Good-bye Dear Chocolate

Chocolate was my first cow. Nervous and excited, I remember the day she and Molasses arrived on my farm. They were sweet, tame milk cows, but untrained. They had been raised in a pasture operation and had never been trained to a halter, so I had to just communicate with body language.

I had grown up with horses, but never cows. And I quickly discovered that I had no idea how to work with the energy of the cow.

These were milk cows in full milk in their prime years. It took me almost two days to get them up to the barn and into the milking stalls. That was just the beginning of the seriously steep learning curve I was about to embark on. This first summer of starting up a micro-dairy was one of the hardest and definitely the happiest time of my entire life.

Chocolate was my teacher for all things cow. And she took this job very seriously, never allowing me to mis-understand anything.

But Chocolate was so much more than friend, teacher, and giver of milk. And she was so much more than the star of many touching farm tales, mother extraordinaire, the hero of my milk customers, the inspiration for my Rock-a-Cow raw cacao line of sweets, and the personality behind my adorable and fun Ice Cream for Kids e-book.

Chocolate was more because Chocolate’s energy completely transformed the land we live on and the terrain of my soul.

Chocolate’s presence was literally life changing. Because of my love for her and my joy in sharing life with her, I was driven to learn how to transform a depleted farm field into a richly diverse, thriving ecosystem.

With free choice minerals, Chocolate and the other cows used the wisdom of their bodies to eat what the land was deficient in and then process the excess out onto the land. Their gentle grazing tugged on the grasses. They laid spent grass and weeds down onto the soil and added mineral-rich fertilizer to the ground, leaving an abundance of life-giving plants in their wake. And the food and shelter those new plants provided brought forth birds and butterflies and bees and flowers galore. All of these came to be by incorporating the energy and wisdom of Chocolate into the energy of the farm.

And all the humans that gratefully savored Chocolate’s milk and joined her meditatively in the pasture incorporated her energy and wisdom into them, using it to produce abundance in their lives as well.

As for me, my entire life has been changed from witnessing and being a part of the far-reaching, beautiful chain reaction of energy transfer and transformation that occurred because Chocolate came to my farm one day. She gave me glimpses into heart, beauty and energy that have been critical puzzle pieces in my life’s work of understanding the energetics of behavior. And she touched my heart in ways that left me deeply altered. My life will never be the same thanks to having encountered Chocolate.

All this life-giving prosperity happened because Chocolate simply graced my farm with her amazing presence.

As Chocolate was laid to rest today, the wisdom and energy that was she has been set free for its final and most complete incorporation into the world that she embraced. And her energy will go on and on and on, transforming endlessly as it brings her wisdom and beauty to all that it touches.

I love you, dear Chocolate. Your presence will be forever felt.