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Editor's Note: While it has not been long since we ran a story on the flying cow, no conical of the tales of the county would be complete without Nellie Jay.
"Sing we praises of that moo cow,
Airborne once and ever more,
Kindness, courage, butter, cream cheese,
These fine things we can't ignore."
--From "The Bovine Cantata in B-Flat Major,"
by Giacomo Moocini and Ludwig Von Bovine
(Barry Levenson and the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum.)
Elm Farm Ollie--known locally as "Nellie Jay" by those who had the privilege of milking her at Bismarck's Sunnymede Farms--has become a bona fide bovine folk hero.
Quite simply, she is the first cow to fly in an airplane. It is not known, however, whether she flew first class or coach. She may not have even had a ticket.
Unlike other, perhaps more common, cows, Ollie's cause celeb centers around the airplane flight she took in February, 1930 to the International Aircraft Exposition at St. Louis.
Because she was such an unusually productive dairy cow--and required three daily milkings--she was put to work in-flight. As the story goes, she ate her usual feed and produced 24 quarts of milk.
In what may very well be the first, if not only, case of fresh air delivery, these quarts were carefully bottled, sealed and dropped from the airplane as it flew over St. Louis. Small parachutes were attached to keep her skymilk from spilling.
Celebrated as a pasteurized legend of the pasture, Ollie has for 60 years remained the star attraction at the Feb. 18 dairy festival held each year at Mount Horeb, Wisc.
In addition to having her praises sung in such works as "The Bovine
Cantata in B-Flat Major" (from Madame Butterfat) and the stirring "Owed to
Ollie," she has been the subject of stories, cartoons and poems. E. D. Thalinger even
painted her portrait for posterity.
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"I probably threw some pretty important records about her away when I got the farm. I
had no idea of the historical significance," said Bismarck Mayor Paul Hedrick, who
now owns the barn where Ollie's star was born.
"I think it was all done to get a little publicity," he added. "It must have worked. I still have the fan they used to cool her in the plane."
While written reports are utterly impossible to come by, those who remember Ollie recall that she was a young guernsey of two when she was first thrust into the limelight of the public's eye.
"She was a really gentle cow, but of course she had to be in order to get in that airplane," said William Fields Grider.
"She was here at the (Sunnymede) farm when I worked in the processing plant. She was supposed to give six gallons a day, two gallons at each milking. That was a lot back then.
"They brought her here from another place and she went back over into the herd. She lived to be about 10 or so, and died here at the farm. A lot went to the slaughter house," he recalled.
The Spirit of Ollie has settled comfortably in Wisconsin's history books--where her dairy tale is churned out fresh each year when Elm Farm Ollie Day, her holiday, comes around.
But in Bismarck, her humble home before those days of corn and roses, those who even faintly remember her triumph have, for the most part, mooved on.
"It's amazing," agreed Mark Hedrick, city administrator, "Her story was picked up out of Wisconsin and they celebrate this every year. What gets me the most, though, is the kind of planes they had back then.
"You know, for 1930, it had to be a pretty big airplane to pick up a cow of that size," he concluded.
When plans began last month for the upcoming Second Annual Freedom Festival, some organizers jokingly tried to top the Elm Farm Ollie story.
A "grandcalf," they said, could probably be found to serve as the parade grand marshal--and then dropped out of an airplane with a parachute. A milker, preferably the mayor, could also be parachuted out of the plane to milk Ollie's offspring as both plummeted to earth.
When no further business could be completed because of the laughter, the organizational meeting adjourned early.
Perhaps Giacomo Moocini said it best, though, when he penned those timeless lines: "She flies through the air with the greatest of ease/Dropping her ice cream, yogurt and cheese."
