This is a photo I took 6 years ago and just found again with the original post text. The close protectiveness of the mother to the baby is particularly moving. They are no different from human mothers in caring for their offspring.
Now, I feel differently towards these lovely creatures, from what is written in the post below. I no longer wish to be responsible for any harm or suffering to come to them in any way, as in raising them for food. But that is now and this post below was how I felt then. And it was just as valid, though I have now changed.
Original Post: : October 21, 2012 – 294/366 – *Highland Cattle in the Evening Light
This weekend was one of discovery of our local area. We spent the days out and about taking photographs and basically drinking in the sights. For the first time since we moved here, over 15 years ago, I had the same exhilerated feeling that I got when we first moved to that wonderful place in France: “We LIVE here!” We discovered beaches, coves and roads that we had never seen, all within 15 minutes drive of our house. The colours, of course, were out of this world. It is the best year for leaves that I can remember.
But today’s image is one that has more depth and meaning to me (not to knock the colour, which I just love and I know would be more popular). As we were driving back towards home, we passed a small farm, with a farmer working among his animals. He had pigs outdoors, geese and ducks were honking and quacking in his fields and farmyard. The highland cattle you see here were in a field with a young Jersey heifer. I could have walked up his drive and started doing the farm chores that I used to do in our place in France. It was so much like home in the atmosphere of the place it was unsettling. This is a very unusual sight in Nova Scotia which made it all the more memorable and appealing.
So today I have these cattle in black and white photographed against the evening sunlight which lit their outlines so nicely. Noble beasts, harking back to ancient and not so ancient farmyards from lands across the seas.