No one ever explained where the question originated, but it was used randomly by youngsters and adults alike – “How now, Brown Cow?” [See hardfacts’ comment below for the history of the phrase 😉 ]
If a youngster had made a complete mess of an assigned chore, the question was a bemused inquiry, “How now, Brown Cow?” which could be responded to or not. Either way, the questioner would likely just start helping to straighten things up and get the wagon back on the road, so to speak.
It might also actually be addressed to a brown cow encountered in the barn yard, just for the sake of conversation. In that case, no reply was expected.
We had a good relationship with our one or two milk cows – they were gentle and useful. They did not have individual names – all were called Bossy. How we felt about close physical proximity to them depended somewhat on what time of year it was – more about that in a minute.
For the non-farm kids reading here, here’s the back story on how we arrived at having a good milk cow.
A pregnant cow was said to be getting ready to freshen. That just meant that once her calf was born, she would have a fresh supply of milk. The calf would be weaned from direct suckling a month or so after birth. A galvanized bucket with an artificial teat would be filled with milk from the mama and hung on a fence post so the calf could then suckle from the bucket. Once this routine was developed (took a couple of days) then mama’s milk was all ours. After the calf was weaned, it wasn’t too long before it joined the beef cattle in the herd (if we had any) and went on its merry way, forgetting about mama.
All that had to be done from that point on to keep the nice cow producing two or three gallons of milk a day was milk her, twice a day. And never miss.
If she was a good producer (and most of them were, if they were cared for and had good food and water), her production would continue at least a couple of years.
Farmers did not have to go and get the cow(s) at milking time. Their udders will be full and expanding by evening and they would present themselves at the barn door, patiently waiting to be granted entrance and go to their stall where they would get a bucket of good oats to eat while they were being milked.
Sometimes as she stood at the door, we would hear her lowing which is Stage 1 of Cow Talk. (Stage 2 is moo-ing. Stage 3 is bawling.) When we learned Away in the Manger as small children, we knew exactly what the cows were doing in verse two where it says, “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes….”
If milking was delayed for any reason by the human, at a given point the cow would start baw-w-w-ling, plaintively complaining as in, “Hey, I’m beginning to stretch here. The old milk bag is about to burst and I’m in a world of hurt – so can you step it up???” Any farmer worth his salt would never allow cows to go un-milked, both because of the discomfort it caused them and because a pattern of late or skipped milkings would eventually result in a dry cow.
Morning on the farm was something special, especially in summer…that’s when the first accurate weather forecast for the day was delivered.
At the blackest hour of the middle of the night, a bit before dawn, the first bird sings. There’s no evidence of daylight yet, but the first bird sings, and then there’s the smallest line of light along the eastern horizon. That doesn’t light the landscape, but then – morning breaks.
The unannounced immediacy and freshness of all kinds of weather was problematic until recent decades, and the farmers who had barometers hanging on the wall in the hall knew how to read them as well as any forecaster.  Jesus spoke to his listeners about the common sense of those who knew how to read the sky and in the 1950s, being able to read the sky was still the best source of weather information.

The week before my parents’ wedding in 1926, the groom-to-be wrote this to the bride-to-be:

Isn’t it funny weather? I can’t make it out at all. Just wonder what there is coming. Is it going to be spring or a snowstorm? No doubt a snow would be the best thing but I don’t want to see it for another week. Had hoped on getting in the field but the ground is too frozen yet.
The ducks were going north by the thousands this afternoon, but about dark some were coming back. I guess they failed to find open water around Coalridge and decided to spend the night on the Missouri. They fly over a mile a minute so it doesn’t take so long.*

Whatever the weather, around daybreak the big rolling door was opened and Bossy went into her stall to begin her day as the farmer began his.
At the evening milking when things were  warmer, she sometimes brought a cloud of flies with her and I would provide cover for my brother as he milked, pumping the can of DDT to spray the cow’s back and butt while he milked, killing as many as possible and providing some relief for both him and the cow.
If the cow was twitchy and wouldn’t stop switching her tail, my job might to stand there and hold it to prevent her from slapping it across the face of the milker. The diameter of the long hairs on a cow’s tail are just a bit less than the thickness of a paper clip and their coarseness makes them as abrasive as sandpaper.
In the winter time when the barn was frozen solid, there was a comfort for the milker who could push his head into that concave spot just where the belly curves in to the hind leg above the full milk bag. The warmth of Bossy’s body offsets the cold air and makes quite a difference if the temperatures are around zero.
It must have been tempting at times for either brother or Dad to hasten the milking process and, just to hurry things along, not quite drain Bossy dry. That would be a big mistake because then you’re asking for your milk supply to be dried up so the udder is emptied completely, every time.
The bucket of warm milk is carried to the house after the cow is turned back outside, except on a bitterly cold night when she might be left inside with a pile of clean straw.

The milk is taken to the basement and dumped into the big open bowl top of the cream separator, and then the farmer begins to turn the handle to get the twenty or so metal disks turning and swirling. The spigot is opened, allowing the whole milk to flow down over the disks is opened, the heavier cream separates and flows down a small funnel into a can set there for the purpose; the lighter skim milk flows into its larger bucket, and both of them get carried up to the refrigerator in the kitchen to chill.
This was done twice a day. Every day. 365 days a year. There was always more than enough milk for cooking and for cereal and for drinking; and plenty of heavy, yellow cream for baking, churning butter,  selling to the creamery or gifting to widows in the community.
*this was a distance of 50-55 miles as the crow flies

A couple of weeks ago, the MBOB featured stories about the ditches of eastern Montana, the good and the bad. I thought of it too late to include it, but here’s a beautiful photo taken by Cyrano this past summer when he and his wife drove through the area, providing proof that sometimes it is actually green in July.
In recent years, it has rained unlike anything we ever experienced in terms of successive rainy years. These kinds of flower-filled ditches were definitely not a sight we would see in late July as Cyrano did. Most unusual and beautiful to me.