The Farmer's Son

by John Connell

  “Well, that’s not so bad. We have the medicine, don’t we?” Mam asks.

  I nod. “What with all the lambing, I missed them,” I say.

  We finish our coffee and agree that it is time to return to work.

  I meet Da in the yard and tell him of the scoured calf.

  “The French stuff, give them the French stuff.”

  “And some of the pink mixed in?” I ask.

  “Aye,” he says.

  We have a kitchenette in the sheep shed, where we keep the immediate medicine. It is a small apothecary full of powders and solutions, needles and gels. There is everything here for an emergency or a delivery. Hanging from a nail is my lucky strand of baling twine. I have delivered fifty lambs with it, and it has saved many lives. Above the workshop hangs a woodblock print of Saint Francis—it came all the way from Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is all I have left of a former life and love in Canada. I sometimes think of her when I look at Saint Francis’s face in the middle of the night when a newborn lamb has come into this world. I bless myself in front of him and send caring love to an old love. That is our secret, just me and the saint. It was cruel that love ended as it did, but I cannot think of this now, for I have a sick animal to deal with. Saint Francis is the patron saint and guardian of all animals. It was said that when he died, the donkey which had carried him through life wept.

  Hidden between the oxytocin and vitamin B, I find the French stuff. It is a green liquid with a French-sounding name, and I syringe out the correct dosage. I squirt it into a clean empty beer bottle and rummage through the medicines and extract the pink stuff. We have no name for it, for it was given to us by the vet, but it stops the scour and together the two substances kill the bacteria.

  I shake and mix the liquids and wait as the kettle boils. On the radio they are talking of Syria, and I hear reports of the latest arrival of refugees on the Greek islands. Ireland is in Europe too, but this feels so far away, so far removed. I cannot imagine the mass of humanity surging and swelling, for it is so quiet here and I see so few people. There was a time when I worked in human rights, with people like this. I think of the Tamil refugees I met and worked with years ago as a journalist, and wonder where they are now. My work with others at that time led to their being freed from detention centers around the world, and I wonder if they are happy in their new lives. Will these Syrians find new lives? I do not know.

  The kettle boils and wakes me from my thoughts. I mix the last of the mixture and together Da and I seize the calf and shove the bottle down his throat.

  “He’s not so bad,” Da says as we finish.

  “He had a bad dung out of him this morning.”

  “Too much milk,” Da says.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That will do him good anyway.”

  “It will,” I agree.

  We do not talk much, Da and I, except about the sheep. That is our common ground, the ground we feel safe on, or he feels safe on. I am writing now, but we never talk of art or literature, and when I was a journalist or a film producer we never talked of my reporting or film work. Only in the sheep can we truly communicate, and so the arcane language of breeds and lambs and ewes could be taken to mean: How are you, Son? How are you, Father? I love you, Son. I love you, Father. We have a world of mutual understanding, and so long as we do not fight, we can both live in that world.

  The released calf returns to its mother and we think no more of him. He is one of the oldest of this year’s crop, and is strong and should recover quickly.

  “I’ll make the dinner,” I say, and wipe the calf shit from my trousers.

  “That’ll do.”

  Each day I peel the potatoes and vegetables and set the table. Mam says she can do it, but now that I am home on the farm, I want to ease her workload.

  Today we have beef burgers and onions and soon the kitchen is steamy and hot. Mam enters at one, takes a cup of tea and waits while I finish the dinner. She calls Da on her phone and together we three eat. We talk of the day, of the Montessori school and of the animals. The weather is still bad but we try not to discuss it, for it is Ireland and the weather is always bad in winter.

  Names

  We do not name our cows, not with Christian names anyway. They are given names that reflect their traits or the place where they have come from. Every cow has a story, just like every man. As I walk through the sheds in the afternoon, checking their bones to see who is near calving, I think of their histories.

  There is the Black Whitehead who is an old lady, the dame of the farm, for she has never had a bad calf. She is quiet and calm, and when I have to milk her she has never kicked me. I rub her flank and feel that she will carry another week or more. Walking along the bay, I move to the Simmental, who looks exactly like Daisy, her mother. Daisy went mad in the end and we sent her to the slaughterhouse for fear she would gore one of us to death. Her daughter is simply called the Simmental, after her breed. She is a docile creature, but for a week after she calves the sickness takes her and neither man nor beast can go near her. I have nearly lost my life with her more than once. Vinny has learned to stay away.

  The sickness comes on some cows after they have calved. It is their way of protecting their young and they are best left alone. Their calves are usually fine unaided, and so we do as the cows bid. Thankfully the Simmental has not yet calved.

  I run my hands over the others, the Limousins and Blacks, and they lazily flick their tails at me, shooing me away. Vinny barks from the shed passage, for he is afraid I shall get hurt. I tell him that he is a good boy and that I am fine, and he stops talking.

  There are many cows whose stories I do not know, nor does Mam, for Da does the buying. He has gone to marts all over the midlands, from the plains of Westmeath to the hills of Leitrim, where he used to meet the writer John McGahern in Mohill mart. They talked once or twice, Da told me, not of books but of cows. I missed those meetings and miss them now, for there is so much I should like to have asked McGahern. He is the one modern writer my parents know, and many years ago we all of us watched Amongst Women on the television. We saw much of our own lives reflected in the character of Moran and his farming life. In Moran’s quick fits of temper we saw Da, and in the closeness of family we saw ourselves.

  McGahern knew farming, as do I, and at times when the work is good and the weather not so hard I think perhaps this life of writing and livestock could work.

  I run my hand on the last Limousin and see that she is close to calving. I will move her down to the byre. She is old but you could not tell, for her coat is sleek and shining. I do not know where she came from or what farm she was born on, and I must remember to ask Da.

  The Limousin is a French breed of cow, originally used as a draft animal. They remained largely unknown outside of France until the nineteenth century, but it is now one of the most popular breeds in Ireland, the backbone breed of many farms, for it has a good ratio of milk to meat. Limousin calves are smaller but have fewer birthing difficulties. They are a great cow, except for their temper, which is known by all. I have seen them break through ditches like racehorses, scale walls and fight bulls. They say red is the color of passion; it is also the color of the Limousin.

  I move the newborn calf and mother from a few days ago out of the calving pen and make the house ready for the Limousin. This pen is our largest and has a calving gate, which my brother bought for Da two years ago. It is a modern, galvanized contraption which locks the cow’s head in place during labor. It makes calving a safer task for both man and beast.

  The Limousin and I walk together through the shed. Her elder, which is our word for udder, dangles back and forth, engorged and full of milk. We call this being sprung. Her vagina is swollen and broken down and a thin, clear slime hangs from it. She will calve in a day or two. She cannot tell me, and so I must read these signs and understand.

  I prod her flank and hush her towards the house. She lets out a low bellow, looks around her and enters. I give h
er silage and a small bucket of nuts, which have been manufactured with a smell that the cows love, and she quickly devours them. She will hold for now, and I enter her name in the roll call of jobs in my mind.

  Running

  I started running a year ago. Sometimes when I am running hard I forget where I am and what distance I have covered. I forget the pain in my legs and ankles. I simply am. Exercise has become a big part of my life, and most days I head to the local forest or the gym and spend an hour or two working out. It lifts my mood and gives me a break from the farm. To spend too much time on a farm surrounded only by animals makes an oddity of a man.

  I’ve been a serious runner for the last nine months. By serious, I mean in my own terms—that twenty-one kilometers isn’t hard or out of the ordinary anymore. It started as a thought, a small want for change, in what the writer Yukio Mishima called the cultivation of the garden of the self. I was in Australia, my old home, promoting my first novel; I had emerged from a serious illness and the idea of fitness came to me suddenly.

  At the beginning I was slow and would soon run out of breath, but as the weeks moved by, my time on the treadmill increased, my heart grew stronger, and when I moved back to Ireland I graduated to the great outdoors.

  I remember my first five-kilometer race here last August. It was a simple course through the local forest and my only goal then was to finish. I had never before run so far, and slow as I was, I made it to the end. As I neared the finish, I found I had more fuel in the tank and sprinted to the line. For the first time, I enjoyed a runner’s high, a thing I had heard about.

  Long-distance running is like farming, for it requires discipline, patience and preparation. You can’t just decide you will run a marathon on a Wednesday, just as you can’t produce a herd in a day or make a cow calve before her time.

  Come rain or shine or tiredness, I have been running here for twenty minutes every day (the twenties, I call them), to keep me fit, with a longer run thrown in once a week, to build my distance. There are days when I do not want to run, as there are days I do not want to farm. I think then of the Finnish long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi, who said, “Mind is everything, muscle mere pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind.”

  I think about a lot of things when I’m out running. I think of the cows and their upcoming births. I think of their calves and the small ailments they have. I think of the fields, which are still hopelessly wet, and of the remaining silage, and I wonder if we will have enough. I see them there in my mind, all these creatures dependent on me, on the seasons, on time. As I break my jog and enter a run, I push through the pain and pass the boy I was a year ago, who was struggling with so many things. I do not feel pity for him, just love, for I feel that I am in control now—my life has a sense of stability and order—and that I, like the animals, am safe.

  I discovered a philosopher of running, Dr. George Sheehan, an American physician. His books have given me a better understanding of running, and in a way, a better understanding of the farm, too. Man is an animal, he says, and it is our instinct to run, to maximize our fitness as animals. With every stride now I feel the strength coursing through my legs as I near the finish of my route; I think of that instinct for motion, of my connectedness with the cows, with our horses, with Vinny, with all animals that move and want to move.

  Later, when I go out to the yard to feed the cows, they know nothing of my run, but perhaps they recognize in me another beast, just for this evening.

  Evenings

  I like to be home from the gym or forest for half past four. The animals are hungry by then and the evening feeding must take place. Da will have been out in the yard for a while and sometimes we work together on the evening shift, but sometimes I text him on my way back from the gym and tell him to take a rest and I will do it, for I know the jobs I have left for myself from the morning.

  First I fill two buckets of nuts and feed the weanling calves. They are growing fat now and their flesh will be marbling nicely. The bullocks and heifers are separated and bellow at the sound of the silo latch opening. The nuts spill out, rattling to the waiting plastic. The weanlings get beef nuts twice a day, and as I pour them into their trough the animals puck and jostle for position at the feeding barrier. Occasionally a weanling will not like nuts, so they will not grow as quickly as the others, but we cannot change that.

  The weather is so bad that I wear my fleece at all times on the farm, and it smells of amniotic fluid from all the lambs I have delivered. The weanlings do not know what to make of me, for I look like a man but smell like a sheep. I know I have confused them on many occasions.

  Next I must feed the mature cows, and for this I will need the tractor. It is a John Deere, which is, I suppose, the BMW of the tractor world—reliable, strong and popular. Ours came from Northern Ireland and is getting on now. Its starter has been giving us trouble these last few weeks and it is a battle to get the motor going each day. I turn the ignition but the motor does not spark, and I must take my wrench to the alternator once more. I do not know what this does, but I have watched Da do it many times, so I imitate his action, and after several minutes of trying, the motor clicks and comes to moving life.

  I prepare the round bales of silage and pick up one bale with the tractor’s front loader, a mechanical arm with a large blade attached, then step out of the tractor to cut the plastic from around the bale. The mature cows will eat two bales. I drive to the automatic feeder and unroll the plastic netting, which keeps the fermented grass in place, and load the bale. The feeder will roll and chew the grass and spit out a neat row of silage for the animals. All I need to do is drive along the passageway and direct the flow of food. As soon as the tractor enters, the cows wake from their slumbers and call to one another in excitement.

  To watch this display is to know that these animals have cognition: they know the tractor and that it means food. They have memory and thought and, while these faculties might not be the same as those of people, they are aware of this world. I have read that cattle can remember human faces for up to a year. To think in this way, I wonder if they mind being cooped up in here. But there is so little in the fields this time of year, and the sheds are warm, so perhaps they are as happy to be inside as we are.

  On account of the bad weather, we have kept the bull inside this year, too. He has made his presence known in the slatted shed and has at times pucked calves and mounted in-heat cows. When he does so, we must take note and see whether the cow holds and goes in calf. We have separated the pregnant cows from him, for he might try to rise on them too, and in so doing hurt them or cause an abortion.

  I load up another bale and drive to the lower shed to feed the weanling calves. They have greedily finished the nuts I poured for them earlier and are waiting for me. We keep food in front of them at all times and they gorge throughout the day.

  Lastly, I give the small remaining silage to the sheep. Their bleating is incessant and does not stop until each and every one of them has been fed.

  In comparison to the cow, the sheep is a gentle but stupid creature. I have devoted many hours to their care, but I do not think they know who I am. I get the sense that every day is a new day for them, that they are surprised anew by my appearance each morning. I’m told sheep can remember human faces, but I’ve seen no evidence of this yet.

  I check their water and make my rounds to the pens for the newly lambed mothers. I give them each a small bucket of nuts and hay. There are some lambs which need extra feeding and this takes an hour or more, for I must heat up milk and bottle-feed them. I cannot rush this process, for the lamb will only drink at one speed. Sometimes I kiss their little foreheads, for they are so gentle and innocent. I listen to the radio and sit and think.

  The radio is always on in the sheep shed. Da said he read in the paper that the radio gets the lambs used to the human voice, so that they are not spooked when we come out and talk. So far it seems to have worked. It is company in the night for us too, and there
have been times I have heard beautiful music echo through the darkness. I do not know if sheep like Seán Ó Riada or David Bowie, but I have heard both out here and they didn’t seem to mind.

  This evening the chords of a Johnny Cash piece creep through the shed and I smile in recognition. It is a reminder of an older life, a different life. I see myself in recital halls and music venues, talking over coffee and sipping on beer. I see too the money wasted in cities, pissed against walls, and the oppressive encroachment of urbanity that always in the end forced me back to the countryside. In the past I have seen myself as the courageous journalist, as the wily, tight-fisted film producer. Now I see myself as the farmer’s son I am, and think that all the rest has just been an act. The country mouse playing the city boy for a time. I know the laws of the fields, the ways of land and cows, but the code of cities, the laws of film or media-industry types, is different; I am not trained in such rules, and it took nearly a decade for me to learn this.

  But it was not all bad: there were times of great happiness in those urban environments, in those farms of men.

  The six p.m. Angelus begins to chime on the radio and wakes me from my dreams. The lamb has finished his bottle, his brother too must now be fed, and I repeat the ritual. Heating the milk, testing it upon my forearm and nursing him in my arms.

  I sit upon a small milking stool borrowed from an old neighbor’s house. I am in no rush and enjoy the process. The bells ring out and there is silence in the shed now, for all 150 animals are eating. Vinny patiently waits in the alleyway for me. I have not had time to walk him today, but I must remember tomorrow. I must not forget his training. I treat him with a rasher each day after our walk and work. He is learning fast. Even Da has praised him.

  On the way back to the house, I look in on the calves playing in their creep. The sick one I gave the French stuff to is asleep. I check his nose and it is warm and I feel that he will recover. He opens his eyes slowly, recognizes me and springs to life. He shits as he jumps and the dung is still runny but not as much as before. Its color is returning to normal, and I smile, for at times it is like the movie The Madness of King George, and I am the physician inspecting stool samples.