by Amanda Owen
Without realizing it, our scavengers have contributed to a zero-waste policy at Ravenseat. Food-wise, nothing goes to waste; there are hungry mouths to feed whichever way you look. Tea is drunk out of china cups and requests for take-out cups are rebuffed as the paper and plastic objects would just cause litter issues. If you have not got time to stop, then keep walking. Even so, one environmentally conscious Texan walker did manage to find fault.
‘Hey, liddle lady,’ he said. I was already irritated, and he’d barely started.
‘I see that you have an open fire,’ he went on, walking uninvited right into the farmhouse. ‘Are you not worried about emissions and the atmosphere?’
I was tempted to ask haughtily about the purpose of his trip but the fact that he was clutching a Coast to Coast guidebook answered that question. It turned out he was on a two-week walking holiday, which sounded like it ticked all the boxes regarding green credentials but was less impressive when you factored in the luggage being picked up and dropped off by a van every day at each stopover and the flights to and from the US of A. I have more reasons than many to want to leave this world in a better state, in order that my children can inherit a good, healthy planet. We try to raise a family that is mindful of the countryside, nature and the environment. We do not take foreign holidays, in fact we don’t take any holidays. We recycle, plant trees, build ponds and expend a great amount of our time trying to enhance the landscape in which we live. But what is achievable or even possible in rural areas differs vastly compared with urban areas. It is all just a matter of doing your bit.
Epilogue
A Day to Remember
Quite soon after The Firs was ready, in September 2017, we had some farmers come to stay. Dairy farmers from West Cumbria, they were looking for a change of scenery but not too far away as they still needed to be on hand should one of their herd of Jersey cows calve. They had everything arranged, a relief dairyman would see that the cows were milked morning and night, feed the calves and also keep them updated via the telephone. As a keeper of livestock myself, I know that it is never a simple task to leave the animals in somebody else’s hands, however capable they might be. There is always a niggling worry that something might be overlooked. But still, my guests were happy to be taking a few days out from their busy farming schedule and, after I’d given them the guided tour of the house and showed them the facilities, they presented me with a gift, a large bottle of Jersey milk.
I looked approvingly at the plastic bottle filled with what I could already see was the creamiest of milk. It brought back memories of my younger days, working on dairy farms and in milking parlours. A perk of the job was that I was allowed to take home a couple of pints of milk every night. I’d decant it from the cooling tank into a stainless-steel can after the evening milking. Unpasteurized and unsterilized, it tasted indescribably wonderful – ambrosial even – wholesome rather than insipid.
‘It’s fresh out of the tank today,’ said one of the two brothers whose families were staying. ‘Put it in t’fridge and it’ll keep.’
I doubted that it would, actually – he didn’t know about the vultures that hovered around the fridge at home – but I told the children that it would be in their best interests to leave the Jersey milk alone. A rice pudding fit for a king would be theirs if they could manage not to succumb to temptation.
As it happened, the entire family became distracted by a major trauma that was playing out in the Keldside Allotment, a piece of land we have between The Firs and Ravenseat. Two autumn calving cows were in there, grazing amongst the molinia, wind grass and heather. We hoped that they would calve before the weather turned, that the calves would be born outside on the clean ground, have the chance to find their feet and get a little autumnal sunshine on their backs before they were all brought into the barn for the winter. Every day we would go and have a look at them, taking a couple of canches of hay with us to keep them happy, biddable and sweet.
‘Coosh, coosh,’ we’d shout, and the two roan cows would limber towards us.
One drizzly morning, we had only one cow. The chances were that the other had made away to find a quiet sheltered place to give birth. Clive and I both walked up the wallside, where delicate gossamer webs draped between the seaves now glistened with droplets of dampness. We plodded on, upwards through the pasture where the wall dipped and rose, weaving a sinuous trail through the heather and haggs. It didn’t take long before we found a gap in the wall. The bottom row and foundations were still intact, but the rest of the stones had rolled and tumbled to the bottom of the scree that formed part of the adjacent ghyll. We studied the scene carefully.
‘Yer don’t think that t’cow’s got summat to do wi’ this?’ I said, wiping my nose and staring at the stones and surrounding ground looking for hoofprints.
‘Nah,’ replied Clive. ‘She’ll have calved and be laid up quiet somewhere with her calf.’
We agreed that, whilst we were there at that moment, we should repair the wall. I went over the collapsed section and down the screes to retrieve the stones whilst Clive made a start on putting the wall up. It took little time, and was not the neatest job in the world, but it was stockproof. Carefully, I clambered back over the wall, stopping briefly to sit astride it. From that vantage point I could see both of our cows, one at the bottom of the field quietly eating hay and the other previously missing cow striding purposefully out through the heather in the opposite direction from where we were standing. Beside her, a small roan calf half-trotted and half-stumbled, its tail aloft. The pair made away into the distance until they disappeared over a hill end and out of sight.
‘She’ll calm down in a day or two,’ Clive said. ‘Her blood’s up, best thing for her is to leave her well alone.’
I agreed. There was nothing to be gained by hunting her down, the calf was clearly mobile and strong enough to keep up the pace. We would get to see whether we had a heifer or a bull calf in a day or two, we just needed to be patient.
The following day there was, once again, only one cow awaiting the arrival of hay expectantly. I walked up the field to the same vantage point from where I had seen the other cow the previous day. It was a clear, dry day and you could see for miles. Startled grouse chattered as they took off and then glided to a safer distance; flocks of young lapwings danced and swooped, shining silver under the bright sunshine. They’d soon leave these bleak hills when the cold winds began to blow, the first sign of the changing seasons and the impending winter. I climbed a little higher, sure that I would catch a glimpse of my cow but admitted defeat at the brow of the hill that overlooked the second deep gully. Tomorrow would be just fine. It wasn’t the first time that a cow had gone into hiding after giving birth, as it was a natural thing to want to do – all animals did it to some degree. In a small field, or in a barn, there are limitations on privacy but out here she had room, space and freedom, and that was all good, I reasoned.
Day three was almost the last day of the summer holidays and we all went to look for our missing cow and calf. Nancy was in the backpack, and Clemmie was being towed along by Edith, the mother hen. The other cow showed no concern whatsoever for her absent friend and carried on eating hay, dolefully watching us work out our search-and-rescue strategy. We made sure that everybody had an area to cover. The quad bike would have made the task much quicker and easier but unfortunately it could not traverse the steep slopes of knotted, wiry heather.
It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, with so many undulations, ghylls, cascading becks and deep rills where mother and calf could be hidden from view. For every natural obstacle surmounted, another appeared ahead; it was never-ending. The children played and explored, slid down screes, rolled down grassy slopes and then got hungry and fed up.
Then came the shout.
‘I’ve found the cow!’ bawled Reuben, dancing a little jig on a craggy stone-topped slope. He pointed furiously downwards and then tipped his head on one side whilst gesticulating a sort of sawing motion
across his neck. The children now all set off running, one by one disappearing from sight. By the time I reached the scene of the incident, there was a crowd of onlookers all surrounding the body of my missing cow. I was panting, Nancy now weighing heavy in the backpack.
The cow lay on her side, at the bottom of a steep ravine, her torso bloated, skin taut, legs akimbo. Her neck was outstretched, her head bent backwards, her pallid tongue lolled to one side, her eyes open but lifeless. Water flowed around her. It was a shocking sight.
Sidney moved in close, edging sideways through the water. He gently put his hand on her side as if to detect any warmth. There was none to be found; she had been dead for a couple of days.
It was quite inexplicable how she should have lost her life in such peculiar circumstances. It appeared that she had fallen down into the ravine, though this alone would not have been enough to kill her as she seemed to have little in the way of physical injuries. Staggers or milk fever might have caused her to become unsteady, or maybe she suffered heart failure. Whatever had happened, the result had been terminal.
Miles and Edith, having recovered from the shock of this discovery, were now examining the cow’s corpse at close quarters. Violet had gone one step further and was sitting on the cow, perched on its side, looking downwards, deep in thought, her mittened fist resting on her forehead. The macabre picture resembled Rodin’s The Thinker sculpture.
After a moment or two, she said brightly, ‘Mam, where’s the calf?’
I confessed that I didn’t know.
‘Yer don’t think that she fell on it?’ said Miles.
‘That woulda been kinda unlucky,’ said Raven phlegmatically.
We had a good look and concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that there was anything under the cow other than silt, mud and stones, and that the calf must be somewhere else. The search resumed, only this time for a small, newborn calf weakened through hunger and almost certainly frightened. We knew that time was against us and that we wouldn’t have long before he or she succumbed to either starvation or the elements.
We started our search in the vicinity of the calf’s dead mother, radiating slowly outwards. We combed the banks, hunting high and low. The chattering of the children would surely rouse any creature that was lying low to avoid detection.
A couple of hours passed and other than finding in the peat the pickled and preserved ancient tree root that had once grown there, and a half-deflated foil helium balloon that had become tangled up in the heather, we had nothing to show for our efforts. The children were flagging, their spirits at a low ebb, and finally we gave up and set off back home.
‘Ne’er mind,’ I said cheerfully. ‘He’ll be hungrier tomorrow, we’ll stand more chance of finding him.’
I hated walking away with only half of the mystery solved, though was remaining positive, maybe overly so, but I was not ready to concede defeat just yet.
The next day dawned bright and we decided to set about the search more tactically. The smaller family members would stay at home with Clive rather than hinder us in our search, the rest of us would take our lunches so we could stay out longer and hopefully we would be victorious.
A whole day was spent traversing the ghylls looking for any sign of our lost calf, such as hoofprints and droppings (although the fact that there could be nothing going in at one end meant that there’d be little produced at the other). Once again, we returned down-spirited and empty-handed. In my mind, it was looking like the worst-case scenario: that the calf was dead, and we would never find him.
Days went by and every day we looked. The children went back to school midweek but every evening we’d have the same discussion at the tea table.
‘Ave yer found t’calf?’ Reuben would enquire in between mouthfuls of dinner.
‘Nope,’ I’d say.
‘Mi mate has a drone, he can bring it at t’weekend,’ he said.
It was certainly worth a try and, on the Saturday, we resorted to aerial shots, viewing the Keldside remotely from above via a drone. There was nothing to see.
‘That’s it,’ I announced on the Saturday evening. The last and only confirmed sighting of the calf was almost a week ago; its mother had been dead for a minimum of five days. We had exhausted every possibility and we just needed to draw a line under the whole sorry incident. ‘The calf is dead, there’s no point looking any more.’
We got on with our jobs as usual. Although it was a special day, being my birthday, the overriding feeling was one of failure. Edith, as bright as a button, announced at lunchtime that she was taking the binoculars and was going to have one final look across into the Keldside to see whether she could spot anything. I nodded and smiled sadly as she skipped off dressed in her boiler suit and woolly hat. She came back to report her failure an hour later.
Edith’s enthusiasm was in direct contrast to my despondency and, by the time tea was on the table, I had decided that a pessimistic mindset was no good at all and was badgering Clive to come with me for one last look around the pasture. He muttered and chuntered and reluctantly agreed to come along. We dressed warmly, as the light was already fading, and then set off, sitting side by side on the quad bike, to the field gate. A biting coolness in the evening air numbed my face and I pulled my hat down over my ears and my scarf over my nose. Clive prattled on about cows, the trouble they caused and how on earth we were going to retrieve the dead cow’s body. I wasn’t listening.
‘Let’s ga reet up onto t’top amongst ling,’ he said, ‘neet’ll be ’ere soon.’
We walked together for a little while, then separated. After a half-hour of haphazard wandering, we met up and made for home.
‘Reet, that’s it now, no more lookin’,’ said Clive firmly.
The cragged hills across the valley were momentarily backlit by a fiery crimson sunset. I shivered and pushed my hands deeper down into my pockets. Clive came over and put his arm through mine, and we walked together saying nothing. In many respects we were quite different in our outlooks. I would analyse and look back to see how I should have done things differently, Clive would look ahead and never bother to cry over spilt milk. The combination of these two approaches was probably the best way to be.
The dewy dampness of evening now wet our leggings as we walked through the heather, and every so often one of us would stumble as our wellies were caught up in the wiry heather roots. We were nearly back to the field gate and the quad bike when suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, a small roan calf sprung up immediately in front of us. Quite who was most startled, me or it, I could not guess. For a fleeting moment, the calf stood, unsure of what to do next, and Clive, always a quick thinker, leapt upon it before it had the chance to make a bid for freedom. The calf let out a weak and tired bawl as Clive, now on his knees, wrapped an arm around its neck and stopped it from escaping. The calf clapped to the ground, its legs folded underneath it as it sat. It stared fixedly ahead with fearful eyes that had sunk back into the sockets.
‘Pick it up,’ panted Clive, still holding the calf down. ‘It’s as light as a feather.’
I bent and gently picked it up, its long limbs dangling as I put my arms underneath it.
‘My God, I just can’t believe it,’ I said in a mixture of jubilation and disbelief.
The dazed calf rested its head on my shoulder and mooed, the faintest and most pathetically tired noise I had ever heard. I swear that even Clive was lost for words.
‘The children are gonna be beside themselves when I show them,’ I said.
We clambered back onto the quad bike, and I held the calf tightly across my knees, its legs either side of the seat. We were now full of excitement and enthusiasm for our next challenge, to very carefully nurse our calf back to health. It was a miracle that it had survived so long without sustenance and now we needed to very carefully reintroduce it to milk, without it being too much of a shock to the system.
‘We gently need to warm . . . her,’ I said, taking a quick look under her t
ail. ‘It’s a heifer. We need to bring her inside an’ get ’er up to t’fire.’
We disembarked at the front door and carefully brought the calf into the porch. The children, now dressed for bed and lounging around in the living room, were astounded when confronted with the calf who now stood forlornly in the middle of the room with her head hanging downwards and ears drooping.
Edith covered her mouth and burst into tears.
‘I know, I can hardly believe it myself,’ I said, ‘but now the hard work begins, we must feed her, lal’ and often.’
Now, as the little heifer stood surrounded by adoring children dancing a jig on the stone-flagged floor, it became clear just how malnourished she was. Her guts were concave, hollow on either side below her hip bones which jutted out awkwardly and angularly. We were going to have to be very careful with her nursing.
‘What milk are you gonna give her?’ asked Clive. ‘Needs to be good stuff, she cannae stand a tummy upset.’
I wasn’t so sure that I knew the answer. Milk-replacement powder was not going to be good enough, but maybe full-fat blue-top out of the fridge would suffice. Colostrum wasn’t required as she had been suckling on her mother until the accident; there was absolutely no way that she could have survived for this duration if she had not had the critical first feeds of this energizing, antibody-filled milk. I went to the fridge, opened the door and looked to see what I had that might be suitable. And there it was, a large plastic bottle full of Jersey milk, the most nourishing wholesome milk a weak calf could ever have.
‘What’s her name gonna be?’ I asked the children as she hungrily sucked the milk from the bottle. I reminded them that, as she was a pure-bred Shorthorn heifer, we would be keeping her to join our small herd of cows and that she needed a pedigree name that began with J. The cows were named alphabetically according to their year of birth; that way we could always tell how old they were by their name.