Cow-mmunity

When I told my brother about the idea of our cowshare, at first he was confused, and then he laughed out loud.

“What even is a cowshare?”

“How does that work?”

“Is it just a loophole, a clever way to get around legal difficulties?”

Well, I have to admit, I laughed, too, when I first heard of the idea! It seemed odd - how can we share a cow? Visions of cartoon udders marked off in sections, a cow divided up into parts, filled my head - “you own the bottom third of the left hind udder quarter, but only on Thursdays,” or “the end of the cow’s tail is your portion.” It seemed so silly, so clearly a ruse. Raw milk is illegal to sell in California, so someone thought of a way around that…. you can drink milk from your own cow, right?!

Well, you certainly can, but we didn’t want to be sneaking by on the shady side, so we thought about it a lot.

Sunday gives a lot of milk. More milk than our one family could use even when we try, and we have tried! She also is expensive to own and care for, for a single family, and a lot of work. But as the center of a community, as the focal point for a private gathering of individuals and families, she becomes a resource of life giving nourishment. She allows us all to thrive and partake in a certain life to the extent that we are able. The relationship is not one of commercial give and take, but rather of membership, of pooling our resources so we all can have more and do better than we could alone.

This cowshare is not selling milk. You can buy that easily and certainly more cheaply at the local store. Our cowshare transcends the monetary and convenient. It is truly a community, an opportunity to be a part of something unique and special, a chosen relationship with each other, with a magnificent animal and with the earth, and we’re proud to be sharing it with you.