A Farmer's Diary

by Sally Urwin

  Bollocks.

  Thanking her, I race over to the brewery. As I arrive, I can see Button happily admiring her reflection in the hubcaps of the cars in the car park. She looks pleased to see me and bounces over to investigate my pockets for lamb feed.

  Some walkers have been through her field gate and moved the sheep hurdle, and haven’t put it back. Button must have been watching and waiting for her chance to roll under the field gate again.

  This time Keith isn’t with her – he’s probably too dim to pick his way through the hurdle assault course.

  A few interested brewery customers are watching as I pick her up and walk with her up the yard. I carry her like a baby, with her head on one shoulder, her bum cradled by one arm and her little hooves flailing in the air.

  ‘Isn’t she cute!’ one little boy shouts. He gets to pat her head, while she snuffles in his ears and round his coat hood.

  I dump Button in the chicken paddock. It has nice tall stone walls and the gate is low to the ground. Button is too small to be put in lamb, and she’s too tiny to make a ‘fat’ commercial lamb at the Mart and be sold for meat.

  ‘See if you can get out of that you little bugger,’ I tell her crossly.

  I still give her a lamb feed nut, though. The thought crosses my mind that maybe I’m unintentionally training her to get out of fields, by giving her treats whenever I find her.

  Oh well. When I walk away, Button is carefully investigating and snuffling round the outside of the chicken house.

  Thursday 21st September

  It’s weigh-in day at the local slimming club. Dad has lost four pounds. I have put on half a pound. Bloody hell.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says the nice leader, ‘you’ll just be bunged up a bit. One good poo, and it’ll all be gone.’

  Saturday 23rd September

  We’re sowing our winter barley today. Arable farming is a specialised science and highly technical, especially to outsiders like myself. The main things I’ve learnt is that:

  The Basic Payment Scheme subsidy is a rural grant that all farmers are given by the government each year. To be awarded the grant our fields need to grow three different types of crops. High House grows winter barley, oilseed rape, wheat and spring barley, so each field is in a four-year rotation that improves the health of the soil and land.

  Our crops are one of the most valuable things we grow on the farm, which explains the immense amount of stress and strain when we’re trying to get the bloody seed into the ground and we’re battling against bad weather.

  Harvest happens late summer/early autumn, and is my least favourite time of the year, as I hardly see Steve, and when I do he tends to march around the house shouting at the weather forecasts on the TV.

  Winter barley, planted in the winter, is a slower-growing type suitable for animal feed, and is harvested the following summer. Spring barley is a quicker-growing type and planted in the spring, and is usually sent for malting for beer. It is harvested at the same time as the winter barley, in the following summer/autumn. It literally took me about ten years to understand this. I think I’m naturally drawn more to the animals on the farm, and so the arable farming is a bit of a closed book.

  I watch as Steve pours the winter barley seed into the drill, which is hooked up to the back of the tractor. Seed is expensive – like ‘foreign holiday’ sort of expensive – so he treats it like liquid gold, carefully tipping in each bag and shaking it out cautiously.

  This winter barley seed variety is called ‘Tower’, and next September we’ll harvest it to sell for animal feed.

  I watch as Steve climbs into his cab, selects his Iron Maiden playlist for the day and rumbles out of the yard, hauling the seed drill behind him. It’ll take him all day to sow or drill the seed, and then he’ll need to flatten it into the ground with the two-ton roller that he pulls behind the tractor.

  The tractor is the workhorse of the farm, and costs more than the average family house. It’s Steve’s pride and joy, and is kept in pristine condition, with tyres cleaned and paintwork washed and buffed each week.

  Monday 25th September

  The vet came today to give Candy, our fat Shetland pony, her annual check-up and flu injection. When she saw Candy’s enormous stomach and skinny legs waddling towards her out of the stable door, she did one of those reverse whistles that mechanics make when they see the state of my car.

  ‘Are you sure she’s not managed to get herself in foal?’ she asked.

  Nope. Unfortunately, it’s pure lardiness from excess and illicit grass-eating.

  Candy has put on a lot of weight, as she has (in the parlance of the horsey world) no respect for electric fences or anything else designed to help her restrict her food intake. She can work her way out of grazing muzzles and squirm under posts, and calmly bulldozes her way through electric fences. She probably doesn’t even feel the sting of the electric shock due to the fat pads across her withers and enormous arse.

  After a bit of poking and prodding, and a few more involuntary noises at the size of her gut, the vet told us in no uncertain terms that the little Shetland had to be put on a strict diet.

  So off I went to Carrs Billington farm shop in Hexham to buy the most electrically charged fencer unit I could find. I finally found an enormous German-made unit that promised ‘Extra Power’ with ‘at least 0.22 joules shock power’ that makes it ‘an ideal partner for all your livestock’. Surely this would keep the fat pony in her field? I staggered out to Candy’s field and started looping the unit over the fence before switching it on. It made a reassuring ‘extra power’-type electric humming noise.

  Candy looked at it suspiciously. She doesn’t like anything new, so she retreated behind the water trough and inspected it from afar.

  I was pleased with a good job done and prepared to triumphantly exit the field.

  However, every time I attempted to close the gate, my arm and hand leapt upwards in an involuntary fascist salute.

  I tried closing the gate for a second and then a third attempt, but each time I grabbed hold of the gate I found myself inadvertently making enthusiastic Nazi signals to my neighbours.

  Finally, in confusion, I gripped the top bar of the gate tightly with my fists, and a huge zap shot up my arms and across my shoulders, making my heart do a double thump. I honestly thought I’d had some sort of stroke.

  After a bit of a sit-down and a think, I realised that I’d accidentally hooked the electric fence over the metal gate sneck, so the whole gate was live, and I’d been unwittingly lighting myself up with 10,000 volts of top-quality German electricity.

  I think Candy was laughing at me from behind the trough.

  The upshot of the whole project is that the fat pony did attempt to walk through the electric fence last night, and after a zap and a squeal, now gives it a very wide berth.

  All I’ve got to do now is make sure the huge battery pack stays charged.

  Tuesday 26th September

  Today we need to check the tups again before they get let loose among their ladies.

  Getting them in from the paddock is always exciting, as they lumber towards the sheep pens, lowering their head against Mavis the dog, who stays well out of their way.

  Randy is one of the biggest tups I’ve ever seen. If he was so inclined, he could do some real damage with his hard, wedge-shaped head. He’s also proven to be a grumpy bugger, and has chased me once or twice when I’ve been tipping sheep feed into his trough. I never turn my back towards him now just in case he catches me behind the knees.

  Thrusty is gentler and tamer. He’ll accept a sheep nut out of my hand, and once in the sheep pens he steps calmly into the tall metal walls of the sheep race, ignoring the testosterone-fuelled huffs and puffs of Randy behind him.

  While the tups are in the medicated foot bath, Steve gives their teeth and testicles the once-over. I can see them all showing the whites of their eyes while Steve methodically goes along each tup’s body, feeling for any lumps or bumps. Thru
sty has a bit of a runny nose, so he gets an injection of Amoxicillin to clear up any infection. Apart from this, they all look well, and everyone seems to have a good set of gnashers.

  The tups smell at this time of year – a very strong musky odour, which must be full of potent testosterone pheromones as all the ewes gravitate towards the gate to stare at them as they run back to their bachelor field. It must be frustrating for the boys as they can hear and see the ewes but can’t get anywhere near them. Our flock of breeding ewes is getting a bit antsy too. As the days become shorter, they start to come into season, and they’re flightier and more interested in whatever is happening outside the gate. Roll on tupping day.

  Wednesday 27th September

  Steve is doing the farm VAT return. He hates doing it, and before sitting down he’s procrastinated much of the day, mowing the lawn, replacing a light bulb in the bathroom and clearing out his tractor cab. Everyone keeps out of his way when he finally fires up the accounting software. He needs to do three months’ paperwork, and the misery of sorting through invoices and totting up how much we’ve paid out, compared to how much money has been trickling in, makes the whole house feel under a thundercloud. The kids are hiding upstairs and I’m sitting in bed with my iPad ignoring the swearing from downstairs.

  Thursday 28th September

  Back to our slimming club today. Dad has lost another three pounds. He gets an award for it, a shiny purple one with a star down one side. I have lost half a pound, so I’m basically the same weight I was when I joined two weeks ago.

  I sit in a childish huff all evening, sarcastically clapping all the skinnier people. Dad is very proud of his award and takes it home to put on the fridge.

  I skulk home and open a packet of chocolate buttons. I don’t want to go any more.

  Friday 29th September

  Checking the sheep today I notice a big white lump at the far end of the field. It’s absolutely bucketing down with great sheets of icy water, but peering through the gloom I can see that the lump is one of our ewes, lying motionless on her side.

  I fire up the quad, and race towards her. I’m hoping she’s not dead, as a) I’m very fond of our sheep, b) I’m not big enough to lift a dead sheep into the trailer and c) they tend to go off very quick and start to smell really bad.

  When I get there I find poor Tilly the ewe stuck on her side in a puddle of water with a mass of blood where her left ear should be. She’d obviously laid down last night and rolled onto her back, and the sheer weight of the water in her wool had been too heavy for her to roll upright.

  And then some scrotey creature (probably a badger or a fox) had crept up and gnawed off her entire ear while she lay there unprotected.

  Poor soul. Unfortunately, this is fairly common – especially when the weather is bad, as the ewes’ fleeces become saturated with water. Usually, the prone sheep get weaker and weaker, and then die. Crows were already circling, waiting to have a go at her eyes.

  I hauled her by her sodden fleece and managed to get her onto her chest. She was shivering with the cold and her legs were so stiff that they stuck out behind her, so I wrapped my coat around her neck and massaged her legs to get them to bend underneath her backside. And there we sat for about thirty minutes in the driving rain, with me propping her up to stop her rolling back again and giving her a pep talk.

  I don’t have any proper waterproofs. Steve and I share the one waterproof coat we have (not because we’re poverty-stricken, but just as I tend to wear fleeces unless it’s really wet), and he had it on that morning. I was left with water trickling down the back of my neck and into my sleeves waiting for Tilly to try and get onto her feet. I sang a few songs to perk her up but every time she tried to get up she fell on her side again.

  I call Steve, who is out buying sheep feed, and after about an hour, when we are both completely chilled through, he finally arrives back to help me manhandle her into the trailer and then into the warmth of the barn. She’s had some strong antibiotics, had her wound dressed and been given some sheep nuts and hay. She’ll be fine, and I got a cup of tea for a good rescue attempt.

  We check our sheep twice a day, so thank god we caught her this morning – as I doubt she would have lasted another couple of hours.

  Saturday 30th September

  Checking Button today, I notice that her spine is more prominent than it was, and she’s looking a bit ribby.

  She snuffles in my pockets for a few lamb nuts. Her eyes are still bright and she doesn’t have the hunched back and lowered head of a poorly lamb, so maybe it was just the change of grass. After a chat and a neck scratch, she happily trots away to start grazing beside her ewe friends. If it keeps raining, we’ll have to bring her in out of the cold, to see if that stops the weight loss.

  When I leave the field, she’s happily lying down, chewing her cud – her nose pointed skyward in typical ‘relaxed lamb’ pose.

  Sunday 1st October

  Tilly One Ear is looking a lot better. Some sheep, when they’ve been attacked and lose an eye or an ear, go into shock and never recover.

  We had one ewe last year who got stuck on her back and had her eyes pecked out. She died from septic shock later in the day. We’ve had lambs that have had tongues and eyes removed by crows. It’s not Disneyland out here. Foxes eat chickens; ravens, crows and jackdaws attack newborn, sickly lambs or immobilised sheep; badgers and foxes will eat sheep alive, if they get the chance and the animal is too ill or injured to move. It’s upsetting and dismal, but you can’t blame them. Every animal is just trying to survive.

  Tilly is up on her feet tucking into her silage. We’ll keep her in until the wound has completely healed. Sheep need a tag in each ear: one that displays the animal’s individual identification number and one to show our flock mark. I’m not quite sure where I’m going to put the replacement tag.

  Monday 2nd October

  This morning, I found a very smug Candy in next door’s field, absolutely knee-deep in grass. She had spent the whole night busily ingesting 3 million calories in prime pasture. When I find her she’s happily munching, completely unconcerned that the rich grass is making her fart noisily every time she moves.

  She hasn’t damaged the gate but inspecting the electric fence it looked like someone had deliberately unclipped the battery connectors.

  Yesterday I noticed that the bride and groom from a wedding at the brewery had been in the horse field taking photos.3 God knows why they went into that field, as it’s a bit scrubby and is also dotted with huge piles of pony poo. When they were posing for their pictures, they were also standing right next to the run-off from the septic tank. The smell must have been distracting.

  Maybe they unclipped the battery from the fence, so they didn’t have to duck under the wire?

  Whatever the reason for her escape, the outcome is always the same. A complaining Candy is put into her stable to deflate over the next twenty-four hours. She has straw to munch on, but spends most of the day hanging over her stable door trying to persuade brewery visitors that she’s being mistreated and starved. It would work if she could stop farting and didn’t look like a well-upholstered sofa.

  Thursday 5th October

  Most of the salesmen from agricultural supply merchants that visit us on the farm are lovely. And polite. And just want us to buy something from them. However, we have one geriatric feed salesman who is always turning up at the front door, when Steve isn’t around, and demanding I give my husband feed supplement samples while staring at my boobs. Today, he turns up at the busiest time of the day, straight after school pick-up at 4 p.m., when I’m feeding children and animals.

  ‘Is your husband in?’ he asks. He won’t talk about the farm to me directly, as I’m not a man, and therefore obviously know nothing about farming or sheep.

  I’m wearing the unsexiest outfit in the world: a roll-neck jumper, leggings and slipper socks. It doesn’t stop him though, and as usual, while he’s talking, his gaze slips down to my admittedly magnifi
cent bosom.

  ‘No. No, he’s not,’ I answer distractedly, trying to stop the cat from running out the door onto the road.

  ‘Could you give him this then, dear?’ he replies, pushing a heavy sheep lick tub into my arms.

  ‘No, I really fucking couldn’t, you patronising old bugger.’ I don’t really say that. Instead, I smile weakly, take the lick, and promise to pass it on to Steve.

  Friday 6th October

  Button isn’t very well at all, and I can’t work out why. She’s looking very thin and ribby and today I’ve found her lying down in the gate entranceway. Her eye looks dull and she’s obviously not eating anything as she’s so skinny. I carry her into the shed and make up a little pen with some straw, feed and a tub of water.

  Steve can’t work out what’s wrong either. Some lambs just don’t thrive, and maybe her difficult birth has impacted on her digestion or the way she metabolises her food. We give her some antibiotics and painkillers in case there’s an infection.

  I sit with her for a bit, stroking her neck and rubbing her ears. I do this to myself each year in the months after lambing: get attached to some poor pathetic scrap of a lamb who becomes very friendly but then ultimately doesn’t survive. Button has been so full of mischief though. It isn’t fair.

  ‘Could we give her a bottle of milk?’ I ask Steve.

  ‘You can’t give a weaned lamb milk,’ he replies gently. He knows better than to tick me off for getting attached. For all his big farmer grumbling, Steve is just as soft as I am. He pushes the water bucket closer to Button and splashes his fingers in it, but she turns her face away.