Down on the Farm

Each morning, I make a cup of tea, and usually add a splash of milk to my cup. The milk comes from a waxed cardboard carton, emblazoned with a company logo and charming little drawings of rolling hills and grazing cattle. This morning, I stared at the milk carton while my tea was steeping, and thought about those cartoon cows. Even before the agrarian revolution and industrialisation, most dairy cows did not graze on unending ranches - dairy farmers kept their cows close to home to make milking easier and faster. These days, most dairy cows do not see the light of day - they spend their lives indoors. Grazing is the domain of beef cattle. The drawings on my milk carton are a sweet, appealing falsehood, relying on the ignorance of city slickers like me to sell an idea about darling dairy cows with names like ‘Betsy’ and ‘Mildred’ and ‘Daisy’, a sort of mix between Beatrix Potter, Marie Antoinette’s pretend farm at Versailles, and James Herriott.

I suspect those who grow up in more rural environments, with closer access to the realities of cattle farming, might not be so easily fooled by my milk carton. Similarly, I suspect the sons and daughters of farming families do not normally wax poetic about cows, which I am about to do. One of my first jobs was to muck out stalls at the horse barn where I learned to ride, in exchange for lessons. Across the gravel road from the horse barn was a cattle pasture, often populated with a handful of placid cows, chewing their cud, swishing their long tails, standing stolidly together, staring into the middle distance like the noblest dukes. These were beef cattle, and they had rough, shaggy coats, broad creamy-white foreheads, and stubborn looks on their faces. They grazed, unbothered, in nearly all weathers. There was something very charming, very appealing about them, clustered in little groups of three or four, jaws working interminably, but I never went near them. I grew up around horses, and their peculiarities (which are varied and legion) are at least familiar to me. But the ways of cows are unknown to me. I am given to understand that they can be dangerous because they are so curious - they likely will not mean to hurt you, but you can easily be stomped upon or trampled by a cow who has gotten very close to you, and brought all her nosy friends along for an investigation. In my experience, if you go into a horse pasture (especially if you are swinging a halter and rope from your arm), then the horses will slowly and determinedly stroll away from you. It is good practice to bring some form of bribery along with you to collect a horse, or make peace with chasing them all over their field. Cows, apparently, may well wander up to you and surround you, all inquisitiveness - not an ideal trait in an animal that weighs as much as a small car. Horses tend to be wily, flightly, particular, and given to strong emotions. Cows seem, at least to me, to take life more philosophically.
The same horse barn that kept ponies also, for a time, had flocks of sheep. Sheep are quite a different kettle of fish. They are trusting, generally quite sweet-natured, placid - and very stupid. I once watched, incredulously, as a ewe stood at one end of a field, calling for her lamb who stood alone at the other end. The lamb and ewe were crying out for each other pitiously, with equal vigour - but it did not seem to ever occur to either one to cross the field. This went on for some time. A ram from the same flock once had a ferocious battle with fence post. I could not possibly say who won. But one cannot help but feel a special affection for sheep, who gaze upon humans with such obligingly, eager little faces. I don’t think it’s a mistake that so many shepherding cultures imagine the relationship between humans and God through the metaphor of sheep and shepherd. They (the sheep) have no idea what is going on, but they are not worried, because you are there, and you will take care of them. I’m afraid the implications for the brain power of humanity isn’t great, but the sheep aren’t wrong - we will look after them, the wooly little idiots, if only because we know how badly things would go for them if we didn’t.

Jennifer