Re-charging our batteries – 3

….our visit to the new two of our partners had to be short because of the intrusion of real life.  Margaret Elliott’s mother had been hospitalized unexpectedly earlier that day…and Angus and Joy Cottey were both recovering from very serious illness.

We confined ourselves then to brief courtesy calls.  We were pleased to see that our Falcon’s brother, Millennium Monte, who had been ill himself, was doing much better now that he was under the care of Margaret at her Cutcombe Farm.

We also paid our respects to one of the grand old bulls of English Devon, Bywood Jasper, who is living out his days in semi-retirement at Cutcombe.  Jasper’s breeder, Ken Farmer, passed away not long ago and, by coincidence, two of Jasper’s sons have wound up at our colleague’s farms:  Cracker at the Kew herd and Christopher at the Goldings herd.  More about that in our next post.

Continuing our “convalescent tour”, we stopped at Garradon and were relieved to find both Angus Cottey and his wife Joy as vigorous as ever.  Still, sadly, they told us they had decided they couldn’t maintain the pace any longer and planned to disperse the herd.

It’s a great loss for Devon in England as well as Traditional Devon America™ because the Cottey’s have been doing really well in recent shows and developing an outstanding herd.  By coincidence another of our friends, Juliet Cleave, visited the Cotteys and took this picture of one of their cows.  One look and you’ll see why we think it’s a tragedy that the Cotteys feel they have to leave Devon’s ranks.