Losing a Highland Cow: What Nobody Warns New Farmers About Grief

Finley didn’t come for breakfast the morning after the storm.

Ace found her in the creek bed. But I need to back up, because she was never just a cow to us.

When we started this adventure, my imagination was full of fluffy cows, baby chicks and an orchard full of fresh fruit. I thought I was ready for the work that came with them (I wasn’t). I knew I wasn’t ready for the butchering, but I was confident I’d get there (I did). What I never even imagined was the unexpected death and its associated grief.

I came to the farm as a pet owner. Every animal was family, loved for his own history and personality. (The memory of rehoming my Saint Bernard in 2012 still makes me teary.) On a farm, animals carry more: the hopes, the investment, the plans. And because we’re pet people, they get that same family-member love too.

Finley was my first taste of that pain. We bought her “bred back” and due any day. The broker needed to sell quickly, so we rushed into our first Highland cow purchase. Our Highland bulls, Judah and Jedidiah, were still juveniles who’d been handled daily, so they were sweet and affectionate. Finley was a jaded 5-year-old who had been through a lot. She had been hungry and scared. We had no idea what we were in for.

Ace risked life and limb for months to work with her. Avoiding her horns and her girth, he won her over with affection, playfulness and, mostly, snacks.

She started to soften and even enjoyed being brushed, but no calf came. The Angus cows gave her plenty of space. She was a force to be reckoned with.

Eventually we came to suspect she had never been pregnant at all, and that she’d been sold quickly because she was so disruptive and dangerous.

The disappointment was emotional and financial. She and her calf (the any-day-now-hopefully-female-and-unrelated-to-our-bulls one) were supposed to be the start of our breeding program. Our plans were changed for us. Almost exactly 10 months from her arrival on the farm, she did have a calf (Go Judah!): our amazing Laoghaire, a picture of breed standard with the personality of a princess.

Those girls were babied and brushed and loved.

And then there was the storm.

Laoghaire was weeks away from turning one, and Finley was days away from giving birth again, when an unusual winter thunderstorm rolled through. We don’t know whether lightning struck close by or the ground was just weakened by the water. Ace found Finley dead in the creek bed with a broken neck. Her horns had caught in the mud of the bank when she fell.

It was too much. I was ready to give up and move back to a neighborhood. We’d lost a beloved character in our daily lives, and we were set back thousands of dollars and several years in our goals. But Ace has a calm, steady reliance on God’s sovereignty, so we stuck it out.

Since then, Laoghaire has had a beautiful daughter, Rory, and a few other Highland cows have joined the fold (Lima Bean and Liberty). Liberty recently had a funny, gorgeous little girl, Sassenach (Sassy).

Finley never came to breakfast again. But at feeding time, when her granddaughter, Rory, stands at the gate like she owns the place, I smile before I remember to be sad. I think that’s how it works. The grief doesn’t leave; it just has to share the pasture.

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