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| A herd of their own: Highland cattle complete couple's country home (Spring 2008) |
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By Lorne McClinton
Julie could tell from the sound the cattle were making that something was very wrong. Bare feet flying, she ran up the mountainside to see what
was the matter. A pit bull and another stray dog were attacking one of their week-old Highland calves. By the time Julie and her husband, Jeremy, arrived at the scene, the mother cow had jumped over the 5-foot-high electric cattle fence and was goring the pit bull with her long horns. The dogs limped off when the couple came to the calf’s rescue.
The dog attack was the low point in Julie
Zeitlinger’s and Jeremy Fontana’s first year of
owning cattle. The young couple had dreamed of moving to the countryside with their two
young daughters, Romy and Violetta. Three
years ago, Au Diable Vert, a small alpine inn
and outdoors center with 200 acres of adjoining
woods and meadows near Glen Sutton,
Quebec, came up for sale. They decided to
move to the mountains and become innkeepers.
They sold their house in Montreal, and
their cottage in nearby Sutton, and bought it.
Middle of nowhere. "Au Diable Vert is a French phrase that roughly translates to the middle of nowhere," Jeremy says. "It
certainly is appropriate. It’s only 90 minutes
from downtown Montreal, but when you get here you really feel like you drove 500 kilometers
directly into the middle of nowhere."
The region is heavily wooded now, but 50 years ago their property was one of the many alpine farms that once peppered the south slope of Mount Sutton. The main section of their house/inn, the original farmhouse, dates from 1900. Their property, like most of the farms in the region, was abandoned when farmers switched from horses to tractors. If you hike into the woods you can still see the stone fences that once divided the fields.
The couple financed the property through a shared risk mortgage with a farmland lender and the Business Development Bank of Canada. The terms of the farmland lender stipulated that the couple had to operate an agricultural enterprise on a portion of their land. After debating the possibility of buying wild boars or bison they chose the simplest option; purchasing 12 cows.
Happy accident. "We stumbled across the
Highlands by sort of a happy accident," Julie
says. "They can stay outdoors all the time and
they like the hilly terrain. They’re ideal for
the winter mountain pasture that we have."
"They’re very hard to kill," Jeremy adds. "They’re very hardy; they take care of themselves. They have a 98% unassisted live
birth rate which sounded very, very good. The
shoulder-length gloves didn’t appeal to us."
It was love at first sight when the couple
first saw the animals. Their exotic look and
their impressive horns appealed to them.
Yaks or musk ox. "They’re just astounding creatures," Jeremy says. "They look cool and they’re so different. They fascinate literally all of the thousands of guests who stay at the inn, cabins, or the campsites every year. Most people have never seen one before, so we’re often asked if they’re yaks or musk ox."
Jeremy works in advertising in Montreal
and Julie had trained as a biologist in Europe.
Neither had any experience raising cattle. Don Badger, the local breeder who had sold
them the cattle, was quite interested in their
project and provided a lot of advice and help.
"You have to feed them and look after
them," Julie says. "If things go wrong, you’ve
got to take care of them. It was a bit scary
at first. They are big, they kick, and they do
have long horns, but after awhile you do grow
more accustomed to them."
Now, instead of two children, "I have 37," Julie says. "I literally know all of their moos. If
one cries in the middle of the night, I hear it and wake up. It’s just like having a newborn in the next room. Just one moo and I’m at the window."
It was Julie’s close attachment to her animals
that let her know something was wrong
when the dogs attacked. The calf was badly injured. Jeremy and Julie wouldn’t hear of
putting the animal down, so they had the vet
patch it up. Every day, for weeks afterwards,
the couple wrestled the calf down and treated
it with antibiotics. The calf survived.
"It’s the most amazing thing when you are
in there helping these little calves," Jeremy
says. "The mothers stand right beside you,
watching you, not blinking; breathing through
their nostrils. The look is a combination of
‘I really should kill you, and thank you for
taking care of my baby.’ You’re dealing with
most basic things: life, death, food, and water;
things you never think about in the city."
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