by Oliver Balch
It’s Week Two in the Young Farmers’ Club calendar and everyone is still finding their feet. Twenty-six youngsters are signed up this year, a record number for the small Llanigon branch. Most are between ten and fourteen years old and a good number of them are new recruits. When they’re not out visiting a farm, club night is usually held at Llanigon’s red-brick village hall, where parents dutifully drop their charges off at seven-thirty and return to pick them up at nine.
A co-ordinating team of about five or six Young Farmer veterans is charged with keeping order, all of whom are in their late teens or early twenties. Lauren, a blonde hairdressing assistant from Glasbury, is this year’s club secretary. Although responsibilities are supposed to be shared out evenly, the burden of managing the children seems to fall mostly on her shoulders. She wisely carries a whistle.
‘… twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six,’ Lauren counts.
Happy no one has sloped off, she turns her mind to the hubbub of whispers and giggles that has steadily grown during Woko’s presentation. ‘Now, everyone, listen up, please,’ Lauren says firmly, before reminding those who brought writing pads with them to take notes.
‘What should we be taking notes about?’ a smart aleck at the back wants to know.
‘Whatever you think is interesting,’ replies Lauren, who has a teacher’s ear for truculence.
The older cohort knows there’s no test in the offing, so they don’t bother with notes. Instead, the boys jostle and lark about, their hands thrust deep into the pockets of their branded body warmers. The girls, in contrast, pair up and feign oblivion to the antics of their male peers.
The younger contingent is greener and thus more pliant. They square their shoulders and furrow their brows, although full concentration appears to be beyond their gift. There is too much else new to look at, too many novelties to assimilate. The draughty barn, the sickly sweetness of fresh manure, the bleating lambs in the pen, the cold in their fingers, the prospect of a test at the end. It’s not long before they are fidgeting too.
Woko persists nonetheless. He’s nearly done anyway. After sharing some summary tips about judging squareness of ribs and straightness of leg, he’s ready to wrap up.
‘You want shoulder there,’ he says, prodding the cow’s upper flank with a finger. ‘You want width of top line, then you’ve got your ribs, and finally your loin, hind leg down to the second muscle. And that there’s your main parts on a beef animal.’
Two girls at the front scribble something down in their notebooks. The remainder stare dully.
Lauren steps forward. ‘Thank you very much, Woko. Now, has anyone got any questions?’
Her high-pitched voice echoes off the barn’s galvanised roof. The question elicits nothing but the scuffing of shoes on the cement floor.
‘Oh, one last thing,’ Woko says, recalling a potentially confusing point from Week One. ‘Now, you don’t want no big bellies on these beef animals. When you had them dairy cows last week, we was on about the deep barrels. Well, you don’t want that on beef cattle. You want a good tucked-up animal, carrying no waste then. So you’re killing out percentage, like.’
For a fraction of a second, the heifer stops her waddling jig and stands stock still, not even a swish of her tail.
‘What’s a barrel, again?’ asks a girl at the front with a bob and thick-framed glasses.
‘It’s the ribcage, there, you see,’ Woko explains, his enthusiasm for his subject unrelenting. ‘Behind the joints of her legs, like.’
He straightens up and takes a step towards the group. ‘There, so you’re all happy now,’ he states. ‘You know what main points you’re looking for, don’t you.’
Both questions are presented as points of fact. It’s a binary form of instruction: information given, assent received. It’s the law of the farm, orders before understanding, cognisance before sentience, compliance before questions, two legs before four. Sheep and cattle understand it. If only the human yearlings did too.
Woko steps towards those in the front row of the crowd. He smiles encouragingly. ‘Maybe some of you would like to take a feel? Come on up, now. Step up. A couple at a time maybe?’
No one is brave enough to volunteer, everyone shyly looking at their shoes.
Lauren repeats Woko’s invitation in gentler tones. ‘Come on, who wants to have a go?’ When no response comes, she deftly changes tack and targets the teenage boys’ sense of self-esteem. ‘There’s no need to be scared now. It’s only a cow.’
The heifer moos and four lads put their hands up. ‘Well, then,’ Lauren says. ‘Don’t hang around.’ They saunter forward, hands still glued to the seam of their pockets. The girls laugh teasingly behind cupped hands.
Woko tells the first of the volunteers to feel under the ribs. The boy is wearing white pumps and expensive skinny jeans. He steps forward, confident and cocksure.
‘You can feel the meat on its ribs, see,’ says Woko.
Gingerly, the boy reaches out a hand. His cockiness is swiftly disappearing, but his image is at stake so he persists, inch by slow inch, until finally human skin and cowhide touch. Woko nods.
‘Good, now for the back end.’
That’s enough grandstanding for the boy, though. He looks at the animal’s hind legs and her stamping hoofs, and retreats towards the comfort of his friends. His lips purse in a sulky pout as though angry with Woko or the cow for having played a trick on him.
Woko points to one of the other boys in the gaggle. ‘How about you?’
The replacement student, a square-set boy of about thirteen, steps forward. More confident and with less of a smirk than the first volunteer, he approaches the heifer in a way that suggests familiarity with livestock. He first touches her underbelly and then, at his tutor’s instruction, moves his hand upward over her flanks.
The animal looks vast beside him, a tower block of a creature. Woko holds her steady as the boy steps onto the tips of his toes and runs a hand along her backbone.
‘Feel that? Wide and flat, it is.’ The boy agrees. ‘You want a top like a table, see.’ Woko projects his voice loudly to indicate that the observation is for the whole group.
Edging around the heifer’s oblong mass, instructor and student step towards the cow’s rear. Woko positions himself directly in line with her bell-rope tail, his feet set half a yard apart, his knees ever so slightly bent.
He looks set to leap, and for a wild moment I imagine him springing up onto the heifer’s pommel-horse back and spinning around, legs and arms all akimbo. He doesn’t, of course. Instead, Woko continues doggedly with his instruction. The boy stands at his side with a shepherd dog’s attentiveness. ‘Look from behind, see how wide she is,’ the experienced YFC hand says. Width is all-important for Woko. Width means meat, and meat means money.
He moves on to the muscular curvature of the cow’s hindquarters, which he compares to the muscled legs of a hundred-metre runner. ‘The more muscle, the better.’ He doesn’t explain why, but the same two note-takers as before scribble down the adage regardless. A few others are now following their lead, concerned perhaps that a test might be coming after all.
‘Now, have you ever heard of a rib-eye steak?’
For once, a large number of hands go up. Woko doesn’t smile much, but a flicker of pleasure crosses his lips at the positive response. ‘Good, well, next time you see rump steak in the butcher’s, you’ll know where it comes from.’
So they’re absolutely sure, he points a second time to the rounded upper section of the cow’s hind. ‘Look, see, no waste at all. Firm rump is what you got: here, no waste.’
A ginger-haired boy standing next to me pulls a biro from his pocket and writes a brief phrase in his booklet. He gives a conspiratorial nudge to the boy standing next to him. The two descend into muffled laughter, prompting me to peer over the shoulder of the redhead.
The incriminating page lies open. ‘RUMP = ARSE!’ it reads. He sees me looking and closes it quickly. The two stand stock sti
ll and stare straight ahead, their faces reddening as they try to gulp down their giggles.
In front of us, the heifer’s tractor-like body suddenly stops shuddering and, with almost a comic’s timing, she picks up the scraggly braid tip of her tail, gives it a swish this way and that, and then releases the most splendid jet of steaming gravy-coloured excrement.
Sailing through the air in a majestic rainbow arc, the hosepipe stream of runny undigested goop carries a good few feet before eventually petering out and plummeting downward, where it splatters on the floor in a magenta pool of oily slurry. And all done so nonchalantly, with such infinite finesse.
The class stand transfixed, their laughter stuck in their throats. They have all seen cowpats before, these discus-shaped fly feasts with their squelchy innards and their deceptively encrusted lids. Yet their genesis, their bringing into being, their original manufacture: this is something altogether new. All that grazing, all that chewing, all that grinding, and then to suddenly splurge forth in such a gush. We are all slightly awed.
The heifer at last looks fully content. For a while, she remains still, her dancing done. The children’s full attention is hers. She can taste their respect. She can sense their admiration. The farmer leads her away, grumbling quietly. ‘Come on, now, yer silly thing.’
Walking tall, she leaves the stage, a dainty tail-flick her curtain-call goodbye.
*
Touch rugby is on the agenda tonight. Spring is at last upon us and its gift of lighter evenings allows the children an escape from their winter’s internment in the village hall. Lauren is bravely occupying the position of referee. A pile of jumpers defines the corner flags and two teams of seven youngsters are charging up and down the grass playing field, although not always in the vicinity of the ball. A third team stands on the sideline, waiting its turn. They make a fickle crowd, shouting support for their friends one minute and then heckling them the next. Tries are infrequent.
Rhys and Chris, two of the nominal organisers, are practising drop-kicks at the side of the pitch. Irritated that she’s being left in charge as usual, Lauren suggests they might ‘actually like to join in’. The two young men, both local farmhands, leave their ball-kicking and reluctantly enter the game.
The pair soon set aside their hesitancy and throw themselves into the play. With one on either team, the tempo lifts. Ball in hand, Rhys speeds along the touchline, shouting over his shoulder for his teammates to ‘keep up, keep up’.
Next, Chris has control of the ball and is making great show of whether he should chip or make a pass. In the end, he does neither, dummying his marker and sliding through a tag-tackle before eventually laying the ball off to a tough-looking kid who is racing along beside him.
For the best part of ten minutes the girls and boys are running and panting and shouting, until Lauren finally blows her whistle and calls full time. Two tries to two, it’s a diplomatic result.
‘Good effort, everyone,’ Lauren shouts from the centre spot. ‘Right, Billy’s team, take a break.’ Billy, a lanky boy of about eleven, leads his fellow players off the field.
‘Jill’s team,’ Lauren says loudly, signalling to the waiting side. ‘You’re up against Bronwyn’s team.’ The seven fresh replacements rush enthusiastically onto the pitch to shrieks of ‘champ-yyy-ons’ and ‘no-oo prisoners’ and other bellicose battle-cries.
‘So you know what the rules are,’ says Lauren. ‘Try by the posts. Six touches and it’s a turnover ball.’
Lauren is a member of the women’s team down at Gwernyfed Rugby Club, so she knows the drill. ‘And no kicking the ball, please,’ she confirms, to which a boy on Bronwyn’s team says it’s unfair and that they should be allowed to kick after the fifth touch. Lauren consents. ‘All right, kicking after the fifth tackle is okay. But not before. All of you got it? Okay, let’s play.’
She blows the starting whistle.
Just as the match gets under way, Woko walks out of the shadows from the car park. I’m standing by myself on a raised bank just back from the touchline. We catch one another’s eye and he wanders over. He’s been busy lambing and I’ve had work commitments, so it’s the first Monday night that I’ve seen him for a month or so.
‘You all right, then?’ he says.
‘Hey, Woko,’ I say, trying to sound cheerful. ‘All good, thanks, yeah. Lucky with the weather, eh?’
It’s an inane start, but I’m never quite sure what to talk to Woko about. I have learned a little about farming under Tony’s tutelage and from general conversation at the Rhydspence, yet my grasp remains pretty rudimentary. I take some solace from the fact that Kilvert, who was always happier chatting with farmers’ wives in their kitchens rather than with their husbands in the fields, appears to have little hands-on knowledge of agriculture either.
I sense Woko encounters a similar difficulty with me. As an incomer, I am a blank sheet: no background, no history, nothing for him to latch on to – a phantom, in effect. As a consequence, although he’s always civil, we’ve never talked much.
‘And you?’ I ask. ‘Done with lambing?’
‘Yup, all finished up.’
‘Go well?’
‘Yeah, not bad. Well as to be expected, s’pose.’
‘Still keeping busy though?’ He doesn’t reply. ‘Must always be busy on a farm, I guess,’ I say to fill the void.
‘Yup, plenty to do all right.’
We stand in silence, both watching the chaotic game unfold on the pitch.
‘One touch,’ Lauren calls out. ‘Two touches … no, Dylan, no pushing. Let him get up. Huw, on your feet now.’
As Lauren tries to bring some order to the match, Billy’s team is growing bored on the touchline. Two boys are practising kicking, only they lack the skill of the older organisers and one of the two miskicks badly, the ball slicing off the side of his boot and rolling up the bank towards us. Woko scoops it up and expertly spin-passes it back to them.
‘Play a bit of rugby then, do you?’ I say.
It’s an off-the-cuff observation rather than a pointed question, but Woko replies with uncommon enthusiasm.
‘Sure, I played a bit in my time,’ he replies. ‘Used to play flanker, down at Gwernyfed. Played over at Builth a bit as well, me and my mates. There was a bunch of us. Several of them are playing for the seniors, whatever, down there, like, you know.’
I don’t know, but he waves a hand vaguely off to the right, over the humped outlines of the Radnorshire hills, which, as Chatwin describes them, recede ‘grey on grey towards the end of the world’. Or, in this case, as far as Builth Wells.
I ask when he stopped playing, keen to keep the conversation going now Woko was on something of a roll. ‘’Bout five years ago, s’pose,’ he replies. ‘Maybe a bit longer.’ He’d have been around twenty, he calculates.
Was he working on the farm then? He laughs ironically. ‘Started working as soon as I left school at sixteen,’ he tells me. ‘I went to college, like. Got my certificates and all.’ He complains how you need ‘tickets’ for everything nowadays. ‘For your health and safety and what not, like.’
Woko has always had odd jobs in addition to farming. One of his neighbours has a small building firm, so he often helps him out as a day-labourer. For now, he needs the extra cash. His father is still working and the farm, which is mixed beef and sheep, isn’t large enough to provide two full incomes. Woko is hoping that, as his old man approaches retirement, he’ll begin to take a more active role, make a few more decisions around the place. ‘Stepping up’ is how he describes it.
Johnny, the current Llanigon Young Farmers chairman, finds himself in a similar situation. Gangly, good-humoured and just turned twenty, he has been working the family farm since his mid-teens as well. Part of him would love to have gone into acting or music, he confided to me once, before quickly dismissing the idea as a ‘pipe dream’. Where would he start? He’s never even met a jobbing actor or musician. Farming, in contrast, is there on his doorstep. The natura
l default.
Most of Johnny’s school friends came from farming backgrounds. ‘Joskins’, the other children would label them. None of them studied much, content for the most part just to achieve the minimum GCSEs for agricultural college. A-levels or university were never really on Johnny’s radar.
Opportunities to travel proved slim too. Because farm work rarely lets up and extra hands are expensive, Johnny’s family was not in the habit of taking holidays, not even a bucket-and-spade mini-break to Tenby. He’s only been abroad once in his life, he tells me a little sheepishly. That was to France, for four days with some mates. They took the boat. I ask if he’s ever been on an aeroplane. He shakes his head.
One Monday night, while the younger members were occupied preparing pumpkins for Halloween, I fall into conversation with Chris and Rhys, who are killing time in a side room in the village hall. Both grew up locally, they tell me. As with Johnny, Rhys went to agricultural college straight after school, while Chris did a brief apprenticeship in carpentry, which he didn’t like much so he took a job on a dairy farm instead.
The conversation turns to travel and Chris tells me about his various package holidays to Europe with his parents. He went on his first big trip by himself last November, to watch Formula 1 in Dubai. ‘Eating out is dead cheap,’ he enthused. ‘It’s all two for one out there.’
Rhys hasn’t taken too many holidays, but he has done a few stints labouring in Norway, at a slaughterhouse that his uncle manages. His best mate spends six months in New Zealand every year as part of a shearing gang. Johnny and his peers, they don’t backpack.
I ask if they have been to London, to which Chris says he has, once, and Rhys replies that he hasn’t but that he fully intends to soon. ‘Everyone is, like, “I’ve been to London, been to London.” And me, I’ve hardly left the ruddy village.’