Thistle seed head

An extra car in the parking area when I pulled into the dairy this morning. Turned out to be the milk tester - hadn't seen it on the schedule. I like having the milk tester there. The milking machines capture a small portion of the milk and he puts that sample in vials labeled w/ the cow's number. His presence means that I will have help for the entire milking since the owners don't want to keep him any longer than necessary. We were done milking early - 8:30 a.m. Once Mike & I had done our usual cleanup, we got down to scrubbing the parlor. Good thing we had an early start. At 10:00. when we had finished cleaning both sides and were working on the pit area, the Boumatic guys came in. They were there to rebuild the pulsators (part of the milking machines). That was also not on the schedule. At 1:00 the next milking would start and everything would have to be in working condition again, so we quickly finished our remaining cleanup and got out of their way. Either someone needs to be more responsible about updating the schedule board - or - maybe I should check that I wasn't on the wrong week.