Cow Embryo Incubation Chambers!

According to my Twitter feed I promised to tell this blog the story of the cow embryo incubation chambers.  Now for those of you who aren't aware, I grew up working a dairy farm in rural NW Pennsylvania while not in school.  Just about everyone in the church our family attended had some connection to farm life, which is why this story is so amusing to me.  I trust you will also find it so.

In the autumn of 1987, just around County Fair time where in that part of the country one is reasonably certain the days will be warm and rain-free, our church received a visitor.  This fellow was a traveling minister assigned to visit a circuit of congregations to review their needs and accounts once every six months for a period of two years.  His first full day with us was on a Saturday, so to get him and his wife acquainted with the area one of the elders took Barry with his family for a drive in the country and another elder took Barry's wife.

We had reached an area bordering on Amish territory and were viewing our first real farms when Barry asked a question about the large hay bales covered with tarps in the field.  As background you have to understand that this preacher had lived his entire life (he was 43 at the time I believe) in New Jersey near New York City.  Farm life was as alien to him as the Spaniards were to the Aztecs.  Here then is what our elder told Barry about life in the country:

Brother Morgan (picture James Earl Jones): 'Those hay bales there?  Those are cow embryo incubation chambers.  The farmer inserts the baby cow inside and it eats it's way out as it grows.  They put the plastic over top to keep it warm and to make sure it doesn't rot in the rain.'

This news took a moment to digest as our distinguished visitor started to realize that either his host was teasing or that farm life was a lot harder than any episode of Green Acres.  The rest of the ride was a litany of questions any country 10-year old could answer followed by the increasingly unbelievable answers which Brother Morgan seemed to make up on the spot.  To add verisimilitude the answers were sprinkled with truths such as how the Amish and Mennonites hung their curtains differently or to avoid wearing the color red around them to avoid giving unintended insult.  This lesson in farm life and biology continued for a couple hours- long enough to make our guest wary of staying too long in our primitive part of the world.

Finally we arrived at McDonalds to join up with the preacher's wife's car.  Over snacks we related anecdotes from our respective tours.  Brother Morgan was cajoled into admitting that most of what he had related was true in essence but that he may have exaggerated for comic effect a few of the more unbelievable "facts"- all except for the part about the cow embryo incubation chambers, of course.

I happened to see Barry again in 1994.  After a speech in Greensboro I rushed down to the stage to say hello.  Turning around from other well-wishers he saw me and immediately recognized the young adult I'd grown up to be.  "Throop!" he said loudly and affectionately.  We spent a couple of minutes gossiping about old times and he remarked that of all the places he had been our congregation of 'country bumpkins' had been the sharpest group of parishioners with which he had ever been associated.  He also said that he told this story on himself to his friends and colleagues as a cautionary tale: never assume you know it all- especially about how calves are raised.