Sue Sanders: “The year was 1893, and we weren’t able to raise even seed. Our chances of eating looked almost hopeless that winter. For months we had been living on bacon rinds, black-eyed peas, and cornbread, with an occasional skinny chicken. In addition to this we got about a gallon of milk from our scrub cows. They had kept on coming up every night, and we’d been glad to start milking them again. This milk meant life to our little family, and we were mighty thankful for it. Ma’s blueblooded Jersey had almost given up the ghost. She lay sprawled out under a tree and made no move to get up and find anything to eat. She kept alive for awhile because Ma would sneak out some of our cornmeal to her. When that was gone, Jersey just quiled up and starved to death. Fannie and I had got fighting mad at Ma for giving almost the last bit of our food to that cow. We thought the little Jersey should take her chance with the scrubs. ‘She’s a different breed than those old common cows,’ Ma would say. ‘How would she look in that herd of cattle? She belongs where they have a big barn, and that full of feed.’ But I will take the old common herd every time. I don’t mind saying that I’m proud to be one of them, both in breed and in fact.”

Sue Sanders. Our Common Herd. New York: Garden City Publishing Company, 1939.