The Farmer's Son

by John Connell

  “But you surely don’t want to spend your time there, not after everything that was said. You’d be much better in a city.”

  “Maybe . . . But now that I’m back, I realize that this is what I know. It’s what I’ve always known.”

  We ran for a time in silence. We turned a corner and jogged by the seashore. To our left, a cow and calf nibbled sweet grass and I smiled. They looked peaceful and at ease.

  We ran on into the sunset, tired and happy, the sound of our running shoes clapping on the country road. That night we ate by the Cliffs of Moher and fell asleep to the sounds of the Atlantic Ocean crashing outside.

  The King

  On our trip, Duncan and I have seen several small islands on the horizon. Some are still inhabited and I tell him so. They have brought back memories of the king who came to Soran.

  There is a small island called Tory, off the coast of Donegal, and when I was a boy, its king launched a mission to find a mate for a cow on his island. She was the last of her kind, a near-extinct breed of Shorthorn, and with her death would go the end of an ancient bloodline.

  After searching for six months, the nearest genetic match for the cow was found to be a young Shorthorn bull called Felix. He was owned by Tommy and Jack Brady, the bachelor brothers known as the Wild Men of Soran. They lived on the brow of Soran Hill, they were farmers and shopkeepers, they were our friends.

  When they agreed to sell Felix, the islanders banded together to purchase him. It was the talk of the county, for the television cameras and newspapermen had come from Dublin to record the event. The Tory people saw the reestablishment of the cow line as imperative to their livelihoods and tourism trade, and it would provide fresh milk for them and allow them to export safe, BSE-free beef.

  The islanders treated it as a marriage and presented Felix the bull with a laurel halter woven with wildflowers. Tommy Brady said Felix was going home, for the bull’s grandfather had been a Northerner, the Letterkenny Eagle.

  The bull and cow lived happily for a time and the Wild Men gained a new fame in the area as breeders of great bulls.

  Duncan laughs at the story. I am glad to have its telling.

  May–June

  ❦

  Writer and a Farmer

  We finished the trip with a mighty run through a forest. Duncan was faster than me and tore off into the distance. Now that I was alone again and our time together was coming to an end, I knew I had to make a decision. He would go to London, but where, where should I go?

  Despite my talk of the cows on our run, I cannot go home.

  When Duncan left Ireland, I did too, and traveled to Spain to meet Tim, my musician friend.

  In my self-imposed exile, I began to write again. I had been all year waiting to do this, but when I finally sat down, it was not the western, nor the literary novel I had planned, but something which has been within me all my life. I wrote about our cows, from the little Black to the Red, from the Master to the new bull. And I wrote about Da and Mam, from whom so many of my stories have come.

  It was strange to write this, to delve into my memory and look at what has happened. In a way, it allowed me to make sense of things.

  Father Seán once told me that fiction is a truth that never happened, and truth is a fiction that did. I have long pondered that statement. Now I think that somewhere in the middle, narrative is born, and with it, meaning. As I wrote, I began to see that life is just a series of events, and that it is we who shape it, to explain it to ourselves. The calves had become so much more to me than mere animals; they were part of the cast in this battle of wills, in the age-old story of fathers and sons. I have reflected on that day in the rain and Da’s hurtful words, and wondered if he spoke not just to me but to himself, for maybe he wished he had made different choices too. Or maybe he wanted me to feel free to walk away from the farm, to do something different with my life. Is that not what he worked so hard for all those years on the building sites, all those late nights, that back-breaking labor? To give me—to give us—a chance at a different way of being. To become a man of learning and have the opportunities life did not give him. I know in the long ago he once wanted to be a teacher, but, forced to earn his keep, he had to take to the world of work and not that of college. Now I think his words were driven less by anger than by love. He gave me everything he did not have. I pondered all this as I went for my walks in the morning sun of Spain.

  Mam and I have spoken on the phone, but she has not mentioned Da or the fight. She tells me the last of the cows has calved and delivered a nice bull.

  The Spaniards and Italians I am with don’t know anyone who has delivered a lamb or calf, and ask me how it feels.

  “The mother was giving birth—I was there to help, there is nothing to feel, there is no time, instinct kicks in,” I answer.

  As when Duncan and I talked, I realize that these facts, this knowledge, now feel as familiar to me as the words of any book.

  I am not a typical farmer’s son. I left the land so young, but I think if that leave-taking had not occurred, I should never have come to see it for what it is: my culture and my birthright.

  I look at the animals as so much more than mere beasts. They are creatures of history, holders of the past—our past—and I see in their genes and bodies whole races, not just of cattle but of their owners, the farming families, and in them stories upon stories.

  I do not need to be a writer or a farmer. I can be both. I am both.

  Future

  In much of Europe and the United States, the break with farm and butcher is nearly complete. As consumers, we buy most of our meat from supermarkets, packed and sealed. At times it has been dyed with red coloring to make it more appealing to the eye, and at others it has been injected with water by meat packers to add extra weight to increase profits. Many children do not know that beef comes from a cow, and few have seen farms, except on television or in a bedtime story. Most people have never seen a slaughterhouse or a cattle carcass.

  We have become alienated from the living source of our food, so it is perhaps inevitable that the next step is to cut out the cow altogether.

  In 2016, the Boyalife Group opened a facility in China to produce cloned cow meat. They have already cloned a Tibetan mastiff dog. They say they will not stop at cows and dogs, but will clone cats, racehorses and even people if the need arises.

  They say this technological solution is needed to meet the increasing demand for beef and other meat products in the Chinese market. This development brings with it a host of new ethical questions. Does a cloned animal have a soul? Are we subverting nature by growing meat? Are we prepared to assign the farmer to the growing pile of victims of obsolescence? Are we prepared to end the ten-thousand-year story of man and cow?

  And yet, even as some manufacturers are taking these radical steps towards an artificial future, other farmers are following an alternative path. The organic and grass-fed movement has allowed a small group of growers and farmers to survive corporations, conglomerates and cloners. Organic or grass-fed beef may be more expensive for the consumer, but the beast has had a better life, one free of a lifetime of housing, confinement and stress. We raise cattle to die, but they live a life of peace and nature. Our way of farming here in Ireland, our family’s way of farming at Birchview, may be seen as a backward step, but it is a way in which the animal can live with dignity, and one in which the farmer has retaken the old and respectful role of custodian of the land and the environment for the next generation.

  There may well come a day when cloned meat is available in the supermarkets of London and the delis of New York, where steaks are grown in labs and test tubes from stem cells, but we have a choice over whether we want this future. Whether we want a cowless world.

  Return

  A month passes and my time in the sun ends. I must find the next step in my journey. It is a short plane ride back to Ireland. I have been away four weeks, but it has been long enough to forget, or rather to put aside, hurt and
hate. I take the bus home from the airport.

  The weather is beautiful and the country is a riot of green; there is life everywhere. With all the animals out in the fields, the yard is silent now, and only Vinny remains to keep watch on the empty sheds. He has grown in my few weeks away and is happy to see me.

  That evening, I go for a run through the parish. The northern summer has arrived and the sunlight is long and lasting, and I am glad. I wave to neighbors and friends. When I pass Doherty’s house in Esker and see the meadow grass growing in the distant fields, I turn left and begin my ascent of the France road and pass Ruske’s and Kilnacarrow. The cows, our cows, are in the fields, eating and singing to one another. By Reilly’s hills, where they hanged the 1798 rebels, I turn and pass the Charterses’ land. I think of young Willie and his all-too-short life. I carry his memory with me up the road to Gurteen Lake and past its glassy waters. At the village, I take off my T-shirt, for the evening is hot and I run bare-chested now. I bless myself at the graveyard, saluting all the dead: Uncle Mick, Granddad, the Wild Men of Soran, Robin Redbreast. I speed up and move down the hill and wave to the shopkeeper as I pass. She is closing up for the evening and smiles to see me half naked. The statue of Seán Mac Eoin glitters in the fading light and I turn by our war hero and take the road for home. I cross the bridge of Ballinalee, where it is said a ghost lurks, and peer into the Camlin River, where we built our rafts and spent our summers. I am near the close now and move into our townland of Soran; my breath is heavy and my legs are tired, for I have traveled far today. The sweat runs down my back and face and drips into my eyes and I push on and on. By Granny’s, I smile and speed up, for I am in the land of the Connells, in the galaxy of my home and the universe of my people. I take the right and sprint up our lane. All the way to Birchview farm.

  It was eight o’clock when the knock came at my bedroom door.

  “I’m going to the bog,” Da says. “Would you like to come?”

  They are the first words we have spoken in over a month, and I know this is his olive branch. There is a part of me that seeks to refuse, to break wholly from him. I pause and breathe.

  “OK, I’ll come,” I say.

  The cutting of turf is an ancient thing. The peat is fossilized plant debris, the remnants of ancient forests that once covered the whole island. The turf is cut from the bog and left to dry in the sun. Then it is burned in the winter for heat. This work is older than the nation, older than any of us know. The Celts made sacrifices to the bogs, to the gods, and bodies have been found preserved like leather in the peat: men and women of ancient days, their faces contrite, almost prayerful, mummified in the black, gloopy mass.

  We cut the turf and load it into the trailer. It is black and cool in my hands. He begins slowly to talk to me, telling me his news; he asks of my writing and how was Spain. I tell him there were no cattle but lots of sheep. We talk of football and rugby, of Rory and Uncle Davy. I ask after the new bull and the lambs. We talk now as if we have not spoken in a long time. It has been a long time.

  It is as close as he may come to “I am sorry,” as close as we come to “I love you.” We wipe our brows and curse the heat, but jokingly so, for we are glad of the sun, of the change of season. High above, the birds sing and a murmuration of starlings passes, cresting and falling as a giant black sky shoal. The patterns of nature do not change, but we can.

  “The summer is here,” he says.

  “Thanks be to God,” I reply.

  It is the end of the calving season. We have all our stock, we have each other. It is all we need. It is all we want.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the help and support of my family. Thank you to my father and mother, who sacrificed so much to give me a good start in life, to my siblings and relations. A special thanks to my grandmother Mary, who, though she lives in these pages, has now departed this life. I hope she would have enjoyed this work. A dear thank-you to Father Seán, Liam and the Heslin family, and all those who have walked beside me on the road to becoming a writer, including Vanessa from www.writing.ie, Seumas Phelan, Hillary White, Ross Laurence, Jamie and Tim Jones, and Elliot James Shaw. A very special thanks to Simon Trewin, my agent, to Laura Barber at Granta for her willingness to take a chance and for her wonderful editing and friendship, and to Sigrid Rausing for taking a go on my short stories. To Helen Atsma, a farmer’s daughter who took a go on a farmer who wanted to be a writer and made a lifelong dream come true. With thanks to my dear friend Stephen Rea, the wonderful Jimmi James, and the people of Longford. To Duncan, dear old boy Ramesh and funny Tar, thank you all for everything, and last but not least, Vivian Huynh, the best lady and love I know.

  ❀

  Researching the history of cows was no easy task, as there is no standard book that I could find. Many different documentaries, articles and films helped, but “Cowed: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America’s Health, Economy, Politics, Culture and Environment,” by Denis Hayes and Gail Boyer Hayes, provided a great launch pad and helpful insights, especially into modern cattle farming in the United States.

  The films of Ken Burns, in particular the series The West, first broadcast on PBS, provided insights into the early settler days in the American West and the famous cattle trails of the nineteenth century. The National Geographic documentary Hitler’s Jurassic Monsters gave me more clarity on the rebreeding programs of Lutz Heck.

  And, of course, reading the works of Henry David Thoreau has been a defining moment in my reading life.

  About the Author

  John Connell’s work has been published in Granta’s New Irish Writing issue. He is an award winning investigative journalist and film producer. His memoir, The Farmer’s Son, was a number 1 bestseller in Ireland. He lives on his family farm, Birchview, in County Longford, Ireland.

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  Follow us for book news, reviews, author updates, exclusive content, giveaways, and more.