by John Connell
The last calf escapes my arms and I hear Da cluck. He is growing tired.
“Ah, will ya catch him!” he says, irritated.
“I’m bloody trying,” I say, and I can hear now our tones change.
I chase the calf around the creep and finally capture him in a headlock. I stand to once more and direct him towards the chute. I push him inside with my legs and we quickly bolt him into place. He is strong and his coat smooth.
“Is this the scoured calf?” he asks.
“Can’t you see it is?”
Da does not answer me and takes the burner in his hands and sets to his work.
When we finish, he does not speak and we drift apart once more, tempers cooling. We have done well not to fight. I inspect our work. The calves are sore of themselves, but they will thank us in the long run.
Ballinalee
I have gone into Ballinalee to buy some bread and the newspaper. It is not far from the farm and it provides me with a break from the place. It is a historic village and battles were fought here during various wars. Da was schooled here, and Granny has shopped here all her life. Its name means “the ford of the mouth of the calves.” It is an odd name, and we mostly just call it Bal.
Bridgie from the shop has two freshly made loaves of brown bread, still warm to the touch. I buy them both and take the paper. I will enjoy this at break time.
“How’s the farming going?” she asks as she takes my order.
“Not too bad, if only the weather would lift,” I say.
“That will take time,” she says as I hand over the fiver.
“It will surely.”
“Are you writing at all now, John?” she inquires.
“I’m trying,” I lie.
“You’ll be our Frank McCourt.”
“He was an old man before he made it!” I laugh.
“No one said it was going to be easy.”
We smile and laugh and I leave the shop, the breads tucked under my arm.
The Purebred
The purebred Charolais cow gave birth a few weeks ago. The calf, a bull, is the culmination of years of selective breeding. He will be a champion—our neighbors have said so too. To him we will give a name, for all purebred bulls must have a title.
He is snow white and tall, evenly balanced, with legs that are straight and not bowed. We do not praise him too much, for fear that he might be taken from us by death, or that our luck might turn. Da is happy with him. Our neighbor and friend Rory, who raises purebreds, comes every few days to check on the bull’s progress.
“Best calf yet, lad,” Rory says each time.
Like so many purebreds, the bull calf’s mother has no milk, and so we must find him a surrogate mother. There is the dairy cow we bought for last year’s purebred calf, but she has not yet calved herself, and so has no milk. Da looked for several days for a foster mother but found none. In the end, a neighbor lent us a cow and she has been providing milk for the new arrival for the last few weeks. She is an old cow and gentle, and though her tits are small, the calf has figured out how best to suck them.
I watch him some mornings as a bubbling white foam emerges from his mouth as he suckles. He is a good grubber. His birth mother never cries for him; she has not the nature of the other cows.
Our neighbor would take nothing for the use of the cow, and so we gave him a hamper with some food and drinks in it, and he was thankful. Derek is his name. He is a Protestant and we are Catholic, and in the past that would have been a wall between us, for we have different cultures; he has family in the North, and ours are of this place. But he is an Irishman and a good man, and the walls that were made to divide us no longer exist. The animals do not care what creed we are, and they are right in their innocence. Derek has also helped me with difficult lambings, and I have learned a lot from him. I see it as a point of pride now that I do not need to call him anymore, for I was a keen student and he a great teacher.
We burned the purebred bull’s horns last week and it has put back his progress a pace. It will take time, but he will thrive again. Rory says we should boost his diet by giving him some crunch, which is a type of seed-and-pellet mixture. Rory understands the genetics of the calf and appreciates him all the more for that.
The purebred bull calf was the product of artificial insemination, and all we know of the bull that fathered him is that it was British and called the Flying Scotsman. The two shall never meet, but we must pay a royalty for the calf to the sire’s owner. We must register the calf with the purebred society and then begin his training with rope and stick and noose. He will be a thoroughbred of cattle. Already Mam has asked that we keep him as our own stock bull.
“And what if we got offered ten grand for him?” Da asks.
“We can cross that bridge if it comes,” she replies.
“That’s a big bridge,” he says.
“I invested into that cow, she’s partly mine, and I’ve seen no return from her yet. The bull calf will stay,” Mam says with an air of finality.
I do not have any share in the cow and so stay quiet. I will let them debate this themselves. It is a happy talk, the talk of money and success. It is like the birth of Hazel all over again, and I know it makes them smile.
When our dairy cow finally calved, we moved quickly and put the pedigree bull calf onto her teat. It took a few days, for he often escaped back to his foster mother, who kept crying for him, and I knew then that their bond had been strong. When the foster cow settled, we took her back to Derek. I wonder now, does she think of the bull calf, or look for his scent amongst her herd? There are some things in farming we cannot know.
It’s All Greek to Me
In evolution’s eyes, the cow has tamed man as much as man has tamed the cow. With the domestication of the aurochs some ten thousand years ago, the diet of Indo-European peoples changed considerably and we turned into milk drinkers.
Man had previously been lactose intolerant, as is still evident in nations such as China, where the relationship between man and cow is weak and dairy is not much consumed. With this dietary jump, humanity could now readily absorb vitamin D, thereby giving us stronger, healthier bones and teeth. There are more calories in milk than in crops, which in turn meant a more robust, sturdy constitution. Tending cattle could be a nomadic practice, and so people were no longer tied to one area. In this way, the milk drinkers could spread to new lands, conquer new territory and impose their own culture. Our first great animal relationship was with the cow and not the horse.
It was not a one-sided affair, however, for the cow gained a protector. Man would now guard it from predators and even domesticate other animals to do so. What was the taming of the wolf for, if not to create dogs that could protect our herds?
In ancient Greece, the mountainous terrain was not suited to the cow, and so the goat and the sheep became the dominant domestic animals in the region. Perhaps this is why it was a golden fleece Jason sought and not a golden hide. In nearby Anatolia there was a cult of the bull, but to the early Greeks, perhaps the cow was viewed as a mysterious foreigner. It was in Crete that the attitude towards the cow eventually began to change.
The story goes that in the long ago, Minos, the first king of Crete, sought to justify his sovereignty, and so he prayed to the god Poseidon for a sign that his rule was by divine right. Poseidon sent him a snow-white bull out of the sea, on condition that Minos would sacrifice it as an offering of thanks.
But on seeing the beauty of the animal, Minos could not bring himself to end its life. He sacrificed another bull in its place and gave the white bull a herd of cows. The betrayal enraged Poseidon so much that he bewitched Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë, causing her to fall in love with the beast. The craftsman Daedalus constructed an elaborate fake cow for Pasiphaë to hide inside, so that the bull would be tempted to copulate with her. Pasiphaë bore a monster, half man and half bull: the Minotaur. And into it Poseidon poured his anger and cruelty, for the Minotaur ate the flesh of men.
After getting advice from the Oracle of Delphi, Minos instructed Daedalus to make a labyrinth in which to keep the Minotaur. When his son Androgeus was killed by the Athenians, Minos waged war in vengeance, and when he won, he demanded that every few years seven Athenian youths and seven maidens should be sent into the labyrinth to be devoured by the Minotaur. When the third sacrifice approached, brave Theseus volunteered himself, and, unraveling a ball of string from the entrance to the labyrinth, he confronted the Minotaur and killed him with his sword.
Myth and history are strange things, for it seems that sacrifices were actually made in real life: as a vassal of Crete, ancient Athens had to send a certain number of souls for sacrifice. Perhaps they were killed by a bullheaded man, perhaps by priests disguised as such. Whatever or whoever took their lives, the Athenians feared the Minotaur and the cult of the bull.
Thinking of this violent mythical beast so caged, I cannot help but reflect on our own times. Do we not keep our cows locked up in labyrinths of steel? I think of the industrial feedlots of the Americas, where hybrid cows are bred, never knowing either grass or sky. They too are removed from instinct, they too have felt the wicked hand of man, they too wait for their day of slaughter. Perhaps the story of the Minotaur, born to a fake cow, is a warning to us—we must be careful if we attempt to interfere with nature.
It was, after all, the Minotaur that Dante met on his descent to hell: the first guardian of the walls of Dis, a warning of the violence against nature and the violence of man. Perhaps we must rethink our relationship with that Minotaur, for he is partly us.
Trees
I’m in the fields today. Da has asked me to collect the cut firewood from our land at Ruske’s, by the crossroads. It is not raining, and it is nice to be out for a few hours.
The county council recently cut down several trees to make for a clearer view by the road, and they gave Da several bales of sheep wire in exchange. The trees, which were mostly ash and beech, were over a hundred years old. The woodsmen have already cut them into short meter lengths, though their trunks are so thick that it takes strength to lift and carry them over to the front loader of the tractor. The ground is still wet, so I cannot bring the trailer into the field, for I would track the ground and risk becoming stuck.
So I lift and load and drive back across the road to the house and dump the timber. I have been repeating this for several hours and my back is tiring. A light mist has fallen, but it is not cold and I work in my jumper and hat. I shout and groan at the bigger cuts of lumber, for they are heavy, but I will not be defeated by them. I like this lifting and amuse myself by imagining that I am some Viking or “The Mountain” from Game of Thrones.
Once, this field had many more trees, but when Mam and Da bought it, they cleared much of the ground and it was transformed from a farm that looked Protestant to one that looks Catholic. The old Anglo-Irish farms have beautiful trees and plantations, like in England, while we natives seem to cut the great trees down in favor of small hedges. I do not know why this is, but I have seen it time and time again. It is not something that I much like.
As I work I think of Robin, the old owner of Ruske farm, and how, as a child, I called him Robin Redbreast. How he used to talk to my brother and me over the ditch. How he helped us clear the ragwort from the meadow ground one summer. I think of his fondness for my mother and his wish that she have first refusal on the land when it went for sale. It’s strange that fields can have memory, or rather hold memory. I suppose it is like streets in cities, how they can bring back earlier times. On my shelf is a book of essays by George Orwell in which I have a note to myself from the day it was bought; it reads: “The day she told you it was over. Bought on Macleay Street, Potts Point, Sydney. Tough day . . .”
I am not sure if it is the book or the note or the street, but they have all become part of the same memory, like old Robin at the ditch. I realize that I never did read that book, but perhaps that was not its purpose.
My bucket full, I start the tractor once more and drive back to the yard. I move slowly on the road, for I do not want to track dirt or send it flying into the windscreens of cars behind me.
In truth, the clearing of Ruske’s was a good thing, for Robin had divided and portioned much of the land for sheep and it was no longer right for cows. We needed to remake it to suit our own needs. We had owned the farm next door, and I remember the day we broke through the gap and united the property into one holding. We have kept the name Ruske’s, though for all I know, strangers call it Connell’s now.
I break after the fifth load and take a mug of coffee. My back is covered in sweat and my arms with a fine layer of sawdust. It is a nice dirt. I walk back out to the tractor and dump the load. The mountain of logs is growing and I do not know when we will burn it all, for the house runs on kerosene now, but my sister and brother have solid fuel in their houses and should be glad of the wood. It will keep them warm on cold nights.
We let the first batch of lambs out with their mothers last week. They are in the paddocks around the house. It is too early to tell, but they seem to be OK. I hear them call to one another, their cries loud and clear. One must take care when releasing lambs and sheep and do it in small batches, for the mothers may get separated from their lambs and, both becoming confused, they may not recognize one another and a lamb may be abandoned.
I have learned this lesson the hard way, for I released twenty lambs and their mothers a few weeks ago. The ewes ran for the fields, happy to be released, but the lambs had never before left the shed and were slow to venture out. By the time I got them all out, the mothers had run for the ditches and the lambs were left on their own, crying and mourning. I cursed myself then and had to bring the whole lot back in and release them in smaller groups. I have never known a cow to confuse her calf. I suppose the cow is more intelligent, or has a better sense of smell. But I am still learning with the sheep and must be patient with myself. Da did not know about this mess-up. Sometimes it is better to be alone with mistakes.
I cast my eyes around the paddock as I reverse the tractor and head for the road once more. Please God let the weather hold. I hope we do not need to bring the flock in again.
I drive back to the field and load up the logs. I have many more loads to go before it is all home. I will get it all done today, though; I have set myself that chore. I will be tired this evening, but it will be a good tiredness. The rain holds off and I am warm in my work. A neighbor waves to me from his tractor and we salute one another, arms raised in greeting like the Celts we are.
Smoking
I’ve knocked the fags on the head. I used to love the act of lighting up. Especially after the birth of a calf or lamb. I would lean by a gate, inhaling and enjoying the moment, savoring the taste. But no more.
I have the running to blame, I suppose, for it has turned me healthy, but I quit out of shock too. I had come inside from work one day and coughed and coughed, and a small droplet of blood emerged. That scared me into total abstinence. I am still young enough to hope that the damage will not have been serious. A sick farmer is no good to anyone. A sick man is no good to his family. I know it was right to stop, but I still sometimes miss the way cigarettes gave me an excuse for reflection.
At midday, I sometimes hear the Angelus play on the radio. I do not always stop to pray, but the moment of bell-ringing is one of meditation. I think of the day so far and simply try to be. I have read a great deal about mindfulness in recent years. It has become a buzzword, I suppose, and yet in it there is truth too. As a farmer, I have to be in the moment, for lives depend on it.
I am lucky in this job that I am able to tune out from the world when I want to. I am not so connected to the world as I once was. I have a mobile phone, yes; it was bought for me so that I could be contacted when I was away; but I would be happy not to have one. I am getting out of the habit of technology, and there is freedom in the absence of it. Perhaps Birchview is my Walden. I have felt that it is only in the last year that I have
finally begun to live. The thought came to me quite unexpectedly when I was swimming in the local pool. I was in my fortieth or fiftieth lap and I touched the wall, breached for air, and I knew in that moment that I was comfortable in my own skin.
I feared then that it would be a fleeting state, and yet, since then, that knowing has only increased, the pelt of peace has only thickened. I feel it best as I run through the forest, cycle down country roads or bring a calf or lamb into this world. It is at these times that I feel I am experiencing the sublime, the sacred, the marrow. I feel that I only began to live a year ago, for then I feared I was to die, but I think it is beyond that. I am no longer content merely to be alive—no, not when there is living to be had.
Sometimes when I go to Dublin to visit friends, our conversation revolves around their phones; they look every few seconds at their Messenger or Snapchat or Twitter. I do blame them for this, though I once did the very same. It irks me now, but I do not say anything, for I know enough of the rules of cities to know that this would be rude, and so I accept this distraction as their way of life, as they accept mine. I have become, in a way, exotic to them—a farmer, a writer, a man living a different kind of life. All I do now is work out and farm, and they might wonder what sort of life this is. To me, it is a lovely one, but I too can see that my terms of reference have changed. I was at a dinner party a few weeks ago with some actor friends and found myself retelling a story about the death of an animal. I realized that it sounded odd to them, though it was normal to me. I am not ashamed of it, the life I have on the farm, as perhaps I would have been years before. It is what feels most real to me now.
Haircuts
Da is clipping the cows’ tails today. It’s a thankless job, but it saves much hassle later in the season. Out in the fields, a cow’s tail is long and useful; it helps it cool down, keeps flies away and acts as a communication tool amongst its fellows. Being in the shed, however, their tail tips have become hardened and matted with shit, and this can provide a source of infection. Indeed, once I saw a newborn calf suckle a dirty tail, thinking it a tit. He got sick afterwards, for shit is not meant to be drunk.