrey, a top local charioteer of distinction!. Our job was to trot up the front garden paths, fetch the empty milk jug and fill it with milk. The milk was doled out using the measures which hung from the rim of the churn, either half or one pint. There were no fridges so the milk was left on the step with a saucer on the jug to keep the cats and birds out. Dolly was fully automated, she knew where to stop and for how long, the monotony, only broken by the deep rumblings coming from her prodigious girth. This would be followed by a quivering of the tail, a tightening of the crupper strap and a horrendous rasp, followed shortly by an incredibly life threatening odour and the expulsion of yesterdays dinner.
Dolly spent her last few years wistfully looking out of her stable whilst chewing a mouth full of hay. She was replaced by a shiny electric handcart proclaiming Raymond Harper to be a Dairy Farmer of note! Her disappearance passed unnoticed, probably reduced to joint sized pieces and flogged off the milk float as prime Scottish Beef. Her dusty harness hanging in the rickety old stable being the only reminder that she ever existed in the real world, the following years, becoming a playground for the hordes of spiders, intent on cocooning it beneath their thick webs of gossamer. Her tombstone was a dusty red Seed Fiddle hanging from a nail on the wall.
The new electric milk float was true innovation, a testament to Raymond’s enterprise arriving in the twenty first century. Standing there in its cream livery, with Raymond’s personal details it was Raymond’s splendid new toy. Dressed in his shining white Sunday best overall, he would strut about the milk round like a little bantam cock.
