Over the Farmer's Gate

by Roger Evans

  Through the window about 100 yards away is a small clump of trees I planted years ago in a wet place below our pond. There were two pairs of carrion crows there this morning kicking up a noise. I always think the word ‘alight’ is very descriptive. When you say a bird alights it creates a vision of a bird landing gently on a bough. It doesn’t describe in any way what these carrion crows are up to this morning. They are working the clump of trees methodically to flush out game and when they see the game they crash into the branches and bushes with force. Their behaviour tells me that there are some fledglings about that have just left the nest and they are hunting them down. I don’t know what species they are chasing but I see all this going on and it really annoys me.

  I’d like to put some lead shot into them but they’d be long gone before I got into range, they’d watch me from a safe distance and return to their slaughter as soon as I disappeared. By lunchtime they will have done their worst and moved on somewhere else. Some people blame farmers for the decline in songbirds, when all about me I see birds of prey and other predators wrecking havoc with bird populations.

  At this time of year our dry cows, cows that are resting between one spell of giving milk and the arrival of their next calf, are all away on our other land and it is important to check them closely every day. I need to see if they are approaching calving and that their udders are healthy. A modern dairy cow’s life is a busy one and this eight to 10 week period of rest and relaxation is an important time. We check their feet before they go away and trim them if necessary; a few weeks off concrete, recharging their batteries, works wonders. My holidays seem to do the opposite for me but then my dry cows don’t stay up too late and drink too much wine.

  Earlier this morning, I saw a hare and a pheasant sitting in the maize. I see hares and pheasants in the maize every day, so what’s different about these two? Well, they were both sitting close together. If the pheasant’s wing had been an arm it could have put it around the hare. I watched them for five minutes before I moved on and they were still there. What do you reckon was going on?

  IT’S MORE than a month now since I went around the landlord’s 6m margins with the topper. There is supposed to be a 2m strip cut into these margins on the side nearest the field.

  It was once explained to me that these were for birds to dry off after heavy rain. If that is true, then the strips will have come into their own this year.

  What particularly caught my eye was how much these margins have changed in their nature and composition in the three or four years they have been there.

  I was also told that the idea of the margins was to provide wildlife corridors around fields. When we first left them they were obviously also a valuable food source because what was left to grow was the remnants of what was there before, be it grassland or cereals.

  These would obviously go to seed and provide a good food source for birds in the winter. But the nature of these margins is changing with time.

  Most of the food sources have now disappeared and boar thistles and ragwort catch my eye. This last year, I have noted that the beginnings of trees are appearing, especially blackthorn and saplings, that look a bit like willow but obviously aren’t.

  Given a few more years, I don’t think these margins will be doing what they are supposed to. I was always told that they were RSPB-inspired, and you have to ask yourself if these people who seek to take over the countryside actually know what they are doing. In a few years’ time I will probably report that we have had to take a chainsaw to the margins so that wildlife can get through.

  TODAY I’m topping a field, cutting off grass that has given way to seed, of which there’s a fair bit, but mostly where dung pats have been deposited thus far in the grazing season.

  There are a few thistles and lots and lots of docks. I like to hear docks going through the topper so there are lots of nice noises coming from behind me.

  There are quite a few plants that I call burdocks – I’m not really sure if that’s the right name. It’s a plant that grows a sort of burr that clings to your clothes. They have a tough woody stem and go through the topper with a clunk.

  I decide that the docks have gone beyond what is acceptable and therefore decide, as I drive along, that I will spray them when they regrow.

  There’s quite a lot of white clover in this field and that will disappear with the spray, but I can put some clover back into it – it’s better to lose the docks.

  Cock pheasants are at the skulking stage of their annual cycle and when I start the process of topping there’s not one to be seen but as I progress with my work, one by one they come out of the undergrowth and when I go to the gate, job finished, I look back and count 20 cocks in the field.

  The hens I’ve disturbed can’t be seen and so far this year I’ve not seen a pheasant hen with chicks. I ponder on the subject of burdocks. There used to be a soft drink available in my childhood called dandelion and burdock – a sort of coke-coloured drink – but just which part of either plant was used to make it, I have no idea.

  LAST WEEK saw the last ever Royal Show at Stoneleigh. If someone had told me that 20 years ago I would never have believed them. In the past we always went in a car-load, going early and coming back late.

  We would rest on large stands provided by the banks, who would offer a gin and tonic without even asking if you were a client.

  There would be countless stands selling wine and farmers who looked a bit affluent would be encouraged to try a few samples.

  I can’t remember being asked to try some, which is a stigma that still hurts today. There would be a pig unit there, a dairy unit and, if I remember correctly, a poultry unit, too. One by one these units, like the attendees, have drifted away.

  Our milk co-operative used to have a stand there and I would be on duty for four days but it’s an expensive business and every year we would see fewer and fewer members.

  The last time we were there was particularly hot and there was a nice lot of skin to be seen.

  As times in general have become tougher, people in agriculture have tended to identify with the major shows in their locality, like the Bath and West and Cornwall, and that great success story, the Royal Welsh.

  The Royal at Stoneleigh was ‘everyone’s’ show, but not sadly, anymore. At this year’s I received a fellowship of the Royal Agriculture Society of England, which was a proud day for me.

  I’ve been an associate for a few years now so I’ve moved from a sort of lance corporal up to sergeant.

  Honours don’t fall on dairy farmers very often. What usually falls on dairy farmers comes from under a cow’s tail.

  A COUPLE of years ago we were given a barn owl nesting box. It’s never been out in place, just moved around as we have gone through tidying up processes.

  It has been a doll’s house, a garage, a kitten’s cottage, but an owl it has never seen. We have given it some thought – we’ve tried to identify where it would most likely be used.

  There’s things like height and safety to consider and we’re not big on height here.

  But there is a barn owl regularly working one of our bottom fields and there is a big old oak tree in the middle of the field, so it seems obvious, at last, where to put it.

  Barn owls are just about as beautiful as creatures get. They are probably benefitting from the 6m margins around fields and the extra hunting areas that this provides. Good luck to them.

  WE WENT out with friends for a meal on Saturday evening to the pub in a village not far from here. It’s quite an unusual pub because like a lot of pubs in small villages, it has struggled from time to time, so it was bought by the community some years ago and, despite one or two ups and downs, it is flourishing at the moment.

  Later in the evening while sitting by the window in my observation mode, I saw an old Discovery come down the road and turn into the car park.

  Some time ago I watched a TV programme where they showed how to fly a Jumbo jet from New York to Heathrow entirely by c
omputer. So accurate was this that when the plane landed at Heathrow it straddled exactly the white line down the runway. The Discovery came down the road like the plane, straddling the white line.

  The driver came in after a while. He used to be a local agricultural contractor; someone in our group said he’s 90 next month.

  Two years ago I saw him at a ploughing match doing a fair job with his vintage tractor and two-furrow plough. Everyone knows him; he’s lived in the village all his life.

  He got himself a pint and retired to a quiet corner, obviously contented and at ease. He got out the paraphernalia that he needed to roll himself a cigarette and did it quickly and expertly. Then, sadly for me, he had to go outside to smoke it.

  He’s probably been drinking in the pub since he was 10, and when he first drove down the main road there probably weren’t any white lines on it.

  I’ve never smoked and I think pubs are the better for the ban but I somehow feel he’s earned the right, at his age, to smoke his roll-up where he likes.

  When we left he’d just finished it and we had a five-minute chat. It was a beautiful warm evening and he seemed unconcerned about having to move with the times, something he’s obviously always taken in his stride.

  WE’VE got a really good lad who works here part-time. He comes three days a week in the winter and when he can in the summer.

  Summer is his busy time because he’s bought his own tractor and goes off doing contract work – all very enterprising in a lad who is only just 17. I wouldn’t want him to know I think he’s a good lad because it’s also important to keep him on his toes as he spends a lot of time trying to keep me on mine.

  His social life is of interest to me and I’m always surprised by how many fights there are at the dances he attends. I see it as my role to teach him a bit of homespun philosophy and to avoid these fights and to concentrate on the girls instead.

  ‘This,’ I told him, pointing to my head, ‘is for thinking, and these,’ pointing to my feet, ‘are for dancing and running away.’

  He’s not been here for some weeks now – last time he was here he was carting muck on to our maize ground. There was a huge heap outside a shed that we clean out every month during the winter. He wanted a couple of hours off at noon to go for a driving lesson so I said I’d clear out the remaining muck in the shed while he was away.

  ‘Take you a lot longer than two hours to do that,’ he said. ‘It’s all very well you young boys ripping and tearing about on these machines and making a lot of noise,’ I told him, ‘but now and again someone like me has to take a hand. My superior tractor driving skills, knowledge and expertise are needed to keep work up to schedule and, if you are bright enough, it gives you a chance to learn from the high standards I set.’

  He thought this was all very funny and went off to his lesson saying: ‘You won’t clear that shed out before I get back!’

  I leant nonchalantly on a gate until he was out of sight but then I leapt into action. It’s the best shed we have for cleaning out – in a previous life it was a large grain store, so it’s got nice concrete walls and floors.

  A lot of our sheds are not concreted right through because the cost of concrete in recent years has been prohibitive. In fact, it would probably be cheaper to cover the floors with the finest Indian carpets.

  The previous tenant to me, who used the shed as a grain store, had lined the roof with plastic fertiliser bags. I don’t know why, perhaps it was to stop condensation, but I’ve noticed that lots of pigeons live in the space between the bags and the roof.

  The roar from the machine disturbed them and I’d got my fifth bucket full when two very young pigeons came fluttering out from their sanctuary and landed on my bucket.

  I had two choices: carry on regardless and tip muck and pigeons on the heap outside; or get off, catch them and put them somewhere safe.

  I chose the latter, of course, but my mind was on my young helper – I didn’t need this delay. I pressed on with my work and had to stop three or four times more to remove pigeons from the bucket, including the pigeons I’d removed to safety but which had fluttered back on to the bucket.

  The shed was clear, the loader parked up and I was back leaning on the gate before the world’s best tractor driver got back. He popped his head inside the shed door and, to be fair, gave me a congratulatory nod. Now here’s a strange thing. As I got off the loader while dealing with the pigeons I muttered ‘bloody quist’ to myself.

  I don’t know how you spell it but you pronounce it kwist. It’s a word I’d not used for years and years but have used before to describe a pigeon.

  I left the lad to his work and went off thinking about my automatic use of the word ‘quist’. I lived the first 20 years of my life in Monmouthshire and wondered if it was a word that came from the Welsh.

  I phoned a Welsh-speaking friend that night but he’d never heard it. A friend in Monmouthshire hadn’t either.

  I told him another word I used to use was pronounced ‘een’, which described a ewe in the act of lambing. He’d heard that, saying: ‘An old boy who used to work here at one time always used to say een.’

  Thank you very much.

  I used to employ a real star of a man, who’d be well into his 80s now. He’d been dragged off the farm where the shed and pigeons are during the war, because he was the only single employee there to join the army.

  He hated his induction training so much that he volunteered for a role, not specifically described, that would earn him an extra two and sixpence a week. A couple of months later he found himself jumping out of a plane over Arnhem.

  Jack always used to bring two thermos flasks to work. One contained ordinary tea and one contained tea and whisky.

  At the time, I had a business that used to export game products to France and Jack and I used to drive hundreds of miles together. If ever I was to lose my licence for drinking and driving it would have been because of what was in his number two flask. But he didn’t call them flasks, he called them costrils.

  ‘Bit cold this morning,’ he’d say. ‘Had to give number two costril a bit extra.’

  ‘Why do you call them costrils, Jack?’

  ‘No idea,’ he’d say, ‘always called them costrils.’

  Then, one day, I visited the Welsh Folk museum at St Fagan’s on the west of Cardiff – very well worth a visit.

  There, hanging on chains under a hay wagon, was a tiny barrel that would have been used to take cider to the hay field. It’s name? A costril.

  OVER the last few months, new signs have been appearing in the area denoting a national cycle path.

  The chap who works for us cycles half a mile to and from work and I thought at first it was to show him how to get to his house, but it’s obviously a lot more than that.

  By strange coincidence, the signs follow exactly the route that was historically taken from London to Aberystwyth. This was a very direct route taking straight lines across country whenever possible. I always thought it was originally planned on a map that didn’t possess contour lines, because it is up and down some very hard pulls.

  I used to think: poor bloody horses. I don’t extend that concern to the cyclists because they have more choice than the horses ever had.

  There was time when I did a lot of cycling to keep fit and sometimes I am minded to take it up again, as a recreation. A friend once told me that a lot of disused railway lines are now cycle paths and railway lines rarely go up steep hills – that seems an eminently more sensible option.

  He once told me he had cycled from Merthyr to the centre of Cardiff and went home on the train – a ride almost entirely downhill. Excellent.

  IF EVER you come to our house, and you are very welcome – bed and breakfast, en suite, reasonable rates – you will discover that our back yard slopes down to our house, that there are buildings on two sides of the slope and the house is at the bottom.

  If I tidied our kitchen table up and let you in, you would also discover that it is a
typically large farmhouse kitchen, and that you need to go down three steps from the kitchen to the rest of the house.

  Earlier this week we had the mother and father of all thunderstorms. I was putting a machine on a tractor to go thistle cutting and took shelter in an adjacent building.

  It was raining so hard it was quite spectacular but after a quarter of an hour, I decided I would be as well off in the house and do a bit of writing.

  I didn’t have a coat with me so the 50-yard dash would have soaked me to the skin but the Discovery was sheltering in the shed with me, so I took that to get to the house.

  I’d never seen so much water going down the back yard and you could see that although the drain wasn’t blocked, it just couldn’t cope and the water was rising at the kitchen door.

  There was already an inch of water in the kitchen when I opened the door. I’ve always thought of myself as resourceful, so I went straight to the airing cupboard and got out some blankets.

  I put one against the door that leads to our living room, where the water was now starting to accumulate, one at the top of the steps to stop the waterfall that was gathering pace and then tried to brush some water back out of the door.

  This was a complete waste of time so I put the third blanket across the bottom of the door and with two feet and the broom head, managed to keep it in place and stood there for half an hour.

  I did open the door a fraction to see what was happening but the water was six inches above the doorstep. Eventually the storm abated and I was able to clear what was now three inches of water back out through the door. It took me two hours of sweeping and mopping to restore order.