Pansy

Our cow Jenny was getting too old to keep our family in milk so Daddy visited some of the area dairies to see if someone would have a friendly little Jersey they would be willing to sell. When he came home he was happy to have found someone who said they had just the cow for us. Gentle, sweet disposition and a great milker who would be sure to provide all the milk we could possibly have use for. He had paid for her and they would deliver her free of charge sometime the following day.

The next forenoon John, David and I were playing outside when we saw the man come with the cow and unloading her in our pasture. We ran inside to tell Mom about it. She came outside as the man went on his way. We joined Mom to go to the pasture to have a look at our new cow. When we got close to her we saw why they wanted to sell her. Not only did she look older and more worn out than Jenny but her udder was practically dragging on the ground.

Daddy had gone to a lumber kiln to get more lumber for our woodworking shop and we knew he would be disappointed once he saw the cow the farmer had tried to give us. Once he came home and we told him about it we all went back outside to have another look at the cow. As we expected Daddy wasn't happy. There wasn't much we could do about it though and the cow obviously needed to be milked. He asked us to bring the milk pail and a cake pan. I ran to the house to get what he needed wondering what he would use a cake pan for.

After giving it to Daddy, he slid the cake pan under her udder and started milking. It was a slow process of sliding the cake pan in and milking a little bit until the pan was full then emptying it into the milk pail. After chores were done Daddy went to the pay phone at the corner store in the village and called a cattle dealer and told him we have a cow to sell and that we want a good one to replace her.

Several days later the dealer came and unloaded a pretty little fawn colored Jersey and took the old cow the farmer had sold us. We all admired her as she lay under our apple tree and chewed her cud. once chore time arrived we once again followed Daddy to the barn. This time there was nothing wrong and it didn't take long for the pail to be filled with frothy milk. As we were finishing up the chores we discussed what we would call our new cow. We didn't want to call her Jenny like the family cow before her, as we turned her back out to pasture Mom stood there watching her graze and turned to Daddy and asked. "How about Pansy?"

"Pansy sounds fine to me." was his reply. I said the name to myself a few times and decided I really liked it. A pretty little cow like that was perfect to be named after Mom's favorite flower.