a walk in the field

I am worried: I go out for a walk in the hay field and look at myself, heavens! am I looking a bit Boden/Country Living?? Achieved with secondhand & cheap I might add.... I ask the dog but he declines to answer. The dock beatles keep munching and the cows, the cows...the worst has occurred, one has failed her TB test, totally, a test that even the ministry vet says is next to useless, there is a much much more accurate test but it is not used. So both cows will have to go...will we be able to avoid the lorry and slaughter house for the dispatch of the other? It is something I can hardly think about. My parents are not sentimental about animals - though I think in older age it is creeping in, but they don't want to put a cow through the stress of the journey and the slaughterhouse, they stopped doing that some time ago. When the pigs that you are keeping for your own consumption come back with evidence of pre-slaughter bruising it is not OK. And this whole TB problem: the test in very unreliable, many many cattle are slaughtered that don't have the disease - immunity is bred out of the herds and some people blame the badgers. All the while there is a test that is much much more efficent... Oh and the more that an animal is tested (in TB areas more regular testing) the more it will build up antibodies and test positive.... We are having enough of death in this household.

So my lovely lush green walk is tinged with sadness and anger. And I no longer worry about Boden/country Living look. The dog never was worried. then we face the mud as we come back across the stream, nothing like a bit of slippery, wet muddy, deep muddy, stuff to bring ones attention to the NOW.