Milking an assignment at the Clark County Fair

If You Go

• What: Clark County Fair.

• Hours Sunday: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

■ Where: 17402 N.E. Delfel Road, Ridgefield.

■ Admission: Adults, $11.25; seniors 62 and older, $9.25; kids 7-12, $8.25 (includes processing fees); kids 6 and younger, free. Parking, $6. C-Tran shuttle, free from area Park & Ride lots.

■ Carnival: Closes early today.

■ Barns: Open at noon today.

■ Highlights: Monster Trucks at 2 and 7 p.m., in the grandstands.

■ Other: Young Champions of the Northwest, karate demonstrations, at 6 p.m.; fair court riding competition at 5 p.m.

■ Pets: Not permitted, except for personal service animals or those on exhibition or in competition.

■ Information: www.clarkcofair.com or 360-397-6180.

RIDGEFIELD — Her name was Dizzy, and I came to the Clark County Fair to milk her.

I was nervous. Before Saturday, I’d never touched a cow, let alone milked one. As it turned out, Dizzy had just won grand champion for Holsteins at the fair for the second year in a row. That made her a queen, I was told.

Were my untrained hands worthy of her royal udder?

Milking parlor manager Lori Johnson, whose fiancé owns Dizzy, assured me they were. At 5:30 p.m., Johnson led me to a group of cows behind the milking parlor awaiting their second milking of the day. I met Dizzy, a large, black cow with prominent hip bones and a belly round with pregnancy. I stroked her head and the nubs of her horns, and she rubbed her mouth on my button-down shirt, leaving a sticky smear of chewed grass.

Johnson released Dizzy, who trotted eagerly into the upper level of the herringbone milking parlor and plunged her head into a tub of grain along a railing. One wall of the long, narrow room was a glass window, outside of which a crowd of parents and children had gathered to watch.

I wasn’t expecting an audience.

We stood on the lower level of the concrete floor, which put Dizzy’s swollen udder at shoulder height. Johnson showed me how to sanitize the teats by dipping them one by one into a bottle of iodine. After she wiped off the rust-colored liquid, Dizzy’s milk spontaneously began to flow in thin streams into the floor grate.

It was time to get down to business. Johnson demonstrated the technique, grasping a teat in her fist and squeezing downward, resulting in a strong squirt of milk. Now it was my turn.

I hesitated. I ran my hand across Dizzy’s large udder. It was warm and crisscrossed in ropey veins. I tentatively grasped a teat, feeling foolish. It was unexpectedly thick and meaty, and it felt alive. And, like the udder, it radiated heat.

I gave it a squeeze and was rewarded with a stream of milk. Then I used two hands. Squirt, squirt, squirt, no problem. I was engaged in an ancient ritual dating back thousands of years. I was a milkmaid.

I didn’t ponder this thought very long. Dizzy’s udder was very full, and hand-milking is time-consuming. There were other cows waiting. So Johnson showed me how to use the milking machine. She attached individual cups with vacuum and pulsing action to Dizzy’s teats and flipped a switch. Instantly, the milk gushed through a clear tube into a glass tank with marks along the side that measured the volume. In five minutes, Dizzy had produced 25 pounds of frothy, white milk, the same as she had in her morning milking. Wow.

The milk in Dizzy’s glass tank was pumped into a large, stainless steel tank held at 28 degrees. It would be collected by the Darigold company and sold, Johnson said.

Some things I learned: Cows are punctual. They will happily show up at the same time each day to be milked. Also, cows make best friends with some cows and avoid other cows, just like humans. In addition, Holsteins produce a greater volume of milk than Jersey cows, which produce more butterfat.

In all, the experience was less embarrassing and messy than I’d expected. No squatting on a low milking stool. No dodging manure-filled tail swats to the face. I didn’t get kicked, and there were no cow pies to step in. Dizzy behaved as a cow of her queenly station should, and I would love to come back to milk her royal udder any time.