COWS ON MY MIND

COWS ON MY MIND

I have been persuaded by my friends and neighbors that cows are the thing, the deep desire and lust I have sene in the eyes of various country folk when gazing over my rolling hills has convinced me that growing meat is what the farm needs to go forward into the future.
Being an urban rat by upbringing and inclination I had never really mulled over the value of grass, it was something that kept the soil off my shoes, was a pain to cut and maintain and was quite attractive when trimmed, but I did not really appreciate that it was of some value when passed through a herbivore and converted into edible flesh, this has now been brought to my attention by the fact that a neighbor, who is as mean as cats piss and is renowned for the shortness of his arms and the depth of his pockets, who was nonetheless willing to hand over your actual folding money to have his beasts wander over the afore mentioned rolling hills munching the grass and pooping.
Furthermore I noticed that contrary to the observation I had made of farmers that grow stuff in the soil such as corn or beans, steak farmers do remarkably little in the way of actual toil, such as struggling in the rain and mud with great lumps of broken steel, or trundling endlessly over endless rows of dying plants with expensive chemicals with nasty looking kit and sprayers on the back of large and temperamental tractors. No sir, they tend, to spend a great deal of time leaning on fences looking at their beasts and waiting for some underpaid hireling to gather them from the fields to be sprayed and or injected or inspected and little else other than chatting with their fellow meat growers about the latest beef price at the market, it always goes up!
So the decision having been made to invest in bovines as an alternative to building for-ni-catoriums for bright young things, the next big decision is what cow to choose, there are lots of different types of cow, blue, rare, medium rare, Beef Wellington and on a bun all sorts and those are just the ones I know about, Mickey he of the short arms etc. had been running the ‘most popular’ breed when considering kilo’s as ones main prerogative, called Bosmarra cows which are accepted at all your feedlots and other brutal purveyors of flesh to the suburbs and are without doubt the most dreary and dull creatures to ever grace a plate, grass converters born and bred to be consumed by bi-pedaled monkeys and tedious beyond tolerance.
I suspect that if ones sole purpose in life is to either breed more of your kind or to be eaten at an early stage in life it pays to not think too deeply about the universe and everything. These beasts of burden have been bred to think not at all and to be as efficient as possible at one task in life, that being to turn pasture into edible protein. Not what I want to have around the place at all.
However there is a cow that is a wise and ancient breed, a bovine of mystical status among Africans a cow that has lived and thrived here on the African plains for thousands of years living among the wild beasts of Africa and is adapted to life here unlike their fat lazy cousins that the Umlungu has brought from the soggy north, Nguni cattle, sneered at and ignored by the soulless brutes that feed the masses but a beast in my eyes of noble grace and wonderful colors.
So the first task is to fix the kraal to contain these ladies and fit selfsame with running water and all the mod coms that a bovine of a discerning disposition requires, having done this and consulted with my chums I then entered into the murky waters of bovine acquisitions, a world filled with hard eyed chaps who know what’s what and can see a wet eared idiot like myself from the other side of a 10 acre field. To mitigate I hoped the inevitable costs of learning the ropes I donated one of my paintings to Cheryl down the road who though not an expert in all things Nguni is a nice lady and has been growing these beasts for a few years so is fairly well advanced in cow circles and most importantly is now behoven to me to protect me from at least the most blatant of rip offs that cow merchants are wont to do unto the innocent and uninformed.
So the first thing was to get in touch with these hard men and enter into negotiations, I had hoped that my entry into the world of cows would be as simple as my friend Tim’s in as much that he called a fellow who sent him cows and a bull and there he was set up, however when I called this selfsame purveyor of the African Bovine I was told that as usual when I want something the price has just rocketed and why had I not called say a day before because now he had nothing to offer me as the government is suddenly keen to set up emerging farmers with this particular type of cow! Bummer WITH A COMMESERATE RISE IN THEIR COST, double bummer and even more distressing he had none to sell me. I went into a deep depression.
However us country boys are made of stern stuff and I soon ascertained that indeed all was not lost and further more the fellow called me a little later to inform me that in fact after all there were cows to had from his admirable herd and that furthermore if I was so inclined he was keen that I should visit him on his newly acquired estate and peruse what he had on offer.
With Cheryl and Rudie in tow we trundled of into the bush to the far side of Ermelo where I encountered one of the strangest interviews I have had. We arrived at the designated estate, which was tired, but magnificent and extensive in buildings and acreage where Mr. Hill and his family were in the process of transferring their herds and home to. We were introduced to all, shown the house and finally taken to see the cows that I was under the impression were there for me to purchase, and a wonderful gathering of fine Nguni’s they were indeed, I have been looking at these cows for some time and can at this stage understand some of the qualities that the lover of these cows appreciate, fine athletic build and thin legs, we will not go into the subtleties of scrotums, which are vital, not mention the sheaths but enough said this was a tremendous collection of cows and I wanted some, however every time I tried to broach the subject of exactly which beasts he had in mind to sell me the man got all coy and distant. My first inkling that all was not as it should be was when he described me as an executive, due to my mistake of dressing up a bit in my finest new denims and a clean shirt for the occasion in the hope that he would understand that I was solvent and able to pay and it was only when he realized that I was not a city boy playing at farmer and that I live on my farm that the atmosphere changed and suddenly we were kindred spirits in the long road of life and the coffee and cookies were spread before us, he still would not talk turkey about the cows and I eventually gathered up my chums to go home none the wiser as to whether I was getting some of his ladies and how much he intended to ask, such is the way of cow sellers, they love their beasts and need to know that they are going to a nice home, I think I passed the test, Cheryl and Rudie declared me home and dry which was a relief as I was now panting for his animals, there is method to their madness me thinks hmm?



DOWN THE SLIPPY SLOAP

I have my 25 new ladies and am enchanted with them, I have even got over my buyers remorse and am looking forward to a long and tender relationship with these wonderful cows. I spent a morning with their father a grand fellow who has had an unnatural relationship with this particular breed of animal for yea 15 years or more and is thus an expert.
He was very gentle with me as he bust my cherry re all things bovine, though he did enjoy scaring my knickers off with all the different injections, dips, sprays and other chores that come hand in hand with these particular animals, one would think that they are all just conspiring together to find ever more evocatively named diseases to die off, from lumpy skin to stiff sickness, it all sounds quite disgusting.
I was then taken to be introduced to my new charges that took one look and tried to flee the country. They charged around in a very disconcerting manner doing their best to avoid all contact with the bi-pedal monkeys that we had sent to round them up. They knew already in their young lives that this sort of attention usually ended up with something sharp being stuck in their backsides and they were not wrong.
They were all forced into a narrow wooden passage know appropriatly as a crush where I was initiated into the art of sticking it to female grass-eating quadrupeds. Dave has this cunning trick where he holds the needle (large one) just so, then smacks the cow on the rump and quick as a snake in the grass thrusts it into the animal, the first time he showed me it was like a magic trick but I was soon smacking and sticking with the best of them and we injected the entire herd, it was a thrill really I was leaping up and down in excitement at the whole thing and got so macho and worked up about the whole idea that for the first time in my life I went to a pub on the way home to have a beer!

On a different note the estate is finding it more and more difficult to justify the staff levels that we are carrying as the wattle tree problem and tourism trade are not really keeping my sweating classes busy and productive, an anathema to a lazy bloke like me, so I have gorn into the soap biz.
My sainted sister has been flogging soap in England for quite a while with her loony friends at their local market, and they have like a coven of witches come up with very snappy recipes. Which if any of you have ever looked at the many books available on soap making is the key to the whole thing, which she has after some thumb screw work and nail pulling graceful condescended to let us, under license, use here in darkest Africa.
We (Poppy, Norah and I) have been cooking and mixing it up in the studio for last few weeks, and after some considerable investment in essential oils, palm and other oils, mixers, pots and a great deal of other expensive stuff have finally perfected, sort of, the fine art of samponification, or soap making and the studio now smells like the inside of a tarts handbag, not unpleasant.
The knity gritty however was whether we could unload this product on an unsuspecting public, all my forays into the swamp of retail product sales in the past have not been nice at all and the initial attempts were not heartening, all the ladies loved the stuff but my little helpers and I were less than sure that we could get the price required to make a profit as soap is quite cheap really and we needed to sell our’s at 3 times the price of the most expensive stuff at the local supermarket, not promising, but a call came through from the local market mafia who were throwing a fest at Tonteldoes a village on the other side of Dullstroom to us, and the opportunity to test the waters was to strong to resist, and we went into full production mode producing vast quantities of sweet smelling slabs of soap and even inventing a few new ones ourselves, having labeled and wrapped the bars in sexy raffia and with Norah in tow I liaised with Cheryl and her cow skins at the venue.
Tonteldoes which for the curious means ‘Flint box’ in Afrikaans is a tiny little village that throws an annual peach festival, and as the village is in the very heart of trout syndicate country is really quite well attended and is cute as hell with a pub and a village green where we set up among the peach brandy and dry peach merchants with our little stall of soap.
At first the pace was a little slow and the only trade being done was between the stallholders selling to each other but soon the punters started to roll in and the soap fairly flew of the shelf, most gratifying. The ladies loved it and did not blink at the price so it looks like we are in business, which it turns out is in fact an old family concern as my great granddad on the Jewish side financed his bank which I should have inherited but for the attentions of the Nazi swine, but then if not for them I would not have been selling soap under an African sun at flint box village so all things considered perhaps it has worked out for the best.