Sheryl Kirby

There’s a show running on the BBC in the UK at the moment called What to Eat Now. It’s a 4-part series about eating seasonally, and the first show of the second season (the first season ran last autumn) was about barbecuing. Divided into segments, the host Valentine Warner does a little bit of cooking, a little bit of foraging, and also interviews local food experts.

One of the segments on the first episode was about a herd of cows being kept on the Midsummer Common in Cambridge. With students and local residents walking, cycling or even rowing past, the herd of 11 Red Poll cows, as well as a bull, appear unfazed. The rare breed of East Anglian cattle were chosen for their exquisite taste as well as their gentle temperaments (they have no horns or “polls”) , and aside from the occasional drunken university student giving chase, it appears that most of the locals have become quite protective of the cows, even putting up protest when a local butcher shop began to advertise their meat for sale. (Which might be unnerving, but that’s the point of raising cattle, one would think.)

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