The barn was a pretty big place with the cows in the cellar which was half dug into a slight hillside. The east and south walls were exposed to the sun and lined with windows to let in the light. The cows stood, or lay, in their rows of stanchions, facing each other with a central aisle where they were fed hay and corn silage and feed. Above, the haymow was expansive and open and a marvel of hand-hewn technology 150 years old. The pigeons entered at the roof’s peak through the louvers and built their fragile nests on the highest side-beams to which the red barn-board siding was nailed with hand-forged nails. The haymow held the year’s supply of dried alfalfa and clover and canary grass, all baled nicely and stacked in crisscrossing layers, usually stacked by me as I proved to be heat tolerant as a child-laborer and my brother suffered from hay fever.

During the winter months the cows stayed inside. They lulled about. They got fed; they got milked. It’s a long time till spring. Music fills in for the voice of the farmer on the long dark nights, the wait for the feedbox at the end of the aisle to open and the fragrant molasses of it to spill towards the dual, soft nostrils of munch.

Above the south wall of windows was a small shelf above your head and above the cows’ heads so they didn’t knock things apart when the day came for them to once again venture into the outside. This shelf was the radio shelf. It was actually a three sided box open to the front. There was an eclectic outlet near the shelf with the radio. The radio played one station, day and night, 365 days a year. WABC Radio AM with Dan Ingram, Scott Muni and Herb Oscar Anderson. Cousin (Meyerowitz) Brucie was as big as them come. I don’t think the cows had a preference. The cows gave milk while listening to The Four Seasons, the Temptations, Righteous Brothers, Beatles, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Frankie Valli, and Otis Redding. Diana Ross and the Supremes. Dionne Warwick.

I can’t say if the cows preferred female singers to males, or the Dave Clack Five to the Rolling Stones, but science shows music helps cows remain calm and productive and happy. A 2001 study done at the University of Leicester showed cows gave more milk when listening to classical music. They dubbed their study the “Moosic Study”. A Turkish farmer, Mehmet Akugul, discovered his cows gave 5% more milk when he showered his cows in soothing music. Now, my father wasn’t going to listen to classical music all day, so our cows had to do with whatever came out of that New York City radio station. Too much strictly classical music, while calming for cows, might, after three or four hours, set an impetuous farmer on edge. That would be counter-productive at best and outright dangerous at worst.

Nothing calms a cow more than unfettered access to the sweet grasses of the spring pasture. They will even masticate on wild onion and garlic tops. You could tell the season by the taste in the raw milk. Such a hint of flavor meant the radio was playing to an empty barn, and the cows were in the grass, or napping under the big oaks shading the river bank. The cows replaced John Campbell with birdsong and the gurgling of the river rapids, but always the radio played.