Our cows turn up towards the middle of May. They all look very young when they arrive and in many ways are like a litter of puppies, they romp around and indulge in all sorts of frivolity, with no thought for protocol or procedure. During the year, they grow up right before our eyes, you might say, and currently they are going through their rebellious teenage period.
Yesterday, when we reached the bridge over the beck, I, as usual, crouched down to look upstream through the branches of the hawthorn bushes that crowd in along the bank (they don’t want to miss any of the scandal that the beck babbles as it passes by), there, to my surprise, I spied two of our cows nonchalantly paddling in the water. Now, our landlady has thoughtfully provided a fence to protect the occupants of the field from the temptations that marshy ground and sparkling water offer those of youthful and carefree inclination. The cows had obviously pushed the fence down somewhere – cows use their bulk to do this at every available opportunity.
Unfortunately, the other side of the beck, although quite steep, gives unlimited access to the embankment and the railway line, so I thought it best – in the interests of health and safety – to phone the farmer who rents the field and pass the above information on to him.
Naturally, by the time he arrived with his fence fixing kit, all the cows were back within their defined safe area and were grazing innocently – as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.
