Calving began a few days after I arrived, and now they're coming out thick and fast, pretty literally. Harry farms with as much of a 'hands-off' approach as possible, but still, it's remarkable to return to one of the cow sheds, and find a calf deposited there, warm, like an egg just laid in the middle of the straw. It feels as though you only need to turn your back for a minute for one to appear. The whole thing is bizarrely, comically, matter of fact: I see this sizeable, miraculous living thing on the floor and look at the cow with excitement and respect; she looks straight back at me nonchalently, as if to say, "Yeah, and...?"

I watched one being born from start to finish for the first time this morning. There was something white and slimy beginning to appear from the back of the cow, about the size of a tennis ball. At the time, Harry was still trying to draw out another cow and its calf, but this one was broody, making a claim for the first calf which wasn't hers (hormones, Harry said). But didn't she know that there was something coming out her backside, that she's giving birth herself?! Harry managed to take the first calf away, its mother following, and left this cow to it, me watching from the other side of the shed.

The calf is clearly on its way out, but she's still getting up and moving around, and then lying down again, postphoning the process as I watch. She does lie down eventually, and it comes out in a mere half a dozen heaves, spasms - of pain? - passing over her face during the contractions. There's no way it hurst as much as it does women, with her relative quietness. As she heaves, this thick black sausage-like thing is squeezed out, covered in a wet film of white. It's not cute; it's a wierd, alien thing from the darkness of the inside of a cow! Yeeeeeugh!

It's nearly all out, when she gets up again...! Over three quarters of the calf is hanging out of her backside, feet first, paused in a dive towards the ground. Does it have any bones?! It's so floppy and flexible. Is it still alive?! Then after what seems like a lifetime, it falls. Splat! Water bursts around it, and she immediately starts licking, pulling away, and sucking - eating! - the flaccid wet coat. And then, eventually, what I suppose is its body, rises, ever so slightly, in its first breath of air. Welcome to the world!

Relief.

The rising increases. The body begins making noises. She is making louder ones. She licks it, transforming it from this alien object into a fluffy, cutesy calf. I can't see its head at all, and long to see it stand up for the first time, but I am getting eaten alive by the one year old curious calves on the other side of the fence. They are becoming increasingly brave and paying increasingly less attention to the stick I periodically wave in their faces. And she, the cow, is looking increasingly unhappy about my presence, increasingly like she's going to charge at me. I wouldn't put it past her to come over the barrier. So I leave everyone to it.

An hour or so later, I am walking down the lane when Harry calls to me and points at a cow and her calf walking away from a gate into the middle of a fresh green field: "That cow there - its calf - you just watched it being born". The wet sausage-like alien lump splattered on the straw an hour ago is haphazardly following its mother into a lush green expanse, discovering its legs for the first time; and her, back outside after x months in.

Ahhhhhhhh