Bog Myrtle & Peat

The bull comes to life for an hour at dusk. He rears up from the shadows like a ghoul, and he foams himself into the twilight. Lashed and clarty with mud, he begins to moan and the ground trembles at the horror of it. It’s a deep, seismic humm which rings in the yard and rolls away across the parish like a ripple – any deeper and you’d see it go. It’s because there are cows beyond the meadow, and others on the high ground between the trees. He calls to them, and his screams are hard to bear.

I start to hate him for that din and the repetition which drives my nails into the table and comes again a moment later. Pumped and rasping, he screams for an hour without interruption and he pounds a line back and forth through the granite shelves. I hardly recognise him; wild eyed and burbling with his own foam. It’s a fearsome thing to see him at full stretch, and it’s hard to believe that a single strand of electric wire could ever stop him. I live in fear that he’ll escape and be away to the neighbour’s ground, so I lie in bed and listen to his cravings with a crunch of anxiety. It’s a good fence and there’s no reason to believe that he’ll cross it, but what if… what if?

I have to remind myself that I wanted this. I wanted to learn about cattle, and to understand life in the shade of livestock. My beasts have given me so much to love, but here is a fresh and hateful low. A bull is no small thing, and I was warned against them. And for all the pride I feel at the flex and curve of his shoulder, I can’t deny that anxieties gather round him like flies on a hot day. I would not exchange him for anything, but I still have so much to learn.

When it’s all over and he’s slumped into silence, I climb up to the bedroom window in the darkness and hang my feet over the sill. It’s dark and the hawthorns below the house are white and limp with blossom. Leaders trail below them, and the trees swarm like jellyfish in the moonlight. There’s a reek of blossom above the hot stones, and suddenly I rediscover silence; it’s a sharp, florid thing which has risen from bluebells and rowans, may and broom. Curlews moan at the edge of it, and dorbeetles drill straight through and leave a wake swirling behind them.