A Farmer's Diary

by Sally Urwin

  These were his exact words. He was wearing a tweed suit, had his hair in a pony tail and sported a rather fabulous ginger beard. We stared at each other for a bit, and then he showed me his plastic shoes. They were bright blue. I showed him my Ariat ‘anti-fatigue’ wellies, and how I could store my mobile phone in the flappy bit at the top.

  ‘Why do you keep them, then?’ he asked, gesturing to the pet lambs. They were all lying down in the clean straw, thoughtfully chewing their cud.

  I suddenly wanted to grab him by the lapels and shout ranty, self-pitying, incoherent thoughts about how we keep them for meat, but you should see how well kept they are, and how we flog on looking after even the most pathetic scrap of baby lamb to make sure they’re well fed and happy. If Steve and I were just out for profit, we’d skip all the care and good feed and tube feeding, and just knock the pet lambs on the head, and madly fatten up the rest and sell them as soon as they were heavy enough. But we don’t. We care for the tiny buggers and we’re proud of our farm assured status and we never have enough money as farming is going down the pan …

  I didn’t say any of this but mumbled on a bit about our quality animal care and living conditions.

  ‘Those lambs look all right,’ he conceded, ‘but I’ve seen videos online of some terrible places.’

  ‘Well, we’re not one of them,’ I said stoutly, and he vaguely nodded his head in an unconvinced way and went back to the wedding.

  I couldn’t care less what people eat, as I’m usually too busy struggling with my own carb-heavy diet and ever-increasing waistband, but Martin’s question took me by surprise and I felt all defensive and wanted to make him see what we’re trying to do on our farm. I’m not convinced it worked though.

  Wednesday 25th October

  Today, as Steve is away, I have to feed the outside ewes myself.

  The sheep nuts for one evening feed come in a 25 kg bag. When Steve feeds the sheep outside, he opens one corner of the bag and, in one smooth motion, hoists it onto his shoulder and pours the feed straight into the trough, with the sheep trotting along behind him.

  When I do it, I can’t lift the bag, so I open one end and drag the bag behind me so that a bit of feed drops out and all the sheep gallop over to me to get it and I fall over. I’m then trampled by lots of hungry fat sheep, and Steve gets cross as all the feed is spread across the ground rather than in the trough.

  Today I have a plan. I open the sheep nut bag on the quad bike, and then scoop out the feed with a shovel into each trough, shooing away any sheep that threaten to flatten me. It takes ages but at least I didn’t fall over, no sheep nuts were wasted, everyone got fed, and the feed sack was empty.

  Being under five foot gives me lots of farming problems – the main one being the fact that I have no leverage in wrestling a sheep onto her back to trim her feet. Steve says that tipping a sheep is 80 per cent technique and 20 per cent brute strength, but as I have very short arms like a Tyrannosaurus rex I can’t reach to trim a ewe’s rear feet when I’m holding her on her back. And lambing brings extra problems – keeping a ewe still and then reaching round to pull out a lamb is a physical impossibility with tiny, weedy arms.

  I wonder if Countryfile would do a segment on height-disadvantaged farmers?

  Thursday 26th October

  I met an old family friend today in the village. He knew both Steve and I before we were married. We exchanged a bit of chat about the family and then he said, completely out of the blue, ‘I’m so glad that you two found each other.’ I knew what he meant, but it did sound as if we were a couple of old wrinkly turnips that had been left on the shelf too long.

  Friday 27th October

  I’ve been doing some useful work today. In the last rainstorm an old ash tree fell in the East Field. It must have been rotten, as the whole trunk split in two, leaving the canopy to crash down into the grass field, scattering dead branches all over the pasture. Broken up and dried out it’ll make great firewood for the coming winter, so Steve trudges off to start chainsawing it into logs. I refuse to use the chainsaw. Cutting up a tree is a skilled job, as it’s very easy to either chop into your own legs or trim the wrong bit and end up pinned beneath a large branch.

  I stand and watch for a bit, as Steve methodically works through the ash branches. After a while I decide to go and start on one of my favourite jobs: clearing out a stream.

  Sparrow’s Letch runs through the bottom of the East Field. It’s a bonny little watercourse that trickles between two deep banks. The water is cold and clear and runs through a jumble of deep pools and shallow waterfalls, over a higgledy-piggledy bed of stones, boulders and clay.

  During the winter months the stream becomes a rushing torrent that carries tree branches, logs and old fence posts to end up jammed against the water gate, which is built across the stream to stop stock wandering between the two fields.

  I mooch off to inspect the mound of branches and leaf litter that is piled up against the gate. If it wasn’t cleared, the blocked gate would eventually completely dam the stream, which would then flood into the pasture, drowning the grass and stripping away the soil.

  Pulling on some gloves, I start to haul away broken tree branches and fence posts to allow the water to run through the gate – so satisfying.

  It takes a couple of hours to clear the trash, and when I’ve finished the stream is running completely clear beneath the water gate and I have a huge pile of old tree boughs, holly and hawthorn branches, split fence posts and leaf litter piled up on the stream bank. Mixed in with the organic stuff are plastic lick buckets, the odd empty sheep feed bag and half a drainage pipe, which has all been washed down by the stream.

  I’ve discovered all sorts of interesting bits and pieces in the past while doing this job, including old green bottles, a large deer antler and two rusted milk churns.

  Steve has finished chopping up the tree, so we load the logs into the trailer and take them back to stack in the farmyard. In a few weeks they’ll be seasoned and we can split them into smaller logs for our fireplace.

  Saturday 28th October

  It’s been below freezing for a few nights in a row and that means there’s been some gorgeous clear, cold and (above all) dry days.

  The drier weather means that I’ve been pottering around the fields, admiring the frosty trees and holly bushes, like a short, tweedy nature sprite. Everyone (including me) has been doing some attempts at exercising. I’ve even made Candy trot up the ‘long pull’ to the wood. She hates it, so I lead her while jogging on the far side of the path; otherwise she tries to take a massive bite out of my shoulder. As a name, Candy really doesn’t suit her. I always think Shetlands shouldn’t have cutesy names. The ones I’ve known have been called things like Angel or Sweetie, which they most definitely weren’t. I did see that the runner-up in the Shetland Grand National this year was called ‘Idiot’, which makes me very happy.

  Today it’s so bloody cold that I have developed chilblains. I think they must have been brought on by getting cold feet while gathering wood and feeding the sheep. So far, I’ve been told to wee on them, or rub them with an onion. Sometimes it feels like I’m living in the Middle Ages …

  Sunday 29th October

  Our two chickens are bored. Due to the avian flu threat, all poultry owners are supposed to keep their ‘chucks’ inside, so we’ve got ours penned up in a stable. They’ve got a roosting bar and a nesting box and everything, but every time I go and see them I’m treated to a long litany of clucky complaints which I imagine are about how bored they are, how it’s so crowded and what Marjorie said to Ethel by the water bowl. I’ve started throwing sprouts in through the top door (they bop off their heads in an amusing way) and the chickens race after them, grabbing the sprouts and hurtling into a dark corner to gobble them down as fast as they can. Hopefully it won’t be long before we can let them out again.

  Monday 30th October

  We’ve sent our decrepit ‘cast’ ewes to the Cast Sheep Sale at the Mar
t. These are the ancient souls that have no teeth left, have non-working udders or, in one unfortunate case, have a huge misshapen hernia that bobbles alongside their body.

  They all went under the hammer along with a selection of fat lambs. The best price for the old ewes was £72 per sheep.

  As I’m writing this, Steve is in the background shouting, ‘Don’t tell them how much we got! Otherwise everyone will know!’

  In my experience, farmers don’t like giving away secrets. And they often take the ‘more scenic route home’ basically to drive round a bit and see what everyone else is doing. That’s why we all put our best, youngest, prettiest sheep out in the front field and then hide the scabby, lame ones round the back. Steve usually gives me a running commentary as we drive past farms on the road to Hexham.

  ‘Look at the ploughing on that. God, he’s cocked it up round the electricity pole. Christ, look at the water on that wheat field! Now, what I would have done’, etc.

  I can’t think of any other industry where people are able to stare over a hedge in order to freely comment on the way you do your job.

  Tuesday 31st October (Halloween)

  A good (and true) ghost story for you. Since we renovated the old farm buildings back in 2003, and constructed the tearoom in 2013, some peculiar things have been going on.

  Heather hears footsteps across the floorboards outside in the malt loft, when there’s no one there. It’s not the sound of an old building settling or creaking, but rather the clear ‘slap, slap’ of someone in leather shoes walking across the floors. We’ve all heard the noise of someone else running across the old granary, from one side to another. When you look out, the room is completely empty.

  When Andrew the chef comes in to set up the kitchen in the morning, he occasionally finds the taps running in the men’s bathroom. It can’t be the water pressure, as it doesn’t happen at any other time, just very early in the mornings.

  People have heard mutterings and conversations in empty rooms. The tearoom is made up of three rooms, all connected by low doorways, but none with actual doors. Sometimes, if you stand in the bar, you can hear a low murmur of voices in the right-hand room, but if you look around the corner, the voices stop and there’s no one there.

  I can just hear the sceptics pointing out that it’ll probably be just the central heating cooling down, or the pipes heating up, or the brewery equipment chuntering to itself. But the noise is distinct from the sound of the heating or the boiler. It’s the definite sound of a conversation, but just low enough that you can’t make out any actual words.

  Outside the brewery is a long passageway that connects to the barns at the back of the farm. Originally the passage didn’t exist, as it was part of an enclosed farmyard. At one end, there’s a smaller, low-ceilinged room that the brewery staff use as a ‘bonded warehouse’, to store all the beer and casks before they are delivered. Some staff have seen people-shaped shadows in this room, slipping past the door and the windows or standing in the corner. One lady suddenly smelt a very strong, very unpleasant smell – ‘like a thick, choking sewage smell’, which disappeared as soon as it appeared.

  The brewery buildings were built in 1840 – although there has been a farm on this site for a very long time. The buildings we converted were originally granaries, stables, cart sheds and hay barns. Perhaps the previous occupants don’t approve of their new function as a tearoom or restaurant?

  This sort of stuff doesn’t worry me at all. If I’m wrapped up and not too cold I find working outside in the dark calming, especially on bright moonlit nights when you can see the animals calmly snoozing or chewing their cud. I’ve never actually seen anything, but I’ve certainly heard the rumble of low conversation and the sound of something running from one side of the building to another. Very strange.

  Steve has also seen some weird stuff. Not on this farm, but where we used to live. We rented an eighteenth-century cottage for a few years before Steve inherited High House. Steve was sitting at the kitchen table in this cottage when he suddenly stood up and pushed his chair backwards. He looked like he’d had a fright and went a sort of strange grey colour.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve just seen a bloke walk through the wall,’ he replied, pointing at the flat kitchen wall behind the cooker. ‘Bloody hell. I could see what he was wearing. He just came in and walked through there,’ he said, gesturing towards the cupboard.

  Apparently it was an older man wearing a lighter top ‘with a sort of waistcoat over it’ and dark trousers. He had white hair.

  I had to give him whisky after that to get a bit of colour back into his face. Steve also saw the man standing next to the window in our bedroom, as if he was looking out into the garden. ‘He was smiling, and I could see his upper body clearly, with a dark waistcoat and a collarless shirt. He looked happy.’

  Back to the brewery.

  Heather was approached by a local ‘ghost-hunting’ group that wanted to have a look around the buildings for Halloween. I asked if I could join in, as I’m a nosy old bag and wanted to see if they’d find anything out.

  When the group turned up I was cheered to see that it was led by a man called Brian who was wearing an amazing orange wig. He had normal brown hair round the side, but sticking out the top of his head like a frill on a pie case was a bright ginger toupee. He was also wearing a necklace with an Egyptian ‘ankh’ symbol on it, which he wore because apparently in a past life he’d been an Egyptian priest.

  Fair enough. If you want to go around saying those kind of things then best of luck to you. Especially in rural Northumberland. I thought the evening was off to a brilliant start, and tagged along at the back of the group eagerly.

  We all trooped off into the brewery kitchens, with Brian almost immediately saying that he’d picked up the name ‘George’. Now almost everyone was called George in the nineteenth century round here, so I didn’t think too much of that one. Then Brian went quiet and said he saw a small ragged boy hiding in the side of the hay shed. The boy couldn’t understand what was happening at the brewery, and why the old farmyard was full of bridal parties and visitors in big hats. I started to feel sorry for the boy, until Brian mentioned that he lived in Roman times and wore a tunic and sandals. I started to think that maybe Brian wasn’t telling the truth. I can’t believe that anyone wore a skirt and sandals round here in the fifth century or ever. They would have been bloody freezing.

  Not much else for a while, apart from one of our party going into hysterics as she said she could feel a dog licking her hand. We had to guide her into the tearoom and sit her down with a hot tea until she calmed down.

  ‘It was horrible! It was definitely a tongue! And it licked me!’ I still don’t know what that was. Imagination? A huge rat? Sumo the farm cat?

  At the end of the evening everyone stood expectantly in the barn while Brian intoned a summoning to any spirits hanging around the farm.

  ‘If you can hear me, come closer to us! Do not be scared. Give us a sign that you are with us! We are here to help you move closer towards the light!’

  We waited for a response, holding our breath, ears straining for any reply.

  Suddenly, we could hear faint crunching and dragging sounds coming towards us from outside. They got louder and turned into definite footsteps, limping over the ground, as if the invisible walker had an injured leg and was dragging a foot across cobblestones.

  I grabbed the lady next to me, and she grabbed onto Brian. The footsteps got closer and closer, and Brian whispered hoarsely, ‘Show yourself spirit! Come closer to our circle!’

  After a few seconds a bemused face poked around the side of the stone wall. It was my neighbour, wondering what on earth we were doing in the shed in the middle of the night.

  We all coughed and, avoiding each other’s gaze, pretended to examine the floor and rafters in the torchlight.

  Almost immediately after that, Brian and his wig packed up and left. I hope he comes back soon.


  Wednesday 1st November

  It’s a friend’s Halloween party tonight. Everyone is dressing up as sexy cats and vampires and things. I’m going as a small, fat, grumpy farmer’s wife.

  Thursday 2nd November

  Today Candy the fat pony has disgraced herself by biting a small child and hiding behind the gorse bushes at the bottom of the field.

  I put her bridle on and a little friend of the kids adorned it with a pink unicorn horn. Candy looked at me with utter disgust and is now sulking behind the gorse bushes at the bottom of the field, flirting with the expensive hunters over the wall.

  I really hope that when I’m as ancient as her I have her unshakeable confidence in my saggy and decrepit charms.

  Friday 3rd November

  I have new waterproofs! They fit me properly for once, so I no longer look like a hand-me down. Buying a new coat got to my head and I went a bit mad in my favourite shop (Robson & Cowan’s agricultural merchants in Scots Gap). I also bought some new wellies, as my old pair started to leak, and I’m now the proud owner of a pair of Aigle welly boots – which are wide fitting to wrap round my tremendous muscular calves.

  I showed off my new wellies by marching up and down in front of the brewery staff, and it started a long discussion about benefits of various welly brands. The consensus was not to buy the posher brands, as they fall apart after six months, but to stick to the straightforward ‘Dunlop’ brand, which lasts for ages and seems impervious to cracks or holes. Steve refuses to buy lined boots, as after wearing them all day in hot weather they get very stinky, especially if he’s doing a sweaty job like shearing sheep or mucking out lambing pens. Although Dunlop are great, I much prefer a more flattering posh boot as there’s nothing like a welly that flaps around your calf to make you look like you’ve just escaped from the local madhouse.