ESCAPE, part the seconda

At first, when Wayne the tractor driver shouted over my shoulder that my dry cows were all over 2nd Bridge Field and thus all over the maize seedlings, my heart sank a great many miles.

 I had just got 145's back right foot up in the foot-trimming crush too, had clipped her toes and was just starting on grinding her soles down. I was making Good Time. Instead, I had to set her free and, as Wayne charged down the road in the JCB and I galloped over the fields on the quad  was bike.

I was taken by how well all 31 dry cows had done to blend themselves through the hedge, reminding me of a now long-dead Hafod cheese cow called Snork. Snork had a near-metaphysical talent for transporting herself into and through a hedge; the last time I came across her spirit was in a dumper truck I was driving last May and it was lovely to meet her again, spread out through 31 cows in Somerset. Ghost Snork isn't so much my Guardian Angel but my Annoying Spirit Friend instead...turning up for dinner at the most unhelpful of times.

 Fortunately, the dry cows had little time for the maize and had just yanked a few seedlings out like the thugs they are before making their way to the gate into 1st Bridge Field to look at and moo at a lovely ley of white clover instead. Disaster averted AND I got to appreciate what an exquisite early July morning it is in Somerset.

 By 7.26am I was back in the yard, sculpting 145's feet into a beautifully balanced quartet of tootsies and still making Good Time.

This event also affords me the opportunity to share with you a picture of our maize. Make the most of it though, because this, for various very good, ecological, cheese sensory and agronomic reasons, is the last year that we'll be growing maize at Westcombe.