Dave Wood

I see by perusing the agricultural press last month that county dairy breakfasts were bursting out all over America’s Dairyland, including the Peterson family’s Pierce County get-together menu, which was probably loaded with milkshakes, butter splashed flapjacks and almost anything made into food that earlier squirted out of a cow’s teats.

Except of course, a delicacy revered by Norwegian teat pullers from the bovine-populated hills of Wisconsin. What might that be you ask as you pat your overserved tummies. 

No, it’s not the much-maligned gammel ost, which roughly translates as “old cheese” and smells so vile that my Yankee father rightly asked if it was produced by hanging a pail of cow manure in the milkhouse or a pail of milk in the outhouse? So you may think it rational to keep it isolated from customers, as many supermarkets have banned Liederkranz and Lemke’s odoriferous white from refrigerated dairy cases. 

You can still purchase “old cheese,” which begins with cottage cheese made from sour milk. The tiny curds are pressed into blocks, aged until they’ve turned yellow (“young cheese”) then aged much longer until they turn dark brown: “Old Cheese.” You can purchase those stinky crumbly wedges at any self-respecting Scandinavian specialty store, provided you have sufficient Penga in your wallet.

Okay, so what most certainly was not for sale at Peterson’s last month, respectfully dear Watsonquist?

It was a dairy substance called “Tetmürk” that’s what. Roughly translated that means “milk from tits.”

Roughly is right. Fancier folk would call it colostrum.” Webster describes it as a yellow fluid rich in protein and immune factors secreted by the mammary glands during the first few days of a cow’s lactation.

A remarkable gesture of the Almighty who obviously intended the animal kingdom to be able to take care of itself. The cunning farmer preserved the jar of medicine next to the milk waiting for the milk hauler. No, not for the hauler. For himself and other human family members in need of rich protein and immune factors they needed to ingest. Always cognizant of the need to never throw anything away, when another cow freshened, out came another Mason, in it went into the icy milk tank.

When the jars threatened to crowd out the 10-gallon cans of milk, the farmer’s largesse surfaced and he retrieved the Mason jars and treated his neighbors (AKA threshing crew, silo-filling crew, or funeral mourners, to blobs of his preserved golden goodness.

I was a junior in high school when I came home from a threshing crew at Herman Ringlien’s farm in Dagget Coulee and told my dad that after we finished, Herman treated us to several quarts of Tetmürk. “We sat under the elms, the breeze. . .”

“Did Herman provide scissors for you guys? You can’t drink that stuff without them, unless you have shears to stop the whole blob from slipping down your gullet!” There followed his tale of unloading 100 gallons of milk, 10 cans at a time only to discover one of the cans contained a miniscule amount of the powerful elixir, which turned 100 gallons of milk into one quivering blob.  

Okay, so what most certainly was not for sale at Peterson’s last month?

Elementary, my dear Watsonquist!

It was a dairy substance called Tetmürk that’s what. Roughly translated that means “milk from tits.”