Remember the lofty plan that I made to visit all of these sites in and around North Georgia before the end of the year? Well, I’ve started on my costly sojourn, y’all. Strike one off the list…

Early Saturday morning, I loaded up my niece (Sweet Pea) in the granny-mobile, and we started on the 50-mile trek to Cagle’s Dairy Farm in Canton—because there’s nothing better than a big ol’ whiff of cow dung and a carton of chocolate milk to start your day off good and right.

And on our journey there, we stopped at Mac-Donald’s for breakfast (that’s Mac as in MAC, because that’s what my grandmother calls it, so therefore it must be true). But after I pulled into the drive-thru, I started experiencing some internal strife and conflict thinking that it would probably be more fitting to stop at Chick-fil-A since we were on our way to visit a herd of Holstein cows and that’s what the cows would “prefer” that we do. Those Chick-fil-A cows are kind of like a bovine mafia. And they paint their death threats on HIGHWAY signs, people! But, my stomach screamed at me and said, “Lulu – EAT NOW!” so I ordered an Egg MAC-Muffin for me and an egg biscuit for the niece, and figured that I would deal with the cows later. It would be much easier to defend Sweet Pea and myself on a full stomach of eggs and grease.

Anyhow, Canton is a beautiful town. It’s all countryside and farms and silos, and I swear I felt as though I was in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. (I visited there when I was young-ish, as in am-ish, but without the am- and with the young-. Got it? Good.) Anyhow, the farm’s parking lot (which was basically a pasture) was almost completely empty when we arrived, and I began to wonder where the crowds of cow lurkers were. Perhaps they had stopped at Mac-Donald’s, too? But I guess getting up with the chickens is the key to visiting this place, because by the time we finished our tour, the huge pasture was almost completely full of SUVs and other non-granny like cars.

So, after purchasing our $7 farm-tour tickets (not a bad deal, at all), I took a few pictures of Sweet Pea standing by this sign that says, “Happy Fall Ya’ll.”

Besides that fact that I don’t agree with their form of “y’all,” it happened to be a cheeky little country sign…y’all. (And I know that y’all isn’t a word, but the way I see it is that y’all is a shortened version of ‘you all’; therefore, the ‘-ou’ is being eliminated, so the apostrophe goes after the y. Any thoughts on the matter? Does anyone really care? I think not.)

Our tour started in the calf barn. And surprisingly, we learned about calves. Not to bore you or anything, but down on the farm, a calf is kidnapped taken from its mother 48 hours after it is born, and then bottle-fed and grain-fed in the calf barn until it is about 3 or 4 months old. Unless it’s a male. Males are sold to other ranchers and farmers for stud services. And probably hamburgers. After 3 or 4 months, the females are moved to a small pasture beside the calf barn until they reach milking age. Whenever that is.

After we visited the orphanage calf barn, we saw a demonstration on how cows are milked. Rosie, the cow, was loaded into some sort of milking contraption, and her udders were attached to some kind of steel suction thingies, and people were watching and pointing, and the dairy dude was talking, and…I felt dizzy because all of a sudden it became all too familiar to me. Luckily, it was a quick demonstration, and no one had any questions—especially me because I was starting to have an asthma attack, and I don’t even have asthma. I’ll post a picture, but I can’t look at it…

So, after the gynecological milking demonstration, we moved into the processing facility where we learned how milk is homogenized (very interesting!) and packaged into cartons (not so interesting!).

And after we toured the refrigeration area, we each got to select a half-pint of either chocolate or regular milk to drink on the upcoming hayride. However, Sweet Pea didn’t want one, so I whispered to her to get the white milk anyway (because Hefty here wanted to drink her milk, as well), but she was confused and kept saying, “But, Aunt Lulu, I don’t want any milk!” And I kept whispering, “It’s okay, get it anyway!” obviously quite loud because the fancy-pants lady in line in front of me turned to give me a look of dissatisfaction and annoyance, like I was an imbecile or something. So, I just smiled at her and said, “Oh, she can just save it for later.” You know, like milk will keep in the hot sun for another hour or so.

We were then loaded onto a large cart full of hay and allergies where we were allowed to drink our milk. Sweet Pea actually did end up getting a white milk and drinking it as well, so when the tractor-lady-guide asked us all how we liked our milk, I was all, “Oh, Sweet Pea just loved hers!” while flailing my arms so that fancy-pants lady would LAY OFF MY CASE already.

Here we are on the hayride…

And on the hayride, we saw pregnant cows (that can weigh up to 1200 lbs) waiting to be milked…

…and a pig race…suuuu-eee!

…and a herding demonstration by Tib, the farm’s Border Collie (in which the cows started a stampede towards our cart, and I just knew that we were going to be toppled over—damn you, Chick-fil-A!)…

And as we were leaving, we stopped to feed to germ-y goats…

and admire the beautiful pumpkins…

And while Sweet Pea and I only took in the tour of the farm, there are many other activities to do there: pony-rides, navigate through a massive corn “maize,” enjoy an evening bonfire, shop in a small country market, tour the vegetable gardens (in season), jump on a jumpy pillow, and so much more. Check out their Web site to read about all of the seasonal activities.

Although we both left the farm smelly, and sneeze-y, and hacking our heads off, we had a fabulous time, and I truly enjoyed learning how a dairy farm works. And like their slogan says, Cagle’s Dairy Farm really is “an udderly cool place to visit!”