It’s a test of patience waiting for a calf. But in our closed (ie we don’t buy in) small-scale herd, ensuring successful delivery of new life is vital. I’m now several days into regularly checking for signs of labour. By day, I stride through the greening wood, spring’s symphony of birdsong overlaid by woodpecker percussion, and by night, moonlit or torchlit, I stumble, observed by owls but without pausing to dwell on what those dark scufflings might be. These calves have been nine months in the making, a few more days won’t matter. Nature, after all, dictates her own pace.
By contrast, in the news recently, the Food Standards Agency is seeking to speed up the approval of lab-grown meat. These products, originating from animal cells, will be developed in small chemical plants before being processed to look like food, and it is claimed they are better for the environment and health. Putting aside the irony that they seem to be the “ultimate” in processed food, it might be that using science is the most “efficient” way to produce meat. But – pardoning the pun – there’s much more at stake here than that.
I’ve just read some childhood memoirs of the late American president Jimmy Carter and was greatly moved by his profound connection to the land that his family farmed. Different era, different place, but the lessons of that agrarian upbringing, with its rhythms and rituals, informed his life’s principles – collaboration, hard graft, fairness, but above all a celebration of the human spirit. His story is dated, but its values remain relevant today.
We face difficult decisions about food sustainability, but our response to this says much about what kind of future world we want. Undoubtedly, our relationship to the land needs to be creatively reimagined, but better that than technological solutions which diminish our shared humanity.
Meanwhile, it’s a perfect March day, sharp, dry and bright – this has been a far more recognisable winter than last year’s perpetual wet. The first cow gives a characteristic swish and twitch of her tail, heralding the start of her calving. There’s a whole worldview in the controlled conditions of a petri dish – and it’s a world away from this glorious, unpredictable miracle of real life.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
