In the view of some cultural ecologists the Hindu institution of the Sacred Cow is both ecologically and economically functional. Cows provide milk and manure…for bricks and fertiliser…and give birth to bullocks. But the thing to do when you want to get a cow is just go and get a cow. Do not start taking the measure of your ignorance. The cow will dispel your ignorance better than three years at an agricultural college. The cow is a better teacher than any book. Just get the cow. Thus spake John Seymour. Localization with Self-Sufficiency is more threatening to the Anarchy of Corporate Power…with its mindless pursuit of bigger and bigger profits…than any Anti-Capitalist Protests.

In fact the best Public Policy for the Coming Bad Times will be for the Lord Lieutenants to issue Five Acres and a Cow to every young man in the county. If the Queen can send telegrams when we reach our 100th birthday then her son can make sure that Cows and Land Deeds are handed out to every able-bodied male in his kingdom on their 18th birthday. ‘All power to the parish!’ is the fastest way to ensure that all wealth stays in the county!'

It is difficult buying a cow if you know nothing about it and don't want to be robbed. The Seymours kept blundering about trying to buy a cow but eventually they bought Brownie. Let John take up the tale. We went and looked at a herd of pedigree Jerseys and were offered one…a cull…at just the hundred and twenty guineas. You can buy an awful lot of milk for a hundred and twenty guineas. And you can pay an awful lot out in vet’s bills on a pedigree Jersey or a pedigree any other breed. We did have enough sense - or instinct - to steer us away from over-bred stock.

Eventually we saw an ad in our local rag for a Jersey House-Cow. We went and saw her. She belonged to a small-holder, an oldish man, hard and tough and honest like so many small-holders, who had reared up a heifer calf from this cow and had decided to get rid of the old girl while the going was good. Brownie was darkish brown…too dark for a Jersey…skinny and bony and swag-bellied, a bit shy in the forequarters, not too heavily bagged, a sweet silly frightened old thing, and we bought her for thirty-five quid. She was delivered in a cattle float. And there we were.

It is something suddenly to be landed with a cow. Brownie had just calved, but the vendor was keeping the calf. So there she was with a bagful of milk. We had cleaned and whitewashed out the cowshed…the middle of the two compartments of the weather-boarding shed. We led her in there and I tried to milk her. I had milked cows as a child, but not since. It came back…slowly. But milking a cow…particularly one like Brownie who is hard to milk…Jerseys are apt to be a bit slow on the titty…is a difficult job. I have taught several people to milk since and I have found that there is only one real teacher for difficult things…necessity. I milked Brownie because I had to milk her.

I believe there is no other way to learn to milk a cow. You have to sit there…until it is hard to keep the sweat of your brow from dripping into the pail…and the cow finishes the bit of grub you gave her long before to keep her quiet, and gets restive, and flicks you in the face (hard) with her hard old tail, and jigs about, and kicks the bucket, and you fumble away, and your wrists and forearms get paralytic, and only one thing keeps you at it…the knowledge that the cow has got to be milked to the last drop in each quarter and that she has got to be milked by you. It's no use calling on the Lord God. He won't come down and help you. You are alone…with a cow.

But when you learn to milk comfortably, which you do in about a week, it becomes a pleasant job. I look forward now to the morning and evening milking. There seems to me to be a friendliness between the cow and me, I put my head in her old flank and squirt away, and there is a nice smell, and a nice sound as the jets hiss into the frothing bucket, and I can think, and sum things up, and wonder what I am going to have for supper. In the winter it is dark and cold outside, but warm in Y Beudy…the cow shed…and the hurricane lantern throws fine shadows about the building. The whole job takes perhaps ten minutes - night and morning.

The economics of this are terribly obscure and I would defy all the accountants in the world to work them out. An accountant would say that Labour was the chief item. But how can you assess the cost of labour that you enjoy doing? That is where all accountancy falls down flat on its face. An accountant will say that a man's labour costs are say ten shillings an hour…or five shillings an hour. Or what have you. But supposing a man is enjoying what he is doing? Then he will do it for nothing. If I were to work in an advertising agency I would want my labour to be assessed not at ten shillings or a pound an hour, but at a million pounds an hour. But when I am milking Brownie I am not wasting ten minutes of my life. I am enjoying them. And therefore I do not wish to charge my time up for anything.

In fact I should pay Brownie for she gives me Pleasure for she is one of the family. It is surprising what an affection we feel for the old creature. And Fertility…for her dung is the basis of all husbandry and she is the cornerstone of the arch of our economy. Everything we eat is enriched by either her dung or her milk. Our crops flourish because of the priming-pump effect of her manure. Our animals…and she herself…flourish because of the flourishing of the crops. She is the prime-mover of a beneficial circle of health and fertility. I know this sounds like a lot of crankish clap-trap and fiddle-faddle. It is not though. It is true and very easily verifiable.