A Little Jersey Heifer

 

English farmland

In every relationship I‘ve ever had – and there have been a few – there is a pivotal moment, a "make your mind up" instant ,on which the whole future of the relationship hangs.

We were standing in the barn one cold spring morning when I realized that Chris had already made his choice, made up his mind, and it was time for me to make up my mind.

We’d been dating for about 18 months. I’d found him in a catalog – Green Singles – which seemed like a good idea as it meant the men would be pre-selected for environmental friendliness.

I sent in my £20 and my 100 word blurb about myself – how could they resist me? And they asked me for the three things I most wanted in a man – besides being green and single of course! Number one was easy: Tall! I had to think a while about number 2, but after all, what could be more important than: Tall. Then number three followed quite naturally: Tall.

Pretty soon I received my list of twelve tall green single men living not too far from me in southern England.

I got myself a three-ring notebook – you remember Mitt Romney’s binder of women? This was  my binder of men, with little page protectors for each one, in which I put their photos and notes about our conversations and meetings.

Pretty soon I whittled the twelve down to two – Chris, of whom more later, and Malcolm. Malcolm was a gamekeeper. I’m a big fan of D.H. Lawrence, so I knew that every girl needs a gamekeeper at some time in her life. It was a tough choice, but Malcolm made it for me when he decided to take a job up on the Yorkshire Moors, hundreds of miles away from where I lived.

So Malcolm went off to Bronte country and I was left with Chris. Chris was a farmer and the farm was called Manhood End.

It was a 20-acre small holding where he lived with his father, mother, 99-year-old grandmother and his brother. Over the years they’d done just about everything you could do in a smallholding to raise money, but by this time Chris had settled down to raising beef cattle and flowers which he sold to the local florist.

I was a single parent of two young children and was holding down a very demanding public relations job in a town about 30 miles away from where Chris lived.  Our relationship flourished. We had a lot in common as well as both being green and single. We saw each other on weekends and he sometimes came over in the week, too.

A little jersey heifer

He really loved animals a lot, so I wasn’t surprised when he told me one day: “My neighbor just bought six little jersey heifers. I went to see them and one of them came right up to me and looked at me out of those big brown eyes. I couldn’t resist:  I bought her, and her name is Emily.”

I thought: “Aw, how nice, what a lovely man, he loves animals so much.”

It wasn’t until later that I began to think about what a little jersey heifer would grow into. Some of you may have a farming background and know that a jersey heifer grows into a milking cow. And a milking cow can put a real damper on a social life.

But that was off in the future, and in the meantime our relationship was flourishing. With two young children and a busy job I didn’t often have a chance to get away, but Chris and I were thinking that it would nice to have a small vacation together, so I managed to arrange for my mother to look after the children over Easter weekend. In Britain that’s a four-day weekend because both the Friday before and the Monday after Easter are public holidays.  We hadn’t decided exactly where we’d go, but I knew it was going to be a really precious time, and I was looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, Emily was growing up. Chris had her artificially inseminated - not a pretty sight.

Which brings us to the cold spring day in question, when we were standing in the barn and I said: “I thought me might go to Dorset over Easter weekend. There are some good beaches down there. What do you think?” He looked at me blankly: “Easter weekend?”

 

“Yes” I said, “For our vacation, Easter weekend.”

“Oh I can’t go away Easter weekend,” he said. “That’s when Emily’s going to have her calf.”

I was stunned: I could not believe that this man had chosen to arrange Emily's insemination so that she would be dropping her calf at the very time we were supposed to be enjoying our precious vacation. I could see that he’d already made up his mind about who was important to him, and it was time for me to make up mine. And that, my friends, was the end of the relationship, because that was the first and only time that I have been passed over for a cow.

(Story copyright Julia Lynam 2014)