The Farmer's Son

by John Connell

  In the past, some dairy farmers didn’t just trim the hair from the end of the tail but docked the tail itself, using an elastic band to cut off circulation to the unwanted part. Docking gave dairymen easier and cleaner access to the cows’ udders for milking. Thankfully this practice, though painless to the animal, generally no longer occurs.

  Da walks through the shed, knife in fist, and slowly takes the first cow’s tail in hand, then cuts the burrs of hair and dung from it bit by bit. Sometimes the cows stand to and let him do his work, while others walk through the shed and he follows after. I think they probably like this beautification, for they do not put up a great fight. You can get a machine now to do this job—a cutting head that attaches to a mechanical drill—and we keep meaning to buy one, but each year we somehow forget.

  We move to the weanlings then and it is their haircut time too. We load them in the crush and one by one we run an electric shaver down their backs from head to tail. Next we place a dose of drench on them, which will prevent lice and growths from taking hold. It is bad to see calves infested with scabs and lice. They will not kill the calves, but if left long enough, they will lead to hair loss from scratching, and if left further still, the calves’ skin will dry and harden and their scratching will cause bleeding. It is not a big job to shave and dose them, but it is a necessary one. Soon the sheds are a litter of hair. The animals have taken on a more manicured look and seem happier, or so we tell ourselves.

  “I can give you a buzz cut if you want,” Da says to me at the close.

  “Aren’t I losing enough as it is?” I say.

  We laugh and pack away our tools.

  Brother

  The purebred bull calf has gained a brother. It was not a planned thing, but such are families made.

  It came about after one of our best cows, the Elphin, calved a few days ago. Her udder was huge and overflowing, and try as the calf might, he could not drink all she provided, and she contracted mastitis.

  The illness is characterized by a swollen, red udder and is caused by milk not being drained from the beast’s quarts; it goes sour inside her and creates an infection. If the cow is not milked and the badness removed, her tit will die and she will not bear milk from it again.

  In some cases I have seen the udder rupture and pus emerge; in worse cases I have seen the flies take hold and the rot set in. If mastitis strikes, we must act quickly to prevent such suffering.

  We treated the cow’s tit, milked out the foul-smelling badness and injected her with a small dose of antibiotic. We decided it would be best to get another calf to help keep up with the milk her own calf could not manage, for the cow was a good, kindly beast and could easily rear twins.

  Da set off in his jobbing coat to Carrigallen mart and returned two hours later with a suck calf. The man he had bought it from had said there was nothing wrong with the small bull, save that its mother had been a wild bitch of a heifer and, upon dropping her offspring, had never taken with it, nor let it suck. She too would be sold, he told Da, for no man wants a beast with no nature.

  We put the Elphin in the headlock and prepared ourselves for a long process of many days, for suck calves are often raised on a milk replacer and have lost the instinct and neck to suck a cow. And yet the calf went straight for her elder—her udder—and began to suck her tits almost instantly. He drank for ten minutes, then moved to the next quart.

  “Begod,” I said, “I’ve never seen a calf as quick. You got a right lad there.”

  “He’d want to be, at the price calves were going.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred and fifty.”

  “Still, he’s not a weakling. He’ll make a right bullock.”

  The cow kicked him then and we thought the suck calf’s luck had changed, but, undeterred, he sucked on.

  “He’ll do rightly.”

  “Thanks be to God.”

  The Elphin tolerated her foster child but would not yet let him suck her without the headlock on, and so, three times a day, we put her in the restraint and allowed him to feed. He was brave and strong and so hungry that at times we had to ensure he did not drain her dry and leave no milk for his brother. The work went well until she began to dry up and the milk went from her.

  “That new calf is failing,” Mam says as we meet at coffee break.

  “How so?”

  “I don’t think he’s getting enough milk anymore. Have you checked her elder?”

  “I’m putting him to her three times a day.”

  “The goodness might be going from her milk.”

  Mam was right. Her elder had grown smaller and the fountain had turned to a stream. She was but a cow again, a cow fit only to raise one calf.

  It was Da who thought to put the suck calf on the dairy cow and thereby give the purebred bull calf a brother. The dairy cow had milk enough to raise two and neither would starve or fail. The transition was an easy one, for the Elphin had never truly bonded with the suck calf and she did not cry or bemoan his loss when we took him to the upper shed. The switch was smooth and neither the dairy cow nor the bull calf seemed to mind. The purebred had gained a brother, the dairy cow another calf. We bedded them with fresh straw and left the new family to settle.

  “Funny week,” I say to Da as we walk back to the house.

  “That’s farming.”

  We smile and quicken our step. We shall take this small victory.

  Writing

  My generation was to have been the one that would stay at home, reaping the benefits of the economic boom called the Celtic Tiger, but the recession came and we too emigrated to the four corners of the globe. Some of us are returning, but perhaps we have become unsuited to this place, for we have tasted so much of life. We have returned with new ideas, to find a world that does not want to change. Mam says that to stay here will waste my youth, that I will wake up one day an old bachelor. But at times I think that perhaps I shall never return to a city again, that I will give up the dream of being a writer. I can remake myself as a farmer and settle myself to the land.

  When I came home, my plan was to write what I needed to and then get back to the city, but the farm has taken over. I only have the time to make small notes to myself, patches of paragraphs here and there, in between the sheep and cows.

  When I lived in Sydney, I met the writer who became my mentor. David has written many books and won much acclaim. We are unlikely friends, and yet I call him every few weeks and we talk about books. He does not know it, but those talks fire my imagination and put gusto in my belly once more. He once took me to the opera in Sydney. He spoke fluent Italian and understood the words and beauty and explained the story to me so that I could see the beauty in it too. I have not forgotten that day, nor all the days when he has slowly guided my hand. I know that I am in my journeyman days now, and David understands this, for he also served his time many years ago. He is the master I sought for all those years.

  Outside, a cow roars loudly and in distress. I put my pen down and think. I look to my watch and see it is near time to feed the animals again. Words will have to wait.

  Failure

  The weather has turned once more. For several days now, it has been wet and hailing, and the wind fierce. We have four sheep missing. I counted only forty lambs today. I returned with the dog, but he too cannot find them. We are not sure if it was foxes or dogs that took the lambs; perhaps it was the weather, but we can find no bodies.

  Da and I are both tired. The nights have taken their toll, and I am walking like a zombie around the yard. I am so tired that I no longer care about the rain, though it pelts my face and stings in its fierceness.

  The sheep are in the upper ground, in the rented fields of my uncle Mick. We must bring them towards the small paddocks and then up the lane to the sheep shed.

  Genie, my sister Javine, has come to help us move the sheep, for it is an emergency now. We know that if they spend another night outside, death shall come and take more of them. Javine is no
t a farmer and she does not often come out to the yard. She gives out under her breath, for I know that she does not like the rain and would rather spend her Saturday on the phone or with her friends.

  “Where is Daddy? Why isn’t he helping?” she asks me.

  “He’s calling the sheep,” I explain, and we look back to see his small figure shouting out, “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” which is the call we use for our sheep. Stupid as they are, the sheep have learned that this means food is near, and they usually come running, but today there is pandemonium. Some have begun the long march to Da, while more stand and wait. The lambs cry out through the sheets of rain. It is getting harder to see and my glasses are fogging up.

  I shout to Da to come and help us, for his actions are pointless, but he does not hear me and so I must muster them myself. I think perhaps Vinny would be a help, but he is too young still to muster and would only run the sheep farther away. And so I must be both shepherd and dog.

  Javine has given up and no longer mushes the sheep on. I must not shout at her, for she is a child, not a farmer, and a row now will cost us the entire operation.

  “You’re doing great,” I say. She looks up at me and smiles.

  “He’s still not helping.”

  “We’ll get there ourselves.”

  We march them from the upper ground and down by the river towards the reclaimed paddock. It was once covered in rush and whin until Da and I reseeded it. I know its every acre, for I picked every stone from it by hand myself. The water stands in puddles, and splashes as we walk. The river is near bursting and still the rains come.

  At last we march the eighty animals into the paddock and quickly shut the gate behind them.

  “Genie,” I yell. “We have to get them onto the lane. Hush them towards the gate.”

  She nods and does as I say, and we begin the muster once more.

  The lambs are confused and cannot find their mothers; the field is noisy with loss. I cannot hear myself think. Slowly, painfully, we move them on, edging towards the gate. We must run back and forth and keep them moving. If only I had a dog.

  I bought Da a trained sheepdog a year ago. It cost me a thousand euro and two weeks of hard labor in Canada, but the dog was not worked and grew bored and bold. Da tied him up and that brought on a sort of madness, and in the end the dog ran away. I cannot blame him.

  “Come out to the fucking field now and put down that bag!” I yell to Da.

  He does not respond and I continue my drive.

  “Come out!” I do not know if he can hear me over the rain.

  Finally, at the last field, he walks out. Javine is frustrated and has given up and gone back inside. I am alone and march the lambs on. I do not speak, for I am so tired and wet.

  “Mind the break,” I shout to Da, gesturing for him to stand by the ditch lest the sheep should turn. If one sheep breaks, they will all move and perhaps escape and everything will have been for naught.

  He holds, as do the sheep, and slowly we march them to the gap and out across the bridge to the shed. There is much crying and shouting from the ewes as they begin to sort through the young and find their own. The animals are in; it has taken an hour.

  I say nothing to Da about not coming out to us sooner. There is no point. The animals are inside—that is all that matters. There would have been a loss tonight, that’s all I know. The rain and cold would have claimed another.

  “I’ll walk the boundary and make sure we have them all,” he says, and sets off back into the sleety mists.

  I unfurl a bale of hay and fill the plastic container with water. This year has been terrible. The worst I have ever seen. I believe, as do all farmers now, that climate change is real. There has been but one day of frost in the whole winter. The world has changed and we are running to catch up. We, the keepers of the land, can no longer keep it safe. One day the river that runs by the house will overflow and take life with it. We have dredged it to prevent that happening, but we cannot dredge for floods such as these.

  The farmers in the west are still underwater. They will have to slaughter some of their animals, for there will not be feed enough for them. Athlone, a town south of us, is inundated. The Shannon, the longest river in the British Isles, is out of control and has been reinforced with sandbags. The county council is knowingly flooding some areas to prevent the collapse of urban centers. It is a national emergency. We are lucky here, if this is what luck looks like. We shall not drown, and for that we must be thankful.

  The crop of lambs are delicate and frail, not thriving as they should. Perhaps we lambed too soon. We have enough silage to last for another two months. Things will be better by then. It cannot rain forever.

  I dry my face with a towel and clean my glasses. I cannot see Da, but I know he is out there searching the ditches. I will go out to him, for it is a horrid task. As I walk out, I see him stooped low over the lane. He gained so much from his life of building, but I can suddenly see by his slow gait how much it took in return.

  “Anything left out there?”

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “Fuck them fields. There’s no cover out there. We’ll have to plant some more trees out there. They need shelter.”

  “You’d need a fucking roof over the whole thing.”

  “You would.”

  I have lost my anger at him. I cannot understand his ways sometimes, but the lambs are safe. I turn that hate towards the weather, something that we can both agree on.

  It has been raining for three days straight. We do not think it possible for much more to fall, and yet still it comes.

  Granny

  Granny is my godmother. Her name is Mary. She’s ninety and the head of the Connell family. I call to see her at least once a week. She is funny and intelligent and we talk for hours on each visit: she tells me of her news and of her hens, and we discuss the farm and my writing.

  Granny is Da’s mother. She says he is very like Granddad, her husband. I never knew Granddad, for he died a few days before I was born. He was called John, which is how I gained my name. Grandda was born in 1890, which means his father was born shortly after the Great Famine of 1845–52. No stories have been passed down from that time, perhaps because the pain of the genocide was so pronounced. Some 100,000 people lived in County Longford then; there are only 30,000 now.

  I suppose it was no wonder Grandda fought in the Irish War of Independence in the early years of the last century, for the want of freedom, of control, must have been so vivid, so needful then. We had been failed by the old master, and it was time to stand up for ourselves.

  There are stories of Grandda from those wartime years: rumors of his capture and escape from British custody, the assassination of an informer, his work as an intelligence man. He has always loomed as a hero in my mind. A hero of freedom.

  As Granny says, it was a different time; things were done that would not be done now. Granny is the last woman in Ireland to receive an IRA war widow’s pension. She has not made this known to people, for this is her business and she is a private woman. She does not speak about the Civil War, which turned brother against brother in the wake of our partial independence from Britain, though I know our family were opposed to the treaty and wanted all of Ireland united. I know too that things occurred then that have caused rifts that still exist in the community. These things are not easily forgotten.

  Granny lives with Uncle Davy and his family. They have a busy house, as my uncle runs an undertaking and wedding business. Davy built a funeral parlor a few months ago. He tells me it is the way of the future—that wakes and removals, which have been a part of the fabric of rural Ireland for so many centuries, perhaps since before the time of Christianity, are a thing of the past. People no longer want to have the body of their loved one in the house for three days. We will do things the American way in the future, he says. I find this odd, for it is our rituals of death that have helped us mourn those who have passed. The three days give us, the living, a chance to grieve. Mam
has said that when she dies, she will be laid out in the house and return to earth as a swan on the Camlin River. It is an understanding from the old times, from when we were Celts, before the coming of Christ; we believed our souls, upon dying, moved to the next living thing, be it animal or human. When my time comes, I too shall go in the old way. To live in the countryside is to accept death as normal; it is not removed or hidden from us, but a part of life, and for that I am thankful.

  When I go up to see Granny today, I check on Davy’s sheep and see how they are faring. They have had a lamb born in the night, and Ellen, my aunt, is out feeding her.

  “The weather’s still bad,” she says.

  “It is that. How’s the little one?” I ask.

  “Good now, nearly sucking on her own.”

  “That’s great. She’s a fine lamb. How are the birds faring?”

  “One has a bad hip. The vet says she might pull through. It’s hard to know.”

  Davy and his son Jack have collected an assortment of animals over the last year, the most recent being a pair of rheas, which are large, flightless South American birds. Granny calls them the ostriches. Ellen calls them a nuisance.

  Between the rheas and the two llamas, Davy’s farm is closer to that of Doctor Dolittle. Still, it is a change from the cows and brings a smile to our faces. Granny talks to all the creatures and they know her by sight and wait as she brings them each a special treat: lettuce for the rheas, and carrots for the llamas. They know, I think, that she is old, and are never boisterous or gruff when she appears. They know they must behave.

  Granny has the kettle boiling when I walk inside and orders me to make a decent mug of tea for myself while she prepares some toasted brown bread and banana.