The Grass Is Greener in France

Graham Savage is kneeling in damp straw with a newborn lamb in his arms, its fleece still slick with yellow afterbirth. "When you've done 500 of these day and night over six weeks, you're tired, believe me," he grins. There's a touch of Dorset in his vowels, as there is in the lush green meadows that roll toward tree-studded hillcrests outside the shed, yet we're a long way from the English West Country. Just 50 km to the south, Max Cusell is herding his black-and-white Friesians out to pasture through thick mud. The surrounding valley has nothing in common with the...