Who let the cows out!

Who let the cows out!

And, anyway, what cows?

Your cows, Vera?

 

 

Nooo, ours were still at home.

These cows, this is what I am talking about....

Doesn't look like our farm, does it,
nor do the cows look the same as ours.
 

No, this farm belongs to these two young people....

 



 

.... and close friends and family had been invited to celebrate this next step
in their farming career....
 

 

....with plenty of 'strong stuff' alcohol,

after all we are in the middle of the Almagnac region of France

so best to drink what is made locally....

It made for a merry afternoon......

.....which needed some music to set the ambience,

Vera, Lester, Jacques and Herve to the rescue!

 

 

 

It is Herve's son ( the man whose back is to the camera )

whose project this is.

He must be very proud of his son and daughter in law.

Rather than exiting the countryside to go work in offices in the city,

they have elected to have a go at being farmers.

They have rented a large swathe of grazing land,

and already have a over a hundred sheep just about to lamb,

and now they have these cows.

 

Do you notice that Jacques is holding a set of bagpipes?

This is entirely appropriate, because unlike our two Jerseys..

 



 

 ( Feeding time for the lamb, and Lissie licking her lips

 because she thinks she ought to have a sip of milk too )

 

...... these are Highland cattle,

and what big chunky animals they are too,

especially the bull,

although I am sure that if Lissie was in the right frame of mind,

that she would be willing to share some 'personal' time with him,

but she is in calf,

so can't!

 

 

And here is the rest of the herd....

 

 

And very hairy creatures they are too!

I did have a drift of  a thought that perhaps the long hair might spin into yarn,

but this idea was allowed to evaporate as I looked at those horns.

They are big horns,
wouldn't want to get in a tangle with one of them,

so best to keep on spinning sheep fleece then.

 

And so the afternoon rolled on,

with us four playing jigs and reels, interlaced with local Basque music,

which is very similar to Irish and Scottish music,

all of which was entirely appropriate for the event,

which was to welcome the cows to this new land,

and to celebrate this new venture.

 

It was hot,

it was fun,

it was mucky underfoot,

well it would be, it is a farm after all,

which is an environment we are very happy to be in.

 

And so it came to be the end of the afternoon,

and it was time....

a final burst of the bagpipes was needed, (Jacques)

together with the beat of the drum (Herve)

accompanied by the fiddle singing away (Lester)

and me on the accordion, doing my own thing.
 

Over to the cows we went,

me with a bit of a wobble though because that accordion does sit heavy on my chest,

and since I have a plump chest anyway,

the accordion and my chest combine to make me a tad top heavy.

Not to worry,

I had my boots on,

which gave me a firm platform to stand on while I romped away with the bagpipes, drum, and fiddle.

 

It was magic.

 

So we played for the cows,

they seemed to have gotten used to the sound,

at the beginning of the afternoon they had been a little fazed by the music,

not in a frightened way,

just in a 'what the hell is that noise' sort of way,
but now they stood, quietly listening,
apart from the quick moment
 when the bull thought he would do some mating practice,
which was not happily received by the cow he was practising on.
 

And then the gates were opened...

and we continued playing as they went off out to their new pastures.

It felt very 'olde worldy' and timeless,

sort of like blessing these animals,

giving praise and thanks for them being here,

which is at it should be.

This is not a fast food commercial meat operation,

it is honouring these animals,

that is what it felt like.

 

And so we kept playing for a while afterwards,

and then home,

to find the lamb we have been bottle feeding was bloated up to almost twice his size.

What to do....

so I asked my inner self what needed to be done,

and what came back was:

2 teaspoons of Bicarb and 1 tablespoon of glucose sugar

mixed in a pint of warm water.

Lester syringed it down his throat.

I gave him a massage on his tummy,

and channelled Reiki healing for him.

 

Then we had to go back out again,

because we were playing at the fellow band member's party.

It was food and music all the way through to the early hours of the morning.

We expected that lamb not to survive.

We have had experience of bloat before,

and none survived.

However, when we arrived home at two in the morning,

or rather, three in the morning because of the clocks changing,

as we got out of the car,

in the crystal clearness of the night,

we heard the lamb mewing at the paddock gate,

saying he was hungry.

We didn't give him any,

but it was nice to hear that he was continuing on with life.

Made an end to what had been a marvellous day.

 

 

And somewhere out in the rolling fields of the Gers are the cattle!

 

Bye for now,

 

Vx