Bog Myrtle & Peat

I absolutely cannot resist a brief note on the most recent twist in my farming saga, and I am delighted to report that alongside the excitement of this year’s dalliance with belted galloways, I have found a bull for the future.

My wife and I headed down to look at a promising riggit galloway calf near Kirkby Lonsdale in Cumbria on Monday, and we were very taken with what we found in the smirring rain. Markings on riggit galloways are pretty variable (this could be a blog article in itself), but this is all healthy stuff and creates some nice room for subjective breeding. The “Stonehouse” bull calf in question not only conforms to my idea of almost perfect markings, but he also holds some of the best bloodlines currently circulating in the breed. His father was a winner at the Dumfries Show last year, and his mother has close ties to the original riggit blood which miraculously cropped up near Kirkcudbright after more than a Century’s absence – it makes for a heady mix, and he is an ideal match for my heifers as I work towards the future. It would have been a difficult job to come away without this fellow, and sure enough, a deal was struck.

Buried beneath a weight of work and pulled in every direction at the moment, this “milestone moment” is scarcely being given due precedent in this brief article. I have no doubt that I will return to this subject soon, but suffice it to say for now that this marks a deeply significant moment in this story. I won’t be able to bring the lad north over the border until Christmas time at the earliest, but there is the option to leave him in situ until next spring.

In the meantime, I have been offered the chance to give him a name, and I am not taking the matter lightly…