The Farmer's Son

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by John Connell


  On Sundays at mass we do not speak, for he is at work and I think perhaps he cannot break character while he is at the altar. Sometimes I stand at the back of the church and watch the people of the parish and wonder about their lives. I do not know everyone here, but I do know that we are Father Seán’s family; he is our shepherd and cares for us all. Like many of us, he is a tiller too, a tiller of the soul.

  After mass is ended, Father Seán and I bid one another farewell. He has returned to being a man once more and we can speak. I wish him well and tell him I will call over during the week. He alone knows that I once contemplated becoming a priest.

  Nights

  In the evenings, as I walk across the yard to the house, the customers for mother’s Montessori school are arriving to pick up their children and her day will be finished soon. I say hello to some of them, and they return a smile or nod. They too are tired, and many have come from Dublin offices, some two hours’ commute away.

  I come inside, take off my overalls, wash my hands and hang up my fleece.

  ❀

  I prepare Mam a sandwich for her supper each evening. My mother is a great farmer, raised in the nearby parish of Aughakilmore, where she farmed alongside her mother and siblings after her father died when she was just five years old. She has lived this rural life all these years and understands the ways of cows and men better than anyone.

  She takes care of all of us but forgets to feed herself, and so I leave her with no excuse: the sandwich is waiting on the table for her each evening. Tonight it is ham and cheese with a nice salad dressing and some crisps on the side. She does not like fancy food, preferring simple and wholesome things, things of our culture. I will make her a mug of tea when she comes in the door. I fill the hot water bottles for the bedrooms, for the nights are cold now.

  Da is going to the mart again with Davy tonight and they are selling a ewe that lost her lamb. She has not the kindness in her and would not take with any foster lambs, so we agreed that the mart was the best place for her. I leave a mug of tea for him too, and a sandwich. Uncle Davy soon arrives in his white Land Rover and they head off, the ewe standing in the rear of the vehicle. Good riddance to her, I think; she was not meant for this place.

  For the first time since lunch, I can now sit down. My little sister Javine has finished her homework and plays on her phone. She is the baby in the family, for my other siblings are grown with families of their own. Javine has entered her first year of secondary school. She is consumed with the social-media world and talks with all her friends through Snapchat and Viber. Witnessing this, I am finally starting to feel older and out of touch, but I do not mind this. Each generation has its own way of communicating.

  The night shift starts around seven p.m., and we walk out to the yard every two hours or so and check that the sheep are OK and that no new lambs have arrived. You cannot tell when a sheep may lamb, for they go into labor so quickly and, if all is well, can birth in twenty minutes. The cow is different: she gives us her signs and because a calf is big it takes many hours for her to go into active labor. I have been watching the Limousin, and she me, and I know that she will calve tonight. I have the jack and ropes and masks ready and have prepared a fresh batch of iodine and cleaned the stomach tube.

  Da also knows the cow will calve, but he knows too that I can do it on my own now, and though we do not discuss it, I know he has handed over this small bit of control to me. I will be calmer tonight than I was with the red cow, for it is a simpler job. The Limousin is old and should calve without trouble. She is roomy, as we say, which means her passage is big enough for a man to fit both his hands in and wrestle a calf from her.

  For now, though, I settle with my book. I am back reading after several months’ absence, and from the world of births, cows and rain, I enter the jungle in The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, the Australian author. It is a long book about a group of Australian prisoners of war on the Thailand–Burma death railway in the Second World War, and has kept my attention as I return to it night after night. At each chapter ending I break, check the time and see if I should go out to the yard.

  There are nights when instinct tells me to leave the jungle and the struggles of those men. I cannot describe the feeling any better than that—perhaps it is the sense of nature, or birth, but oftentimes on these trips to the yard I have found a ewe just about to give birth.

  A few weeks ago, I had a battle of some half an hour to take a lamb from his mother. I was alone and it was raining and my lucky twine was failing me. The lamb’s head was so large that I could not get my hand inside the ewe’s passage to get to his front legs, which need to come out first, before the head. After much maneuvering I had to place a rope around the back of his head (a risky move, for it could snap his neck or break his jaw), push the head back inside and then fish his legs out.

  The ewe was tight and I used large amounts of gel to lubricate my hands lest I should tear her and cause a hemorrhage, which could kill her. It had already been fifteen minutes since I had discovered her, and time was against me. Normally a birth takes no more than five minutes, so panic was setting in. I breathed deeply, asked the lamb to stay alive and dived in once more.

  My fingertips finally found his other missing hock and I pulled. His legs were slippery with fluid, but slowly I felt his joints bend and come into place and a pair of hooves emerged before me. Taking another length of twine, I bound those feet in a double locking knot and then pushed them back inside.

  I pulled my two ropes and his feet and head emerged correctly and he broke from his mother. He fell to the ground and gasped, and I smiled and thanked God. Clearing the mucus from his snout, I took him up bodily and swung him in the air three times to clear any fluid from his lungs. After this was done, I rested him back on the straw, his legs splayed out. His mother, now recovered, stood and turned to lick him. The bonding began and I collapsed onto the floor of the pen, the adrenaline draining from me. It had been one of the most difficult births this year, but the lamb—a ram—was magnificent.

  Tonight I check the sheep sheds, but there is no new life or encroaching life. Vinny wakes in the darkness and barks out to me from his house. I tell him it is only me and to go back to sleep, which he does. I check the Limousin; a slime hangs from her passage, as it has done this last few hours. She is not ready, not yet, I tell myself. She has been pacing in her house and her tracks have made a mess of the straw. I will put fresh bedding down when the calf is born. It will be another two hours at least.

  It has been a long day and I am tired now. I usually go to bed at ten when I am on the night shift. Da will then make a last check at midnight and wake me if there is an emergency. I will sleep until three a.m. and waken with my alarm and check that everything is OK. If we did not have the sheep, we could sleep through the night, but during lambing season each night is like this. We are six weeks into the night season and I have become used to the routine by now.

  I lie in bed and sleep takes me soon enough. I have been dreaming of the sheep and cows lately. It is a sign of stress, a sign that the work is consuming me, but I cannot control my dreams, as I cannot control the workload. It is a lot for two men—two men who do not always agree. But we have not fought in a long time, so perhaps that is all in the past. In any case, Da will be happy tomorrow because he had the night off; he will be happy for a few days.

  At midnight I waken, for Da has not come home yet and I can hear the Limousin roaring, shouting with the pains of labor. I have slept in my jumper and socks and so quickly slip on my trousers and I am back in the yard. From her passage, two feet hang and I know that it is time. I sense too that she has given up and that she will push no more.

  I walk up the yard and fill a small bucket with nuts, the sound of which makes all the weanlings roar. Returning, I coax the Limousin into the calving gate with its headlock. I place the nuts in front, and as she walks in I quickly close the latch. Now my work can begin.

  She does not fig
ht or strain, so I think she knows that I have come to help. I reach in and take the calf’s feet and trace my hands up the legs to ensure that everything is coming correctly. When I feel its head, I sigh with relief, for I have not yet delivered a backwards calf.

  The cow roars and her cry is answered by her sisters in the upper shed. If this birth were taking place in nature, perhaps they would surround her and keep her safe. I place the ropes on the calf’s feet—they are small, I notice, and think now perhaps he is a twin, for they are very small feet indeed, no bigger than those of a large dog.

  “First one first,” I tell myself.

  I nod and set to again and take the calf quickly. In the end, I pull him from her with my hands. I carry him with one arm to the straw and he is so small and red and wet, but he is alive and that is all that counts.

  Her vagina splutters and a breath of air leaves her, and I think, now there must be another, a brother for the wee one, and so I check again. I run my arm inside her, but search as I might, I only feel placenta. It is mushy in my hands and I push it to one side, thinking perhaps his brother is behind it, but there is nothing. He is alone—and a dwarf.

  I push the mask onto his face, but I know he does not need it, for he is breathing fine. The Limousin moos and calls to me, and I know she wants to see her calf, but not yet. I must milk her first. For I wonder if this little scrap will even reach her tits.

  As I milk her, the calf makes to stand, as if to prove to me he shall live, and by the time I have filled my jug he has walked to me and is sniffing at her udder.

  “Well, fuck ya, anyway,” I say, and smile, and it’s all I can do but laugh at this, my little Napoleon.

  I break the seal on her four tits and ensure the beestings is flowing and then, bending low, put the tit inside Napoleon’s mouth and strug. The milk shoots out and within seconds he is sucking by himself. I help him stand for a time by placing my knee beneath him to keep him upright. This is better than any stomach tube, for he will learn the art of sucking straightaway and will not need to be instructed as some calves do.

  Napoleon drinks and drinks and drains one tit and moves to another.

  It could be the Limousin’s age that has caused the small calf, or a lack of vitamins and proteins. I am not sure. Perhaps she needed more feeding, and yet I look at the Limousin now and she is in good shape: she is rated a five-star cow on the new government-introduced system. Perhaps the stars count for nothing, as I have heard men say. Napoleon may be her last calf; she may not be here next season.

  I wash the blood from my hands and walk back to the house. Da has not returned yet, so maybe he went for a pint. Mam shouts to me from her dark bedroom.

  “Well?”

  “Little bull,” I say. “Pipsqueak.”

  “I’ll look at him in the morning.”

  “Blink and you might miss him.”

  “Goodnight, John.”

  “Oíche mhaith, Ma,” I say, which is the old language for “goodnight.”

  Three a.m. will not be far away now, and I return to sleep quickly, the smell of new life in my hair and clothes.

  Horns

  The weather has not improved. There was talk that February would be better, but then the snows came and that talk ended. Snow transforms the land, covering all with its sleety whiteness. There is a beauty in it but also a hardship, for our animals outside could get cold. The tractor is slow to start with the weather and I am wrapped up in several more layers. The snow has lasted for several mornings and the children of the area have made men from its whitey down.

  Napoleon is alive and well, and we have moved him to the big shed, and the weanlings are nearly ready for market, but the days have bled into each other of late. Da has not been out on the farm for a week, for he has had a bad cold and I have run the place myself. It has been a busy week and I am tired, for between the days and nights I am but a servant to the cows. Sometimes I wonder what is it all for. I do not earn money at this work, and the farm pays for itself and no more. To make a living at farming is hard work and there are few full-time farmers left in the area; most men have other jobs as builders or tradesmen or teachers. Da is one of the few full-time farmers, but that was not always so. For more than two decades he was a builder with my uncle John, but he retired ten years ago, for the work had grown too demanding and, though he was still young, it had aged him.

  My brother Tom now runs the building company, and Dad the land. Tom loves machinery and tractors, and I the animals. I do not know which of us shall run the farm when the time comes. It is something that is not discussed, and in a way we are happy in our ignorance.

  I wonder at times, is the farm enough for my father? There is always work in the fields, yes, but there is no sociability to it, no spontaneity. As a builder, Da was a man of action, of business, and this life is so very different. The last few years have been difficult for him, as he has lost friends and brothers. We never talk of that, but just once he confessed he dreamed of them. In the dream, he and his brother John were building a wall, as they had so often done in life. John was mixing the cement and he was laying the block; Da said he could hear John’s voice and smell the smoke from his pipe. They were happy, he said, and then he woke and could remember no more. He never spoke of that dream again.

  Today is Da’s first day back on the farm. The first batch of this year’s crop of calves are getting older and we must burn off their horns. Dehorning the cows is a requirement of the Department of Agriculture, for the meat factories will not take a horned beast.

  We burn the calves’ horns now to save sawing them off when they are older. We use a gas torch to heat a small metal bowl that cuts the horns from their heads. It is sore for the calf, but it is better done now than to wait: to saw the horns off a weanling is a bloody job, for the horn must be cut at the root to stop further growth.

  There are twelve calves to be treated today. We lock them in their pen and set up our calf crush, which is a small metal box. Da brings his equipment out and sets it up on the creep wall. He points out potential problems, and I nod in agreement. It may have been a week since he has been on the yard, but it is still his yard, and perhaps this is his way of letting me know that he is in charge.

  “Grab that first calf,” he says.

  I wrestle the first of the crop, taking him by the tail and ear, and steer him towards the crush. I must keep close quarters, for though the calves are small, a kick in the right place could hurt me. By staying tight to the animal, he cannot lash out. I push and pull and steer until he is in the crush. As well as burning the horns, we must tag him and dose him for blackleg.

  We did not always dose for blackleg, but we learned our lesson years ago when we found the prize red Limousin calf stretched out on the hill farm of Clonfin. He had been the biggest and brightest of that year’s calves, but the illness had taken him. I can still remember the shame when the dead lorry had come to take his body away. Blackleg can survive in the ground as a spore for years, lying dormant until conditions are right for it. No one knows why, but the bacteria often strike the best animals. The bodies of the dead must be immolated.

  Da lowers the torch towards the calf’s head. It cries for its mother as the hot metal pierces its flesh. He shits himself and squirms in the crush. I whisper soft words and tell him it will be over soon. I see my father scoop up the small piece of horn contained in the torch.

  “Just one to go,” he says, and bends to once more.

  The calf cries out again and then it is over. We daub Vaseline over the open wounds to prevent infection. Then we tag him, giving him his number in the herd. Each animal born has a card, which is their passport. It records their life from birth to sale to slaughter—from farm to fork, as the slogan goes. Finally we give him 10 cc of blackleg vaccine from the small yellow box. We spray a small mark of paint on his back to let us know we have treated him, and he is free to go.

  “Next one, Johnny.”

  I can tell that Da is in a good mood, for he only call
s me Johnny when things are going well. I nod and grab another calf and we repeat the process. Some fight with me and I enjoy it all the more, for the challenge of man against beast makes me realize the strength I have built up from all my fitness training.

  Sometimes I ask Da to tell me stories of the long ago. I have heard these stories many times but do not tire of them. I think in a way it is these stories that have given me my gift of writing, as we call it here.

  “Tell us that one about your uncle and the strongman.”

  “Ah, you know that one.”

  “Wasn’t it the circus?” I ask.

  “You know it was.”

  “Well, tell it anyway,” I say.

  “The circus came to the village, years ago now, and your granny’s people, the Mullens, lived in Rhyne then. The circus had a strongman, and the bet went, whoever could lift heavier than him would win five pound.”

  “Which was a lot in them days,” I say.

  “Be close to a thousand now, I suppose. Old Mullen lost the first year, but he got thick about it and decided he would win the next year when the circus came back. And so when the next calf was born on the farm, he lifted him every day up over his head. So by the time the strongman came back a year later, Mullen was as strong as an ox and the calf as big as a bullock.”

  “And he won the money?” I ask.

  “He did,” says Da.

  “Some lad.”

  You would not think we had ever had in the parish our own legendary strongman, our own Milo of Croton, and yet Mullen of Rhyne existed.

 

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