Appreciating nature.

 Sure, there’s not much else to do when you’re standing in the mud beside a stream, making sure the cows don’t escape again.

This tiny patch lies between two fields, one being ours, the other belonging to a neighbour. There is a spring burbling here, though the water is contaminated, thanks to modern farming practices. In April, the ground was carpeted with pretty wood anemones, now it is just green vegetation churned into mud by the wandering cattle.

I'm waiting for Bert to contact the farmer. The cows cast baleful looks at me. They had been thoroughly enjoying their brief excursion onto the road, nibbling the tastier herbage from the hedges and verges, completely unconcerned by the growing queue of cars and vans unable to get past.

Around them, swallows swoop and dive. Where there are cattle, there are always flying insects.

At last the farmer and help arrives and I am relieved of my post. The cattle are driven to another field further from the road.

Bert had referred to the beasts as ‘replacements’. They were young dairy cows, Holsteins, famed for their wandering ways. As older cows become less productive they are sent to the abattoir and replaced with younger animals. It seems that the adventure they had on our road was not going to be a part of their future.

We do tend to think of milk and milk products as being fairly benign but it all comes at a big cost to the animals involved, constantly pregnant and never allowed to keep their calves because we want the milk, the cream, the butter, the cheese and the yogurt. And I do love those things. But when faced with those young cows, just wanting to explore the world and live their life and knowing what their future holds I cannot help but wonder if Vegans have the right idea.

The Old Dairy

London is not like Northern Ireland, you wouldn't even know there was a General Election coming up. No posters anywhere, except for a few in people's windows, and all of those were supporting Labour. Somehow, I managed to avoid meeting any obvious Tories while I was there.

You'll be wondering if I went only to Islington North and stayed put but that is not what happened for I travelled widely around the capital beginning in Tottenham Hale, passing through Finsbury Park on the way to Muswell Hill. People sleep rough under the bridge at Finsbury Park which is a sobering sight. From Finsbury Park to Muswell Hill we passed the Old Dairy in Crouch Hill, which in the eighties was opposite flats where all four of my sisters used to live. The building has been gentrified and is now a restaurant.

Deirdre and Bert in Crouch Hill, the Old Dairy, sometime in the 1980s

The Old Dairy dates from the early 1890s. This recent photo is from Google Maps.

I decided this time that I wouldn't visit galleries or museums. Rather, I would walk lots and just soak up the atmosphere and history of the city. History is everywhere.

I remember Matty was very taken by the dairy. I think it tickled her that a building associated with farming was located in the heart of a huge city. But city folks like milk too and back in the 19th century it just wasn't possible for everyone to have their own cow. London contained a good number of dairies and herds of milking cows were to be found throughout the city. The Friern Manor Dairy Company which owned the building in Crouch Hill was one of many. Their cows were grazed and milked in Peckham, the milk distributed from churns and ladled into the customer's own jug.

London Sister, who once lived in Crouch Hill with Ganching, Kerry Sister and Leitrim Sister, is still not that far from an old dairy. In 1915 Manor Farm Dairy sold milk and poultry from this building in Muswell Hill.

One hundred years later, yet another of life's basic essentials was being sold from the same building.

I definitely preferred the original entrance.

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