Re-charging our batteries….

….every year we return to England…and follow the same path…visiting old friends like  Gavin Hunter of Tilbrook farm not far from Cambridge.  We find looking at, and talking about, Devon with breeders like Gavin is a diversion and a challenge.

Gavin is the top supplier of Devon bulls in England and we generally make Tilbrook our first stop, not just because he’s a great friend and breeder but he’s closest to the airport!

It’s become something of a ritual for Gavin to meet us in his yard with his latest treat….this time, a new young bull named Tilbrook Prince.  And this time, our grandson Church made the trip with us…not just because he loves Devon and our farm, but he’s strong enough to carry all our luggage!

And while Gavin has made a record producing not only the most but the top selling bulls every year, to us he’ll always be known as the man who gave us Cashiller, in our view the best cow produced in modern times on either side of the Atlantic.

Cashtiller’s last heifer was waiting for us there, too, and like her mother she knows how to play for the camera.  And she’s always just a bit apart from the rest of the herd.  We have six of her sisters here in America…and a granddaughter and two grandsons as well.

As I said, there’s a certain ritual to our first stop at Tilbrook….not only the latest special animal in the farmyard (it’s where we first saw Cashtiller) but in our first dinner catching up on gossip from both England and America….and the next day a visit to my favorite pub.

From there, it was on to the clinic which handles all our embryo work—Bovine Genetics—and Stella Scholes.  Stella is our heroine for the way in which she navigated the English bureaucracy to export our latest embryos.  She also works very near another favorite pub.  After our meeting there, I was fit only for a long nap in preparation for the next day’s drive.

The next chapter soon.