Within minutes of starting work on the field side of our garden I’m joined by No. 26. She lays her broad, steamy wet nose on the top of the wall separating field from garden, and breathes encouragingly at me.

No. 26 is a Friesian heifer. Unlike the competitors in the Miss World contest, these candidates wear their numbers as ear tags, and No. 26 is hoping that I shall come up with a titbit, or hold down another elder branch for her. If I do, a thunder of hooves brings No. 22, similarly hopeful, or even No. 18, who is rather timid.

I like cows, especially Friesians. They are such shameless minders of other people’s business, and gather inquisitively at anything that’s going on. Initially, they press uneasily around the fringes of the large field behind our cottage, giving the impression that they would prefer to be somewhere else. Their eyes roll, and they bellow in voices of studied tragedy, perhaps at the state of the grass, which is rank.

Looking out across the brown grass of the top field – grass which to my ignorant eye must be almost uneatable for the herd which grazes it – I ponder the quantity of nourishment there can be left in it, what’s left being bitten to the quick. A farmer’s wife tells me that the shortage of moisture in it increases the food elements the animals are getting. I hope so. Otherwise it all looks like a long day’s work for very little reward.

And I wonder again why these animals tend to bunch together as they eat. For them in their shadeless field the heat must be intense, and be increased by each other’s proximity. Yet here they come, towards this house, heads down, ears and tails constantly waving, steadily chewing away. One or two have stepped aside a few paces, but the rest have stayed close, head to tail, jaws keeping up their continuous champ champ champ.

They like to spend a lot of their time bunched together in the narrow end of the lower field, between our cottage, the wall and the boundary ditch. And much as we enjoy having these creatures as neighbours, their preference for this narrow piece of the field presents certain problems. They have already spent so much time standing around on this small area that the grass there has almost given up the struggle, and much of the ground, thanks to cattle and weather, is a sea of squelch. And our bedroom window opens directly over this midden, together with its flies and farmy fragrances, especially on humid summer evenings.

I always appreciate the presence in their fields of our neighbour cows, and see them go with regretful acceptance of the fact that summer is over. But this year they have gone earlier than usual, hustled away to another field without a goodbye. The reason? They have started to break out of their home territory. A few days earlier, John had noticed that two of them were standing in the little ditch that separates the two fields and were trapped between the two fences. He rang the farmer who arrived to collect them, and to reinforce the fence on his side of the ditch at the same time. But this morning when John drew back our curtains there was a cow in the lane, wandering from verge to verge placidly going on with her life as if scaling a wall and climbing over a ditch was part of her normal routine.

This time the outcome was different. Farmer and his assistants arrived. The verdict? ‘Once they’ve lost respect for a fence it won’t keep them in. If they don’t want to stay in a field you won’t make them.’ While John shepherded away any oncoming cars, the farming quartet steered their rebellious property out into the lane and, eventually, off to what the poet called ‘pastures new’ – though by this stage of the year, that’s not a description that accurately describes any fields locally.

We shall miss them, noisy or quiet, when they’ve gone. It’s always a sad moment when the last animal leaves the fields. By the end of the season the fields look tired, exhausted, spent – and, once empty, lonely, as if they miss their late occupants. For me, the dreariness of winter has finally ended once our neighbour Friesians have arrived, and their departure says ‘summer is over’ more convincingly than does the changing of the clocks.

Elizabeth Gardiner, 1996