HarrietsPaintings

05/10/2026

Long ago, a young man named Dave came all the way from Michigan to our dairy in Los Angeles in hot pursuit of my sister Grace, his true love.

My father had 5 daughters. Suitors showed up one after another, and it was my father’s custom to put them to the test.

He took Dave with him on the dairy day after day to give him the full experience: cows lined up in stanchions in corrals munching away, bulls with the cows in the pastures doing their job, milkers wiping the cows’ teats in the long milking barn before suctioning on the milking machines, more milk than you could imagine flowing into the huge milk tank in the chilled milk house, the milk truck pulling up each day to pump it out and haul it away, the artificial insemination tank with its long tubes of semen shrouded in the mysterious fog of dry ice, the vet—a short man with a cigar hanging out of his mouth—his arm shoulder deep up the back of cows checking if they were ‘with calf’, home surgeries in the hospital barn, cows straining to give birth in the close-up corral, walking very carefully out on the rickety bridge to the middle of the s**t pond to turn on the pump, the hoof trimmer with his contraption that raised cows parallel with the ground so he could carve away at their hooves suspended in air, hay bales being thrown down from high on the haystacks, the smell of manure and silage in the air. . .

And at the end of the long hot day, coming back to the house, taking off their “s**t” clothes, and sitting in their broekjes (underwear) enjoying pleasant conversation and laughter over a whiskey together.

Quite an experience for a city boy on a romantic mission!

So it’s fitting that Sexy Cow has now found a home with Dave and Grace.

Their romance has stood the tests of time. May it never fade!