Do step into my herringbone parlour, Daisy

THERE is a “herringbone” milking parlour that can accommodate 44 cows on a dairy farm in Kokstad that is to be auctioned by In2assets on Wednesday. But how did herringbones enter cow country, you might ask?

If you saw a herringbone milking parlour from above, you’d see how it got its name.

The milking machines are positioned in the middle – the “spine” of the fish – between two aisles with room for the cows. The cows come into the parlour and line up between each “fish bone”, creating two rows of cows. The farm team then moves up and down in a sunken pit, attaching the milking machine to the cows’ udders.

As for the “parlour” promise, one can only assume the term was coined to draw Daisy into what turns out to be a good old milking shed.

In2assets have timed the sale of the dairy farm well as last Friday was World Milk Day. In 2001, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation proclaimed June 1 as World Milk Day to celebrate the “important contribution of the dairy sector to sustainability, economic development, livelihoods and nutrition”. It’s now a big occasion with milk celebrated at nearly 600 events in 80 countries.

Friday would have started with dairy farmers raising their glass of milk at sunrise in New Zealand and ended with milk cocktails at sunset on a beach in Hawaii.

Farmers, staff, families, chefs, nutritionists, doctors, academics – even politicians, apparently – raised their glasses to toast milk.

You might have missed the big day in South Africa though. Here National Braai Day and Mother’s Day are far more opportunistically milked by local stores.