Till the Cows Come Home

by Philip Walling

  Three generations of the Dart family have farmed Great Champson since the Second World War, and the family has bred red Devon cattle in the area for much longer than that. Their herd is descended from Quartly stock, bred on the farm for over 250 years. The farmhouse is a fine example of a Devon yeoman’s residence, with stone-flagged floors, dark Elizabethan panelling and, at the back, yet still part of the house, a huge dairy with stone sconces where clotted cream and butter were made and bacon and ham salted.

  The great open fireplace in the kitchen, where whole logs were once burned, is now occupied by a wood-fired Rayburn cooker. After showing me round the cattle in the outbuildings, William Dart and his son Richard invited me in for lunch of cold Devon beef and mashed potato. The slices of pink meat interlaced with fat were sweet, succulent and dissolved on the palate. This is beef as I remember it and as it ought to be. Grass-fed, natural and utterly delicious. If only more people could taste this, they would never eat bland grain- and soya-fed supermarket beef again. I ate slowly and reverently in homage to Devon and her ancient cattle.

  A stream, diverted from its course in the deep valley behind the farm, and once powering a threshing mill, flows under one of the stone buildings and emerges at the bottom of the garden, where it is channelled along the contours of three fields on the side of the valley. Its flow, in open ditches, is controlled by sluices that allow the water to fill up the channel and then evenly overflow across the meadow below in a continuous sheet of water. Watering meadows goes back a long way. The art is to keep a trickle of water flowing through the roots of the spring growth, just enough to warm them, protect them from frost and give a first bite of sweet grass several weeks earlier in a cold spring. The water is kept flowing to prevent stagnation, never allowed to be still, but ‘to enter the meadow at a trot and leave at a gallop’.

  The huge acreages of water meadow that were once common in England have passed into legend, destroyed by the cost of labour, the loss of the old watermen’s or downers’ skills, handed down from father to son, cheap artificial nitrogen fertilizer and the difficulty of working the meadows with modern machinery.

  Richard Dart bounced me round the fields in his Land Rover on a bright, blustery November afternoon. From the high land behind Great Champson, the panorama across north Devon spread out intensely green, with rolling fields topped by moorland and intersected by steep-sided valleys incised into the land by millennia of flowing streams. The fields and farms and villages were laid out in a glorious display of West Country beauty.

  The Great Champson cattle had just been housed for the winter, more to protect the permanent pastures from their plunging hooves than the cattle from the winter weather. Red Devons are easily hardy enough to live outside all year round if they have some shelter from the worst of the storms that sweep across Exmoor off the Atlantic. Traditionally they had shelter behind the thousands of miles of hedges of ash, oak and hazel laid and woven into stock-proof barriers on top of chest-high turf and stone banks. On the higher land, beech is the only tree that can stand on the thin soils against the battering of the storms.

  These Devon fields have been grazed by cattle and sheep since men first settled the land here. The farming has hardly changed, because grazing permanent pasture is the best and most economical way of using the land to get a living. And the Devon cattle have evolved through natural and domestic selection to make best use of this land. This is traditional pastoral agriculture at its finest.

  At some point in the past – nobody really knows when – the Devon cattle in the south of the county took on a distinctly different form from those in the north. They became known as the South Hams cattle and are supposed to have arisen from a cross with the Guernsey or perhaps another Channel Island breed. There is also some evidence of an injection of blood from the humped Indian zebu cattle (Bos indicus) although this may have come via the Guernsey which has a similar genetic inheritance. In 1800, the painter and maker of livestock models George Garrard recorded in a footnote that a Mr Parsons said to him: ‘I shall have the pleasure of shewing you my new Devons, which as a painter I know you will say have a finer claim to positive beauty than any you have yet seen – they are Calves got by an Indian bull given me by His Grace the Duke of Bedford, upon two year old new Devon heifers, and are as fat as quails at a month old …’

  There is also genetic evidence, because the South Devon is the only mainland British breed of cow that carries genes for both haemoglobin A and haemoglobin B. Every other breed only has a single gene for haemoglobin A. Both the Jersey and Guernsey carry both genes, and so does the zebu and other more southerly breeds. It is likely that the South Devon arises from a distant cross with one of these breeds – probably the Guernsey, because according to a report on the county’s farming in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1890, it was common practice to run a Guernsey cow with every ten or dozen South Devons to improve the milk.

  In 1794, the Board of Agriculture was told that South Devon cows gave a decent yield of very rich milk and that both sexes grew to unusual sizes: the cows up to 16 cwt (800 kg) and the bulls up to one and a half tons (1,500 kg). The oxen were equally big. The breed was known for its extreme docility, which is still an attractive characteristic. Youatt rated their flesh as not as delicate as their northern cousins: ‘They do for the consumption of the navy; but they will not suit the fastidious appetites of the inhabitants of Bath, and the metropolis.’ He says they were reported as having ‘more of the fourpenny and less of the ninepenny beef’.

  The Shinner family, who farm near Buckfastleigh, have a herd that goes back even beyond the first herd book in 1891. Into living memory their cattle were kept as triple-purpose beasts: the bullocks worked and made beef; the females milked and worked and then became beef. Their milk was exceedingly rich – over 4.5 per cent butterfat – perfect for clotted cream and butter. It also attracted the same premium as the MMB paid for gold-top milk from the Channel Island breeds.

  Devon clotted (or clouted) cream was made mostly in farmhouses in small batches, and with cheese and butter was a way of preserving milk. The method was to leave the milk to stand for 24 hours in ‘a bell-metal vessel’, says Youatt. Then it was heated very gradually until just starting to rise before simmering. From time to time the vessel was struck with the knuckle; as soon as it ceased to ring, or the first bubble was forming as it began to simmer, the milk was removed from the heat and left to stand for a further 24 hours, by which time the cream had risen and was thick enough to cut with a knife. The cream was then carefully skimmed off, and as much as was needed was saved, with the rest going to make butter and the whey to feed pigs. Youatt records that treating the milk in this way allowed five pounds of butter to be made from a given quantity, whereas ordinary churning only resulted in four; and the butter was ‘more saleable, on account of the pleasant taste it has acquired …’ It took more goodness out of the milk, and left a thin whey, but ‘it also gained a taste which renders it more grateful to the pigs …’

  Since South Devon milk lost its gold-top premium and more specialized higher-yielding dairy breeds have overtaken the dual-purpose types, and as the price for liquid milk is so low, the Shinners and other breeders of South Devons have concentrated on producing beef (or breeding stock) from their herds. In common with all the old British breeds, these are superb grazing animals. They calve in spring, to make best use of the flush of early grass, and the cows winter inside on silage and straw. And they are just as docile, if not more so, as their northern relatives. I was a little nervous of standing in a loose box with five huge un-ringed young bulls, and made sure I was between the nearest bull and the door. But both Robert Shinner and his son walked amongst them, petting them, tickling them with their sticks and showing off their good points, without the least concern. They really are quiet, and the Shinners have never even been roughed up by one of their bulls. Roughing up is when a bull pins you against a wall or other fixed object and rubs the hard top of his head up an
d down your body. He may not mean it aggressively, but a bull doesn’t know his own strength and can do considerable damage if he becomes really enthusiastic.

  The Shinners have just had to buy their farm from the Church Commissioners; it was either that or suffer the uncertainty of a new landlord, and they didn’t feel they could lose the opportunity of a lifetime. I wondered whether the open fire in the kitchen, burning great logs in a huge fireplace, will survive the new owners. And it must be a deal of work for Mrs Shinner to keep the kitchen clean with a fire that is continually depositing fine ash everywhere. She said she rather regretted that there wasn’t time to have ‘the nice things in life’, because everything was subordinated to the farm and the welfare of the cattle.

  1 T. D. Acland, ‘On the Farming of Somerset’, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, xi/i, 666ff.

  CHAPTER 12

  Scotch Black Cattle

  IT HAD NEVER occurred to me that my consignment of heifers was only the latest in a vast migration of cattle that has flowed through Cumberland from Ireland and Scotland across more centuries than it is safe to speculate. Although they have not come on their own feet for well over a hundred years, nothing else about their importation has changed much, except that there are perhaps fewer making the journey now than there have been for three centuries.

  This migration of Scotch and Irish cattle to England may well go back into Neolithic times – more than 6,000 years ago. It is partly a result of the topography and climate of Britain, where the poorer soils of the north and west, which receive more rainfall (and have a consequently lower population), are more suited to stock farming than growing crops. In the south and east, the soils are more fertile, the climate more equable, and better crops and grass can be grown that will fatten grazing animals for the butcher. There are also more people in the places where the climate is better, and therefore the demand for food is greater.

  Until the coming of the railways, cattle from the more remote parts of Britain had to travel either on their own feet, or by boat. And as they were one of the few commodities that could walk, cattle cost more to transport by sea than by land. Walking them was known as ‘droving’ – which has a romantic ring to modern ears – and was done by hardy, independent, reliable men, who always made their delivery, whatever the weather, unless prevented by force majeure. Nothing daunted them. Their word was their bond. Whenever they paid cash, it was on the nail – sometimes in gold. They were cunning and wily, knew every bend, bridge, ford, pothole and night stance along the hundreds of miles of their route, from the great cattle fairs of northern England and Scotland through the fattening pastures of the Midlands, all the way to the Great Wen (as William Cobbett called London), the maw that devoured everything that came near its centripetal force.

  It has been estimated by one writer, Peter Roebuck, that over the centuries, Cumberland saw more beasts pass through on their way from Scotland and Ireland than any other county in England. Estimates of the numbers of cattle moving south seem to depend on which side of the Pennines the estimator knows best, because Kenneth Bonser in The Drovers gives the impression that the Yorkshire trade was the more important. But the Welsh trade was also large and valuable.

  After I’d had my Irish heifers for a few weeks, and not having breached my cousin John’s injunction against phoning Jimmy Connon to find out how much I owed him for them, I received a letter one morning in very elegant handwriting saying that James Connon presented his compliments and took the liberty of enclosing a note of his ‘professional charges’. Attached to the letter was a wonderful old-fashioned bill in restful green curly printing, beginning with my name (spelled wrongly) followed by ‘Dr. to James Connon, Grazier and Cattle Dealer’ and his address. The ‘goods’ for which I was his debtor were 30 cross-bred heifers, at the price of £137 each, delivered from Ireland direct to my farm. Making a total of £4,110. I was astonished at the price. Even ordinary bulling heifers out of Cockermouth auction mart were fetching £250 apiece. I rang John to tell him I had finally got a bill and asked him if Jimmy could have made a mistake.

  ‘Not him! There was a week when the price of stock fell through the floor. Don’t you remember? He’ll have bought them that week and he’s passing on the good luck. Don’t forget, you should always leave something for the next man to take his profit!’

  I wrote out a cheque there and then and posted it with gratitude.

  This is what it must have been like to do business with the old drovers in their heyday. Everything was done on trust. They took cattle from their owners and paid a smallish deposit in cash and the rest in bills of exchange or bonds, to be redeemed once the cattle were finally sold. Bankers were normally willing to discount the bills of exchange. That is, they would pay out against them in the knowledge that they would be honoured eventually. In the case of my dealings with Jimmy Connon, the whole transaction was done on trust. He didn’t get me to issue a bill of exchange. He sent me cattle worth over £4,000, which he had bought (and presumably paid for, or promised to pay for) from numerous farmers in Ireland, entirely trusting that I would be good for the money when he sent me his bill. He based this on the confidence he had in my cousin, and at the time I had no idea how valuable this connection was or how honoured I was to be accepted into his web of trust.

  The demand for meat from London animated the droving trade. And the ultimate destination, as it has been since at least the tenth century, of all those streams of beasts that plodded south and east was the great market of Smithfield – or Smoothfield as it was. Just outside the City, between the wall and the eastern bank of the Fleet river, Smithfield was a five-acre grassy field, once used for jousting and sports, close to water and grazing, where all manner of livestock was brought for sale. The names of the adjoining streets illustrate the breadth of the trade: Cow Cross Street, Cock Lane, Chick Lane, Duck Lane, Cow Lane, Pheasant Court, Goose Alley. The market has been in continuous operation for over a thousand years. And from earliest times, a considerable proportion of the fat cattle reared in the kingdom found their way to the metropolis via Smithfield. For example, in 1830, 159,907 cattle, 1,287,071 sheep and 254,672 pigs were sold through the market. These were for the sustenance not only of the people of the metropolis but also those of the towns and villages within an eight- or tenmile radius – with some going to satisfy contracts to feed the navy. The volume of cattle sold had more than doubled since 1732, when it had been 76,210. The Monday and Friday cattle markets at Smithfield sold more cattle in one place than anywhere else in the world. By 1841, there was accommodation for 4,000 cattle (plus 25,000 sheep and lambs, 1,000 pigs and 300 calves).

  Youatt estimated that the average consumption of meat in 1834 was 170 lb a year for each of the one and a half million residents of London – nearly half a pound each a day. He compared this with the 80 lb consumed by the average Parisian. ‘But ours is a meat-eating population, and composed chiefly of Protestants; and when we remember that this includes the bones as well as the meat, half a pound per day is not too much to allow each person.’ It’s hard to understand why he thinks Protestants should eat more meat than Catholics.

  Droving was a peculiarly British activity, partly due to the fact that the climate and topography made it hard to fatten cattle in the north and west of our island, which acted as a nursery for the breeding of cattle and sheep that would be sent south to be finished in lusher pastures. Also the kingdom was small enough for London to be the destination for the produce of the soil in the provinces, unlike Continental cities, each of which had their own hinterland. The English have always been great meat-eaters. Pyne’s Costume of Great Britain (1806) has an engraving of a butcher (amongst many other trades) with the note below: ‘It appears to be generally admitted that no people cultivate the art of breeding, fattening, slaughtering and preparing meat for the shambles, with so much care and success as the English; indeed the nature of English cooking demands the attention on the part of the butcher etc. as nothing can be more plain an
d unsophisticated or less likely to cover the defects of indifferent meat.’

  Individual farmers had little to do with the sale of their animals, which they consigned to ‘salesmen’, who bought and sold as agents. And country drovers, who had often brought their animals a long way, carefully preserving their condition, handed them over to market drovers employed to pack the cattle into as small a space as possible. These men often had no interest in the welfare of their charges, which they treated with considerable cruelty such that a regulation was imposed at the beginning of the nineteenth century making each market drover wear an armband with his identification number on it, rather like police constables.

  As the numbers consigned for sale at Smithfield increased during the late eighteenth century, the site became too small to hold all the cattle that were brought there, especially as the surrounding land and part of the original field had been built on. The animals had to pass through increasingly crowded thoroughfares, causing market days to be not unlike the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

  Youatt describes the cruelty inflicted on the unfortunate beasts, ‘barbarities which it would not be thought could be practised in a Christian country, if they were not authenticated beyond all doubt’. The overcrowding caused the drovers to resort to the most terrible methods to get the cattle to stand packed tightly in the space available. There were not enough pens on the field or room to tie the animals to the rails, so, starting at about two o’clock in the morning, the drovers would divide the cattle into ‘off-droves’ – groups of about twenty. The constables employed to police the market only worked during the day, so the identifying armbands made no difference to what happened during the night. The drovers would surround the off-drove and start to hit them on the head with their heavy sticks. To avoid these blows the animals would try to keep their heads low to the ground. At the same time, if they attempted to retreat backwards, they would be struck very hard on the legs and hocks or have sharp pointed goads applied to force them forwards. And if any dared to lift its head it would instantly be hammered by a dozen blows to the head or nose, about the horns or bony parts where there was least flesh to damage and where it would cause the most pain. The result was that however ‘refractory, obstinate, stupid or dangerous at first’, every bullock would sooner or later be disciplined to stand quietly in a ring – ‘their heads in the centre, their bodies diverging outward like the radii of a circle’ so that they ‘may conveniently be handled by the butchers’. By breakfast time there would be twenty or thirty rings of cattle standing on the field in ‘perfect discipline’.