Once more into the abyss

Having volunteered to look after his neighbour's herd of Limousin cattle, John Lewis-Stempel is dismayed to find himself having to haul an elm-flowerloving heifer out of a ditch on a dramatic March afternoon Illustration by Michael Frith

- John Lewis-Stempel

 

FOR show business, W. C. Fields coined the axiom: ‘Never work with children or animals.’ The farming version of this sagacity is: ‘Never look after other people’s animals, be they pets or livestock.’

Today offered further proof of this law, which is as immutable as gravity. In a reciprocal favour to my neighbour, Will, I am caring for his farm as he attends a wedding ‘down south’. His sheep-and-cattle enterprise in the hills above Hay-on-Wye runs like perpetual-motion clockwork. My only real job is the moving of his small herd of Limousin cattle from their secure night paddock to their day-grazing on an open hillside and then escorting them back in the evening. All went well this morning at 7am; I let the Lims out, supervised their crossing of the lane, in the manner of a lollipop man, to the hill and fastened the electric fencing behind them. They know the routine by heart. The sun was shining, the skylarks were singing in a sky the perfect blue and fragility of eggshell and the air, even in these far-off hard hills, carried the soft caress of spring. I went home and tended to my own livestock.

At 5pm, I returned to Will’s farm to bring the cows home. As soon as I got out of the Jeep, I knew it was trouble. Trouble with a majuscule T. Usually, the cattle would be waiting at the exit to the lane, standing with the sort of patience that humbles humans. Instead, they were grouped silent and still on the other side of the field, as if arrested in the child’s game of statues. I walked across, knowing—with heavy feet, heavy heart—and pushed through the herd cooing: ‘Okay girls, okay girls.’ You don’t want 10 x 400kg of Limousin milling about in a panic.