by Sally Urwin
Monday 22nd January
Steve has a job interview for a site manager. It goes very well, and he’s offered the job, but only if he’s prepared to work full-time hours.
‘I just can’t do full-time hours and run a farm,’ he says to me, after eventually turning down the role. I bite my lip. If I took on more of the farm work, and had more skill on the tractor, then maybe he could do a full-time job?
We discuss it long into the night, but we keep coming up against the same problem. It’s impossible to work nine-to-five in a normal job and look after the animals and do all the arable work. And I have my own marketing work to do, as well as looking after the children.
If only we could split Steve down the middle, so he could be a farmer and earn a full-time wage. Money is now very tight, so every day we sit down with the job sites and the paper and trawl through for a suitable part-time position.
Tuesday 23rd January
We all have terrible colds. I have two bits of tissue paper stuck up my nose, trying to stop it dripping. Steve is complaining of a bad headache and Lucy is off school, limply draping herself over the sofa and testily demanding ice lollies for her sore throat.
No one can take any time off. It’s not like the animals don’t need to be fed and watered just because we’ve come down with a cold. I feel hot and shivery but drag myself outdoors to turn out Candy and help Steve feed hay to the outside sheep, clear water from troughs of ice and feed the indoor lambs.
When we get back to the house I’m sweating and aching. Sod doing any work. I crawl upstairs and into bed, clutching a hot-water bottle. I can hear Steve stomping around the house in search of paracetamol.
Wednesday 24th January
Still ill. Still grumpy. Steve looks after Candy, who is his new best friend, as he gives her huge amounts of feed, even though I tell him not to give her more than a handful.
‘She looks hungry,’ he tells me sadly, ‘so I gave her half a bucket.’
‘Half a bucket?! She’s not hungry, she’s like a bloody ball!’ I shout hoarsely down the stairs.
No reply. He must have gone out to check round the back field.
Cinders the kitten is cuddled down into my shoulder. Sumo the farm cat is stretched across my feet in bed. Everyone is emitting heat and making me feel hot and irritable. I eventually fall into a fitful asleep, until Lucy comes upstairs to say, ‘I can hear you snoring from the lounge, Mummy.’
Friday 26th January
I’m back on my feet today. But Steve has now got the lurgy and goes to bed. He never goes to bed when he’s sick, so this time he must feel really poorly. He once had pleurisy and still staggered out to feed the animals in the cold until the doctor had to order him to rest. He doesn’t have time to be ill. When I first met him he caught lots of bugs, one after the other, and we decided it was because he’d been so isolated at the farm so was unprepared for the onslaught of infectious viruses that I brought with me when we started living together.
He feels dreadful, so I trot up and down the stairs with para-cetamol and cold drinks all day.
Sunday 28th January
Steve is still in bed. My sympathy is wearing thin. It’s hard work. I don’t know how single-parent families manage.
‘Stop coughing!’ I shout at Steve, who is hacking away upstairs. ‘You sound like a half-dead ewe!’
He hates being inside, and starts questioning me. ‘Have you checked the lame lamb? Could you catch it? Grab the shears and antibiotic spray and do its feet will you? There’s some amoxicillin you can give it in the cabinet.’
‘Bugger off! I’m doing the best I can!’
I start to feel anxious, and make many to-do lists, trying to catch up with work in the evening and get ahead of myself.
Fortunately, Steve starts to feel a bit better, and comes down for his tea. He’s still coughing and looks about 90 years old.
Thank god it’s not lambing or harvest time, as we’d have to get someone in to help, which would cost money that we can’t afford to pay.
Monday 29th January
Steve is out of bed and back on his feet. He’s still coughing and feeling a bit wobbly, but he’s straight back out to check on the sheep.
It’s almost the year-end tax return date, so Steve and I make an appointment to go and see our accountants in Hexham, clutching twelve months of farming receipts. The reception of Armstrong Watson Accountants was wall-to-wall farmers, all clutching grubby Tesco bags full of paperwork, grumpily trying to sort out their tax returns.
Gone are the days when you could ‘forget’ to write down what you’d bought in the stub end of your chequebook and try to claim a new car as an essential piece of farm machinery.
Our accountant Andrew is cheerful, professional and a rather good grower of dahlias. He talks through our threadbare accounts, and over a cup of coffee examines overdrawn bank statements from twelve months of farm business. After it’s all finished we push our way through the crowds of checked shirts and welly boots and go and have a cup of tea in the Hexham Mart café.
Wednesday 31st January
Today is bill-paying day, so we’re crouched in the lounge sifting through the bank account to see which invoices we can pay and what we need to leave until next month. Cash is very tight again.
The mortgage payments and borrowings we made to turn our farm buildings into a brewery place a huge strain on the farm finances. Renting those buildings out to Heather and Gary for their business helps enormously, but there’s no money left over. We make do with our small flock and crops, but any surplus cash goes towards fertiliser, seed, sheep feed and medicines. Every year the price of fertiliser and seed goes up. Unlike some farmers we don’t have any other assets (such as cottages we can rent out) to bring in more income. We do the best we can, keep the farm going and have another job each to keep our family afloat. We’re not the only ones in this situation.
In the 1970s and 1980s farming experienced a boom, and most farmers were able to make a decent income from their land. Nowadays, due to the rise in commodity prices and the failure of lamb prices to keep track, it’s unusual that a small mixed or sheep farm like ours can make enough income to support a farmer and their family.
Now that we’ve lost Steve’s part-time income how the hell are we going to cope?
The kids don’t notice how strapped for cash we are. Fortunately, we have Granny and Grandad, who take them out for treats and help us with money for shoes, school uniform, after-school clubs and the occasional weekly shop.
In return, I promise them that when they’re ancient and decrepit they can come and live with us.
‘I don’t think I’d want to,’ says Mum. ‘You’d make me do all the ironing.’
‘I would,’ says Dad. ‘You can bloody well feed me pork pies and egg custard tarts in return for all this cash we’re pouring into you.’
Bless them.
Friday 2nd February
We need to start thinking about the future. If Ben and Lucy want to farm, High House isn’t big enough to support ourselves as well as our children. We go and see Andrew the accountant to talk about succession. He gently suggests selling up and buying a bigger farm. It would mean a larger mortgage, but also a bigger income, and we’d be free of the debts we made when we diversified into a brewery.
It’s something to think about. But we need to start now while the children are still young enough – it’ll be no good leaving it until they are grown up with families of their own.
Sunday 4th February
It’s trying to snow today. There’s a few fat white flakes drifting down and lying on the farm drive. Our grass fields look tired this time of year. I still love the colour of them in winter: a sort of greeny-grey that stands out against the steel colour of the clouds. The light is flat and harsh. It’s still beautiful, but in a washed-out palette compared to the lush greenness of spring and summer.
Steve is paranoid about the state of our grass at the moment. For a long time I didn’t understand why
he got so worked up about muddy gateways or the tractor making wheel ruts in the field. But it finally dawned on me that the grass in our fields is a crop, just as important as our wheat and barley, as the grass feeds our animals, and we need it to be in the best of health to see them through the whole year. Grass stops growing around November, and by this time of year it has lost most of its feed value. We give silage or hay to our flock to make sure they don’t lose any weight and eat enough calories to keep warm in the bitter winter weather.
The only animal that doesn’t need any extra feed during the winter is Candy, who looks like a furry ball all year round. Although I can tell that even she considers the grass less than appetising, as she’s always desperate to get back to the stable hay net.
The grass will start growing again in late March, and during the summer months our fields are a bright emerald green.4 The grass stalks grow so long that they ripple in the wind, like a huge green sea.
We need to look after our grass crop to make sure it remains in top condition. Steve harrows, fertilises and ‘tops’ the grass (cuts off the top few inches) in the early summer to ensure it stays thick and abundant. We are careful to see to it that no field gets too muddy or ‘poached’ by animal hooves in the wet weather, and sheep are rotated through our different fields so that no grazing becomes exhausted.
Tuesday 6th February
Today we decided that it’s time to sort the in-lamb ewes ahead of lambing. We want to put all the singles together in one field, with the larger group of twins being split between the front and back fields and all those sheep carrying triplets going into the shelter of our shed.
This means, in theory, that we can start feeding them the correct amount of sheep feed for the number of lambs they’re carrying: triplets get the most, followed by twins and then singles.
The twins need to be split between the front and back fields as there’s not enough grass in any single field at this time of year to make sure they have enough to eat.
This sounds easy in practice, but this morning we head out to find that all the ewes are mixed up in two big groups in the front and back fields. We need to get them all into the sheep pens and through the sheep race so that we can ‘shed’ (i.e. sort) them into the correct holding pens before we put them back in the field. Except we’ve only got two holding pens, so we’ll have to put the triplets and singles together and then (once we’ve put the twins in the other holding pen into the field) sort them again into their correct section.
My head hurts.
There’s only the two of us. I’ve left the children in the house, with strict instructions not to burn it down or answer the phone. It’s also blowing a gale, which means we shout at each other to be heard over the roaring wind.
Off we go. I stop traffic by standing in the middle of our main road, and Mavis herds all the sheep out of the gate and up towards the farm. It’s early morning, she’s very keen, and she rounds them all up very fast, so the sheep hurtle towards me, while I wave my crook to try and turn them into the farm gate.
‘Mavis! Settle doon!’ shouts Steve.
We don’t want to stress or over-exert pregnant sheep as they could lose their unborn lambs.
‘Lie doon Mavis! Lie doon!’
She drops to her belly but is so keen that she can’t keep still. She creeps towards the back pair of ewes, sending them skittering up the road, which panics the flock, making them run faster and faster.
I wave my arms and the sheep skid around the corner, down the front drive past the brewery and into the sheep pens.
I puff along behind, while Steve brings up the rear on the quad bike.
The first sorting goes well. Singles and triplets in one side, twins in the other.
We then spend an hour herding them out into the correct fields and sorting the triplets into the lambing shed.
Now is the turn of the mixed group of sheep in the back field. As we open the gate I notice our posh neighbour on a horse, trotting down the grassy track towards us.
‘Sybil! I’m just moving sheep!’ I shout to her from the gate.
‘Carry on darling!’ she bellows back, fag in one hand and reins in the other.
By this time Mavis has settled down a bit, and we manage to round up the ewes at a sedate trot and move them up to the gate. However, with all the shouted commands and hollering against the wind, Posh Neighbour’s horse decides that it’s far too noisy for comfort, and it would much prefer to be in the safety of its stable. The horse whips round and starts bucking towards the gate, nose to the grass and four feet off the ground.
Our sheep have never seen an out-of-control horse and rider before, and they burst through the gate, up the drive and into the pens in terror. Mavis can hardly keep up. Sybil manages to hang on, as her horse goes past the gate and out into the road towards home. The last we see of her she’s hanging on for dear life as her horse thunders back to the stable.
‘Bloody hell,’ says Steve, with feeling, ‘that was a bit exciting.’
We all take a moment to settle down.
Once all the sorting and re-sorting and herding has been done we put Mavis back in her warm kennel and sit down with a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit in the lambing shed to watch the triplet ewes settle in.
The ewes are investigating their new home, nosing in the straw and busily munching on a bale of hay. Some of them already look visibly in lamb, with much wider bellies than normal.
We watch a particularly large ewe flop down for a rest: she sags back on her haunches with a groan and then bends her front legs. She rolls slightly on her side, letting her big belly rest into the straw. There’s a loud fart and then she starts to chew her cud, her jaws moving from side to side as the lump of half-digested grass bulges in her throat.
I feed her a few sheep nuts and she gently takes them from my hand and then explores my face with her nose, huffing sheepy questions into my hair.
‘Let’s call her Bertha,’ I say to Steve. ‘That’s a good name for a big sheep. She’ll be massive by April.’
Thursday 8th February
The local paper gets in touch about our stolen sheep. They want to do an article and take a photo of us at 2 p.m. tomorrow. We’re going to look like a right couple of numpties, standing in an empty field, doing a mournful ‘Where’s our sheep?’ face at the camera.
Friday 9th February
Steve has had a haircut and is complaining about being almost twelve stone. I’ve washed my hair and am wearing my best (and only) tweed jacket, which doesn’t quite meet round the middle. The photographer takes one look and positions us on a hillock in the middle of the sheep field, in an attempt, I think, to make us look less short. Steve holds his sheep crook while I lift my chin and stare off into the distance, trying to look distraught and yet noble and to avoid any chance of a double chin.
Mabel the ewe wanders up to check everyone’s pockets for sheep nuts. She’s very persistent and investigates the photographer’s tripod. She’s nose-deep in his camera bag when he tries to nudge her out of the way with one foot. Mabel doesn’t like being nudged, and pushes back so that he trips over a molehill.
‘Bugger off Mabel!’ Steve hisses, as we plaster smiles on our faces and hold the sheep crook a bit higher. My too-tight tweed jacket flaps open and Steve has a red nose.
Fortunately, it only takes about ten minutes, and then every-one can go home. After we’re back in the house I can see Mabel carefully checking and rechecking the grass for spilt sheep nuts.
Saturday 10th February
Wedding season has begun.
I rather enjoy it, as whenever I’m working with sheep on a weekend I collect a small string of bridesmaids who follow me about, get big mud marks across their pretty pastel dresses and green sheep poo on their sparkly shoes and ask me loads of questions.
I always get asked, ‘Do you eat your sheep?’
‘Not all of them at once,’ is the stock answer.
Candy the fat pony plays her part at weddings. For a b
it of excitement I take her out of the field and let any interested tiny wedding guests pat her while she eats the grass on the verge.
Last year I had this little lad following me around. He was from Sunderland, was called Kieran, and was wearing an amazing bright-blue three-piece suit with tie and one of those haircuts where it’s dead short up the back and long and floppy on top. He must have been about seven years old.
‘Can I sit on her?’ he kept asking, while stroking Candy on her neck. Candy never lifts her head from the grass. You could literally put anyone on her back and as long as she has access to food she couldn’t give a stuff.
‘If you ask your Mum and Dad, and they come and lift you on,’ I said, vaguely aware of the possibility of insurance claims due to injury from a small fat pony.
‘Maaaaaaaaaaam!!!’ he screamed across the brewery. Eventually this huge bloke wandered over, also dressed in a blue three-piece suit.
‘This is me Uncle Kev,’ said Kieran.
Uncle Kev looked a little bit worse for wear, but duly lifted Kieran up and stuck him on Candy’s back.
Kieran’s face was a picture. ‘I’ve never sat on a proper horse!’ he said. He kept patting and stroking Candy. ‘I can even lie down!’ he said happily, lying backwards so his head rested on Candy’s bum. ‘It’s dead comfy!’ he beamed.
Candy is always on a diet due to being completely spherical, so is very soft to sit on. She didn’t bat an eyelid at Kieran messing around her back, just kept hoovering up the grass.