Farm Offers a Little Slice of Bovine Heaven
By Joseph A. Gambardello
Inquirer Staff Writer
Helga Tacreiter rubs the neck of Beatrice, a Scottish Highland.
Beatrice was abducted from a slaughterhouse and now lives on
Tacreiter's Cow Sanctuary in Shiloh, Cumberland County. Photos by
SHARON GEKOSKI- KIMMEL / Inquirer.
SHILOH - Helga Tacreiter does not believe in Hamburger Heaven.
No, this woman with an open face and easy laugh holds that when the
time comes for a cow to be put out to pasture, the animal should end
up in fields of grass - not a slaughterhouse.
It is a belief around which Tacreiter, 51, has built her life, and
that has inspired her to create the Cow Sanctuary on an 80-acre
spread here in Cumberland County, one of a loose network scattered
around the country, including the Lakshmi Cow Sanctuary in Bangor, Pa.
Shiloh is in meat-eating farm country, and Tacreiter knows that sets
her apart from her neighbors - that they think she is a harmless kook.
But "they know I'm honest and hard-working so they put up with
whatever floats my boat," she said.
To pay the bills, Tacreiter makes and sells life-size stuffed cows -
cloth sculptures she calls Cowches. It takes three days between the
chores to make one, which can cost from $300 to $800. Each is
numbered, and she has sold 1,053 in 13 years.
But the real cows clearly have her heart.
"I really think they're people," she said during a walk through the
fields as some of her dozen cows stopped what they were doing to
follow after her.
"Some people are real close to their dogs and feel they're really
members of the family. These guys really are my family. I don't have
kids. I don't have brothers and sisters. I have these guys."
When Tacreiter graduated from the University of California in Santa
Cruz with a degree in literature in 1975, she figured she would
become a journalist.
But on a trip to South Jersey to visit a friend, she decided to look
for a summer job. She applied at a dairy farm in Cumberland County.
"I thought: 'Oh, wouldn't it be fun to milk a cow,' " said Tacreiter,
who was born in Poland and came with her parents to the United States
in 1964 via England and Canada.
"At that time I thought cows just made milk. I thought I'd put my
hair in pigtails and carry a bucket. I didn't have a clue."
What she did not realize was that cows must have calves to make milk.
Female calves might be kept, but little bulls ended up as veal. And
cows who stopped making milk went to auction, usually the last stop
before the slaughterhouse.
Tacreiter said she came to see more in cows than milk and meat,
thanks to a Holstein she knew as No. 9.
She said that when she started at the dairy farm, No. 9 yanked out
her milking tubes three times. Deliberately, Tacreiter concluded.
"The third time she just looked me right in the eye and just pulled
them off," she said. "I said: 'She's trying to tell me something.'
She's saying: 'Pay attention. I'm not doing this by accident.' "
"Afterward I gave her some grain and she let me scratch her. That was
the first cow friend I had."
Sometime later she learned about the meat end of the dairy business
and cried for two days.
"I said: 'Well, there is nothing I can do about this so while these
cows are here, I'll try to make their lives as decent as possible,"
said Tacreiter, who became a vegetarian on principle at 21 and now
says she is one from experience.
In 1988, lightning struck.
While working on a horse farm where cows were used to maintain the
pasture, Tacreiter went out one morning and found that a group of
them had been struck dead in a thunderstorm during the night. Six
orphaned calves stood near the bodies.
She vowed to save the calves and did, buying them one by one with her
labor. Her favorite was an epileptic black Angus bull she named
Harvey, who became the model for her first Cowch.
She moved her herd from place to place until 1993, when she bought
her farm here, now also home to five horses, four emus, six cats, two
goats, three geese and three chickens.
Harvey has since died, but three of the six orphans remain among the
12 cows at the sanctuary. Others were either rescued by Tacreiter or
placed in her care by individuals or animal rights groups.
There's Beatrice, a red, long-horned Scottish Highland who was
abducted from an upstate slaughterhouse a decade ago by the 4-H girl
who raised her; and Bucky, a giant Holstein who was found standing
somewhere on Route 322 with a "Bull for Sale" sign around his neck.
Charlie is the son of Old Blind Cow, who was used for rodeo-roping
practice until Tacreiter bought her. Old Blind Cow has since died but
has left Tacreiter with an enduring memory.
"She nursed Charlie for three years. He was bigger than she was when
he stopped nursing. They have this moo that calls the babies to them
and Charlie would act like 'Aw c'mon, mom.' He actually had to get on
his knees to reach her udders. It was sort of hilarious."
The boss cow is Willis, whose story about how he made it from a
Pennsylvania farm to Shiloh is so full of twists and turns it
deserves a page of its own.
And Bianca came from Chester County after Colleen and Christopher
Ruffini bought the cow when she stopped giving milk.
Colleen Ruffini said she used to walk her daughter Jillian by
Bianca's farm when Jillian was a baby. Bianca, she said, would leave
her herd to follow them.
"We fell in love with her," said Ruffini, now of Chadds Ford. "We
wanted to adopt her and place her somewhere."
After buying Bianca, Ruffini found Tacreiter and arranged to place
the cow with her.
Now Jillian, 7, and sister Jacqueline, 6, sleep with cowches, and the
family visits Bianca at Tacreiter's farm.
"We think of Bianca as one of our household animals," said Ruffini,
who calls Tacreiter's dedication to animals "unbelievable."
Tacreiter, in the meantime, has become something of a Margaret Meade
of the bovine world.
There is, she tells you, a pecking order in herds, one that is
established with looks, nudges and butts - and size, if boss cow
Willis is taken into consideration.
"Social order is real important to them," she said.
Cows keep growing until they are about seven years old, eat about a
bale of hay a day, love the shade, and always lie down in the middle
of the day, Tacreiter said.
And, she advised: "The way to get in good with a cow is wherever they
can't reach, you scratch them."
Cows also feel loss, Tacreiter said.
She recalled how Apple, one of the six original orphans, "bawled
until she lost her voice" when her calf was stillborn. Tacreiter
found another calf and Apple raised Bocita as her own.
Apple is blind now and lives apart from the rest of the herd. But she
stood up upon hearing Tacreiter's voice the other day and walked
slowly toward the familiar sound.
"I've been really lucky," Tacreiter said. "I get to do something that
makes me want to spring out of bed in the morning and gives meaning
to my life."
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Contact staff writer Joseph Gambardello at 856-779-3868 or
jgambardello@phillynews.com.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/6990575.htm
To see Helga and her cows and cowches, visit http://www.cowch.com
Posted on SHARE Yahoo group Oct. 12, 2003