by John Connell
My sticks gathered, I call for Vinny and we make our way back down the hill. There are lots of saplings left for many years to come.
When I get home, I plane and sand the sticks. I am slow and careful, for I do not want any burrs or sharp edges that would cut our hands or hurt the cows unnecessarily. I stack them and leave them to dry out for a few weeks in the shed. We shall use them in the spring. I let Da know that the sticks will be ready.
“We were running low,” he says.
Gadarene Swine
I no longer eat pork—I have abstained from the flesh of this animal for nearly a year now.
The breeding of pigs for meat is one area in which farming has broken fully with nature. I toured a piggery a few years back.
From birth, the pig knows only the piggery. Born in a litter of ten or more, the piglets will suckle for several weeks while their mother lies on her side, caged in a farrowing crate. This is done to prevent the sow from eating her young, which can sometimes happen. The piglets are then removed and taken to a separate weaning room. There they join all the other litters to be fed through feeders. The pigs can eat as much as they like; they simply push a small button with their snout and a watery feed mixture emerges. It is kept very hot in these rooms to promote fast growth.
The farmer must be careful to prevent bacterial infections, for in these sterilized environments bacteria will spread rapidly. Deaths are common at this stage.
Walking through the piggery that morning, I saw workers pull the dead bodies out of the rooms, slinging them to the floor.
The floor in the piggery is slatted; there are huge tanks underneath which collect the watery shit, and this is sold as fertilizer to farmers. Its smell is second only to that of human waste, for the pig is an omnivore too.
The piglets who survive are brought to a new house, where the best females will be selected as breeders; they are the lucky ones and shall get to live. The males are taken to their own section, and there will be fattened.
The pigs here tend to be bored, and a bored pig will sometimes bite the tail off his fellow. In the past, the animals’ tails were simply docked, but now, due to changes in EU law, many farmers provide straw and devices to reduce animal stress. In cases where tail biting still occurs, farmers are allowed to dock tails. The practice, however, is still widespread in other countries, including the United States.
Both boars and sows will be fed until they reach the right fat-to-meat ratio. The weights are set by the slaughterhouses: the carcass should kill out at around eighty-five kilos. If the pigs are over their weight, some factories will charge a penalty, so the farmers keep a close watch on the weight of their beasts.
In Ireland, male pigs are killed before sexual maturity, for this prevents boar taint. Boar taint is a bad odor that emerges from the meat when cooked, caused by increased amounts of testosterone in the beast’s body. Pre-maturity boars make for the best and softest meat. As a result, Irish sausages are known across Europe for their flavor and unique taste.
In Ireland, the pig industry is controlled by just a few farmers. Many of these farmers have built empires on the backs of the swine and run many such factory farms. It may seem a cruel industry, but it provides employment in local areas, and from these small factories the nation is fed. Despite it all, pig farmers do care for their animals. I think, however, few people know where their pork comes from. Fewer still know how the animals might have spent their lives there.
It is the way of modern intensive farming to remove nature from the process as far as possible. There are around one and a half million pigs in Ireland, and few of them will ever set foot on grass or know the feel of muck upon their snouts.
I decided to stop eating pork for both spiritual and humane reasons. I miss it, though, I will not lie; I miss rashers, I miss black pudding. But the pig is one of the smartest animals in the world, and knowing how they are forced to live in order to produce these items has put me off pork for good. Not eating pork is a small sacrifice. Maybe my Jewish and Muslim brothers are right.
Risk
The ewes and lambs we rehoused a few weeks ago because of the bad weather have contracted orf. This viral infection is highly contagious and spreads quickly from lamb to lamb. It causes sores and scabs to develop on the animal’s mouth and face, and those lambs badly affected can find it hard to suckle their mothers due to the pain of the sores. In the worst cases, they cannot suckle at all, and starve to death.
There is a vaccination for the infection, but it is too late now to have an effect. The disease will pass of its own accord in a few weeks and the affected animals shall have a lifelong immunity to it. But knowing the course that the disease will run does not stop farmers from worrying, and a healthy faith-healing business has emerged. There is a woman with a cure for orf, and, driven as we are to try any way to treat the condition, we call her. She asks only that we hold the phone up so that she can hear the animals over the line. She will then say a special prayer and the orf will clear. Gormley the vet does not hold with such beliefs.
Uncle Davy’s sheep have come down with orf too, so I suspect we have infected each other’s herds with our traveling up and down. We know it is a result of the animals being housed for so long. Though I have bedded their shed with fresh straw, there are over ninety animals in the space. They need to be outside, where it is clean and fresh and infection cannot take hold. It is but another lesson that nature is best.
Time has moved on and the days become weeks. It is supposed to be nearly spring, yet the weather is still not much better, but it is agreed we will let the animals out once more.
“They’re better out than in,” Da says as we drive them towards the upper ground.
“Aye.”
There are over a hundred sheep in the field now. It is more than we have ever had. I do not know if the ground can take so many, for they never stop eating.
“We’ll bring them up nuts and I think we could start giving the lambs pellets,” Da says.
“We could. And the silage?”
“We’ll keep up with a little bit to them,” he says.
“It’s no harm.”
We agree that we will feed them some silage each morning on our rounds. It would be better if it were hay, but we have to keep the hay for the newly calved cows. It is a rare commodity.
The lambs are happy to be released again, and though it is wet, they jump and prance as we walk them up the lane. Once everything is in place and settled, we load up the tractor with the feeders and the nut dispenser.
We shall give the mothers a full bag of nuts each morning, since there is not the goodness in the grass yet.
The lambs have different nuts, which we put into the nut dispenser, which is known as a creep feeder. This holds several bags of lamb nuts and is a type of small shed which only the lambs and not their mothers can fit into. The lambs soon learn the purpose of the feeder without my needing to show them. Despite the bad winter, they are growing well. Even after three seasons with the sheep, I am amazed by just how fast they develop and grow. The calf’s maturity is a slower thing.
Vinny has joined us on our jobs this morning and stays close by me. He is still afraid of Da, or perhaps does not know him so well. There was a time the dog would have chased the sheep, but not anymore.
At noon I begin the cleanout of the shed. I must clear the straw from it, for the orf might well be alive in the bedding and infect the next group of lambs and mothers. I muck and pull and drag the bedding onto the front loader, and after three hours the job is done. I will not need the gym today. I disinfect and lime the area thoroughly. I want to kill the badness.
Dolmen
Sometimes I go and visit the dolmen in a nearby village. The dolmen—an ancient megalithic burial tomb consisting of three standing stones and a large flat capstone perched atop—is older than the pyramids of Egypt or Stonehenge, and yet here it stands in a quiet field behind the village of Aughnacliffe. Few outsiders even know of its existence. We are a supers
titious people still and would never harm it, for these strange stone structures are said to be portals to other worlds: the land of youth, the underworld, and beyond.
Ireland has a Valley of the Kings like the one in Egypt, though it is not so famous. In the Boyne Valley, in the nearby county of Meath, our ancient high kings ruled and were buried. I have seen the valley by daylight and moonlight, and it is a thing of beauty.
My wellingtons are wet with dew and a cold breeze flows in from the brow of the surrounding hills. I breathe in the air and linger, looking through the stones’ arch, looking in the hope that there might be something else visible on the other side. As a child, my heroes of mythology were both Spider-Man and Cúchulainn. The feats of old Celtic gods and heroes intermixed with those of American comic books. I have left Spider-Man and the X-Men in childhood, in the distant past, but the works of the old world, the Celtic world, fill me still with awe.
As hard as I look though the dolmen’s portal, though, I see only the green fields on the other side, but they are a vision unto themselves, a vision of my natural inheritance, and with that thought, it is time to go. Some cattle graze upon the nearby grass, and I imagine this is a picture of life from long ago. Back then, a farmer grazed these lands as I do now, his cattle beside him, paying reverence to the old ones.
I have made it my business to bring friends and lovers here and show them this place. And I shall keep visiting the dolmen, even though I do not fully know what compels me to come.
Cycling
I got a bike at Christmas, but the weather has been so bad that I have rarely been out on it. Today the weather is somewhat better, and so this afternoon I decide to go for a ride. I take in the parish and cycle by the farms of our neighbors and friends. There are few cows or livestock out at the moment for want of grass.
A charity cycle race will take place in a few weeks in memory of a neighbor who died suddenly. He was a wonderful community man and a great champion of our local football team, and the parish has mourned him deeply. I’ve yet to decide if I will take part, but I hope I will be fit enough for the fifty-kilometer circuit. It would be nice to race with some men my own age, for I have been so busy on the farm I rarely meet young people around here anymore.
I do get time to talk to friends in other countries through my phone—friends living other lives. Tim and I talk every few days now. He too is a country boy, but a musician who is trying to make his way in this creative life. We compare the music and the writing business and find them similarly strange. His music is fun and vibrant, it has the sound of success; he dreams of playing Glastonbury as I dream of speaking to large auditoriums. We have shared many losses and triumphs at long distance. We laugh and joke and it breaks up our work and week. I have promised to visit him in Spain when the season is ended.
I am glad I have friends from elsewhere, for the countryside can be a lonely place. I think that is why the pub holds such a position of power in rural Ireland, for it is the café of our world, the meeting point for talk and the exchange of ideas. But I do not drink anymore, and so do not go. I don’t miss the drink, for it never did suit me: I said too much under its influence and pushed others away. I prefer my way of living now to the barstool chatter of before. A long run is as good as ten pints to me. I often tell this to Da, which makes him laugh.
I cycle on and begin the slow ascent of Cairn Hill. This is our local mountain, and it is said that Queen Medb’s nephew and murderer is buried atop it. It is the highest point in the midlands and has defined and shaped my life in these parts, for it has watched over all our lives and seen the changes that have taken place. When my brother was a boy, he would tell Mam and Da not of an imaginary friend but of his imaginary cattle upon its brow.
The hill is long and slow and my legs grow tired, but I do not stop. It will get easier, I tell myself. In the weeks to come I will cycle and run harder and I will get stronger.
I reach the top of the hill and stop for breath at the McCormacks’. They have the highest house in the parish and are good farmers too. A lovely white heifer moos at me from across the ditch. I smile to think what she must make of me in my Lycra tights and cycling shorts, then turn and race down the hill for home.
Signs of Life
Jonathan, our scanner, is coming to ultrasound the cows today. We have four animals to check, to see if the artificial insemination has worked. If all goes well, we will have four pregnant cows this afternoon.
Jonathan is from Cavan, the county to the north of ours. He is a nice man, and when we don’t talk of cows, we discuss fishing. Trout are his favorite catch. He is a great aficionado and competed in the world trout-fishing championship last year. The rivers here have much life in them. Da told me once that in his boyhood Granddad caught a wild salmon with a pitchfork and rope as she came up to spawn in the small river by the house. It’s been years since we have seen salmon there, but it is still rich with trout.
Da and I walk the four cows down to the crush in the lower shed and load them into the chute. They are all of them big girls, and it is a squeeze to fit them all in. With much shouting and coaxing, they agree and enter. The crush was one of the first things Da built in the yard. It is twenty or more years old and beginning to show signs of wear. We say each year that we will rip it out and replace it with a better one, but it is still here.
A good cattle crush is an important thing on a farm, for it is where certain medicines are administered, calves are born and TB testing occurs. We must test the cows for TB each year, as a requirement and condition of the Department of Agriculture. The vet must come to test them each summer, and should a cow be found to carry the strain, she will be put down, and in extreme cases a whole herd may have to be slaughtered, so seriously is the disease treated.
Gladly we have not had this happen yet. We sigh relief after each year’s tests, for to destroy this herd would finish Da and Mam; it is a culmination of years of buying and selling and breeding. There are some who say badgers carry the TB bacteria, but after years of eradication programs the badger is not dead, nor is the disease. Indeed, many now question this link with the badger, and in many places this gentle and misunderstood creature is at last being left in peace.
There are two Reds, a Simmental and a Black Whitehead, in the crush today. The bull has been with the Simmental, and the rest were covered with AI by Uncle Paul, so we shall see what has worked best. Da is keeping the bull away from all the cows now and has begun to make trips with our neighbor Rory to inspect potential new stock bulls. As long as the beast breeds well and is not temperamental, then I shall be happy.
Our very first bull is still the best we have ever had. We called him the Master; he was a Charolais from Ballinamuck, and he was big and strong and kind. The farm was expanding then and we needed a bull to cover all the cows. It was, I suppose, a milestone in the growth of the place, an earmark of success. The Master was with us for several years and we never had any trouble.
At first we kept a chain attached to his nose ring, to slow him down lest he harm us or the cows. But that first summer, in Clonfin, he had been chasing two cows in heat when his chain became tangled in a tree stump, and pull as he might, he could not dislodge it. I must have been fourteen or fifteen years old, and though he pranced and pawed the ground at the sight of me, after a time he calmed, for he knew I was there to release him. I remember it still, for he bowed his head low and stood motionless while I gently undid the chain. I did not speak and he did not low. Another animal might well have charged me then, but he did not: he simply slowly stood up and walked away, and after a time resumed his hunt for the in-heat cows.
In that moment, it seems that he and I had shared a look across the gap of species. This is something that John Berger talked of in his work About Looking. Berger’s words have shaped how I view animals; through his prose I came to appreciate a quality in their gaze, a look that we share each and every day on the farm. Indeed, his writings on animals were the first beautiful words I ever read of farmin
g and beasts. Reading them then, as a young college student eager to abandon the countryside, I saw that there was something more meaningful in nature and peasant life than I had first thought, though it would be many years before I would come to know that truth in my heart.
I knew the measure of the Master that day, and I knew the measure of my own ability with cattle, for I had been afraid as I approached him. But I could not leave him to suffer, and perhaps he knew and respected that. We have never named another breeding bull since the Master, but perhaps the new bull will earn a title. We shall see what Da brings home.
Jonathan puts on his overalls and hands me his ultrasound. It is a small device which slips inside the cow and scans her like a woman with child. The machine has a small screen, and through the grey-and-white images he can see what is life and what is not. He has never been wrong. Not in my time.
“Now, we’ll make a start, men. How far along is she, Tom?” he asks.
“I’m thinking a few weeks,” Da replies.
“You’re right, there. Six or seven weeks.”
“Great,” Da says.
They move on to the next cow.
“Now, she was with the bull,” Da explains, “but I haven’t seen her a-bulling for a long while. She’s a tricky one, though.”