I am married to a very odd girl.
Generally speaking, she likes “small”. If we are eating out she
will always ask for a small portion and if - in a moment of misguided
generosity - she is given a plate filled with food her appetite
immediately evaporates. She likes small corners, too - usually writes
in a small corner and did so even when she had a splendid study. One
of her “small” things is a beautiful cut-glass wine glass which
belonged to her mother. It holds less than half a normal wine glass
but she is quite happy with that and uses it whenever we have lunch
at home. Now, after all these years, it has developed a crack and so
next time we find ourselves in Totnes on market day, I shall be on
the lookout for a replacement. Fingers crossed.
However, there are some things that she
likes which are far from small: the obvious example is her love of
Newfoundland dogs. There is another big animal that has been a part
of our lives for many years: highland cattle. When I say "part
of our lives" please do not get the idea that we have ever owned
one of these magnificent beasts or anything like that. No, our
involvement has been passive: simply watching and enjoying them. Back
in the day the only place I remember seeing them was in the fields
then farmed by the prisoners at H M Prison at Princetown on Dartmoor.
The prison farm was started about two
hundred years ago and covered about one thousand six hundred acres
and provided work for about sixty prisoners. It was a stock farm with
something in the order of eight hundred ewes and four hundred head of
cattle of which about a quarter was a milking herd. This herd
supplied the prison and the factory at Lifton where Ambrosia creamed
rice is produced which took over two hundred gallons of milk every
day. There were also Blue Greys, Galloways and (for milking)
Friesians.
Then, to my dismay, I learned that this
activity was to cease and all the highland cattle would be sold off.
That was nearly ten years ago but I need not have worried. Now,
instead of being confined in fields these Highlanders are free to
roam the moors and, as you would expect, they are supremely suited to
that environment. Since their release (if that is the right word), I
have taken a couple of hundred photographs of them and I thought it
was time to share seven of them: one for every day of cows’ week!
Oh, I also have nearly as many of the gorgeous Belted Galloways as
well but they will have to wait for another day.
You keep watch down the hill while I
...
