There is nothing more grounding than being covered with 24-hour-old, dairy-cow-processed total mixed ration (TMR).

I had a truly exhilarating experience recently while attempting to open up a 30-year-old valve, which was holding back a few hundred thousand gallons of the finest organic fertilizer known to modern agriculture. This valve was fully depreciated and chose the intersection of meeting me to refusing to fulfill its lifelong obligation of releasing cow poop in a civilized manner and obfuscated this responsibility.

I was on the phone with someone who had a little more knowledge on the operation of said manure-holder-backer valve as my juvenile experience seemed to notice a little more play and flexibility in said valve. While on the phone, our beloved valve felt the need to abdicate its responsibility, or in more modern parlance, crap the bed. While on the phone with our resident valve expert, I let out several forms of communication that conveyed a sense of urgency, an expression of being on the wrong end of a cow, and verbiage that probably wouldn’t get past the Federal Communication Commission or the editors of this fine literary body.

While in the throes of trying to stem the tide of bovine fecal matter, I couldn’t help but think back to my ancestor, the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dike in order to save the entire nation of Holland from a potential dike burst and deadly flooding. While not nearly as heroic, your little Dutch boy did end up fighting a rusty valve and stemming the tide of angry bovine fertilizer while preventing an ugly interaction with the local concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) inspector. This battle for control over containing manure was countered by the desire for an above-ground manure tank to become instantly free range.

Fortunately, the good guys won, and our beloved valve decided to contain enough muscle memory to close and prevent widespread shame and consternation. This movement, however, was not without the side effect of covering our little Dutch boy in yesterday's TMR.

Photo provided by Dwayne Faber.

While this is certainly not a glamorous job, and has many unrewarded sacrifices, there is something deeply human in knowing that I can share my suffering with all of you readers. So here we are. I felt better knowing that my unconventional bath in the digested refuse of my cows’ lower hind guts would provide great fodder for an article in the most progressive of dairy literary genius.

Not all of you may get the opportunity to share some of your more humiliating dairy encounters with millions on social media or thousands through the written word, so I hope you take comfort in knowing that there are many others across our fruited plains who encounter the splash zone of cleaning a separator, need to lasso errant cows in the lagoon, get pooped on in parlors and, yay, even encounter a fully depreciated manure slide valve on a manure tank.

In the words of a wise old farmer, if you can’t be good lookin’ or smart, you better be willing to work hard and be covered in cow poop. Words of advice from your friendly author, with some lived experiences: If you can, offer to be part of the front end of feeding the cow rather than dealing with the back end.