A Farmer's Diary

by Sally Urwin

  Thursday 1st March

  It’s World Book Day at school, when all the local parents desperately turn out our wardrobes to find some approximation of a book-themed costume.

  Ben wants to go as Bear Grylls. Bear has written lots of children’s books and Ben is now obsessed with the idea of Going on Adventures. He’s packed a bag (plastic dinosaur, toothbrush, spare pair of pants) and drawn lots of maps with big crosses and captions like ‘Tresure here look!’. We’ve started to lock the door in the evening just in case he decides that he wants to go on an adventure into the farm in the middle of the night.

  I manage to find a pair of khaki trousers and a black top. What else does Bear wear when he’s on a mission?

  ‘A belt made of bullets,’ says Ben solemnly.

  I am not sending him into school with shotgun cartridges Sellotaped to his trouser belt. Instead we borrow a camouflage T-shirt to go with the trousers and a backpack stuffed full of Useful Things (mostly baler twine).

  Lucy finds her own outfit, and decides to go to school as a Warrior Cat. When they’ve both left on the school bus, it takes me about an hour to tidy all the discarded outfit solutions that have been strewn around the room.

  Friday 2nd March

  Steve has been offered another full-time position but is now trying to negotiate part-time or flexible hours. His prospective employers won’t budge. They tell him that it’s imperative that he works the full forty hours a week between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. It’s just impossible and so frustrating. After long discussion, he turns down the job. This is two full-time jobs we’ve had to decline. We’re back to square one.

  We’re fed up but I find a leftover birthday voucher for a meal in a local Chinese restaurant. I don’t think we’ve been out together since before Christmas.

  During the duck pancakes Steve starts to talk about lambing.

  ‘You realise we have twice as many sheep as last year?’ he asks while shovelling in crispy duck. ‘So, we’ll be in the lambing shed most of the time?’

  I realise this, but tentatively offer the opinion that if I’m knackered I’ll be able to go and have a nap during the day. I love mid-afternoon naps.

  ‘You’ll not get the bloody chance!’ says Steve, waving his fork for emphasis.

  ‘I reckon we might have twenty-a-day lambing each day. How on earth are you going to have a lie-down? And I know your naps. You’re often out for the count for over an hour. Snoring flat out.’

  He starts using his knife and fork on the spring rolls. ‘I just don’t think you realise how much hard work it’s going to be.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say crossly. ‘Mum can come and look after the kids for a bit, and I’ll just stay in the shed all day.’

  I’m sick of him going on about how much hard work lambing will be. I don’t want to think about it until it happens.

  I snap back, ‘But what are we going to do about checking the sheep overnight? If you get another day job, you won’t be able to do it. I’ll have to get up each night.’

  I am dreading this.

  That evening I finally sit down and think about it, and I realise that it is going to be tough, and I’m going to have to get fitter and stronger to be able to cope with the day-to-day grind. I’m out of shape and struggle even to lift a single water bucket. I make a resolution to get back to the gym for the next few weeks to give me a head start. But, lying on the sofa, I realise I’m more excited than terrified.

  I am going to do the whole bloody lambing. I’m going to lamb all the lambs. I might be middle-aged, and a mum, and not have a whole load of experience, but I’ll show them.

  I imagine myself lean and strong, with thin thighs, in attractive waterproof overalls, striding through the lambing shed like I own it.

  I spend the rest of the evening searching through eBay for waterproof trousers, short leg, size 14, that don’t look like a pair of plastic bags stitched together at the crotch.

  Sunday 4th March

  After moaning on Twitter about the lack of women’s farming wear I’ve been sent a link by a lady who owns a business dedicated to ‘Outdoors Wear for Women’.

  I flick through the website. Some of the waterproof trousers are floral. There’s a pink boiler suit with leopard-skin pocket flaps. I just can’t see myself in the lambing shed in a pair of pink floral overalls with leopard-skin pockets flapping at my boobs. I resign myself to wearing ill-fitting Flexothane leggings instead.

  Monday 5th March

  Today I feel a bit more organised. I go to an agricultural merchant’s in Hexham to buy the lambing supplies.

  These include:

  Colostrum tube and syringe, for tube-feeding newborn lambs who won’t drink.

  So-called ‘titty bottles’ for feeding pet lambs. In the past I used to come over all prudish and refuse to use the term, and instead insisted on asking seriously for ‘lamb milk bottles and teats’ with a po-faced expression. It didn’t work, as everyone just asked me how many ‘titty bottles’ I needed.

  A huge tube of birthing gel.6

  Iodine to spray on newborn umbilical cord stumps after they’re born.

  I was going to buy buckets. We always need lots and lots of buckets. But I saw the price (£4.50 a pop) and instead have decided to use ice-cream tubs, old sheep-lick cartons, horse buckets – in fact anything that can hold water and a scoop of sheep feed.

  I also went a bit mad and sent off for a ‘sheep-restraining device’ on the Internet.

  This ‘Restrain-o-Sheep’ device is apparently ‘The easy, humane way to restrain stock. Can be used again and again for lambing, foot trimming and transportation.’ It’s a thick bit of plastic in a half-moon shape that fits over the top of a sheep’s head, with two holes at either side for her two front feet. I can’t wait to give it a go.

  Wednesday 7th March

  The Restrain-o-Sheep device has arrived. I try but can’t get it round any of our sheep’s heads. We obviously need the extra, extra large size for our freakishly gigantic animals. After a lot of wrestling with a panicking ewe I throw it into the corner of the sheep pen.

  I’ll need to practice catching sheep with my new crook and my sheer athletic ability.

  Friday 9th March

  Today is pen-making day. We need thirty-two separate pens made from metal and wooden hurdles fixed together with bag ties and baler twine. They’ll be built around the perimeter of our lambing shed, fixed to each other and the wall.

  The ewes will lamb in the main shed, and then we will coax each new mother and her babies into one of these individual pens, where they’ll stay for at least twenty-four hours, to make sure they bond properly, and to ensure that the lambs can get a good feed of milk.

  It’s hard work lifting hurdles, and after a couple of hours I’ve got splinters under my thumbnail.

  Finally, by about 2 p.m., we’ve built all the pens we need – sixteen along one side of the shed, and sixteen along the other.

  The next step is to fill them all with straw and make sure there’s enough water and feed buckets for each pen.

  I go in search of the water buckets. I know we have them somewhere, but during the year they go walkabout.

  I find a big pile of them behind a huge pile of empty fertiliser sacks. They’re filthy. Rolling my eyes, I set to, washing them all in freezing cold water with a threadbare dandy brush I’ve found in my pony-grooming kit.

  Empty sheep-lick containers make good feed buckets for sheep. I’ve also collected a huge pile of these, and methodically go through each one, swilling them clean with water from the trough.

  Finally, I’m finished. It’s taken me all day. But there’s something very satisfying about the lambing shed, now that it’s all bedded up with clean straw.

  Steve has made a final pen at the end of the long line, and he’s put in a big bale of clean straw and one of hay. It smells wonderful. I collapse back into a pile of clean straw and inspect my hands. Washing buckets in cold water has turned them red and cracked.


  Cold water, cold weather and all sorts of lambing goopiness all work together to turn my hands into sandpaper and crack the skin around my nails. I make a mental note to buy a bucket of hand cream before lambing starts.

  Monday 12th March

  Inspired by the facilities inside the lambing-course shed, I decide it’s essential to be able to make a cup of tea when I’m on lambing duty, so I’ve gone and bought a big hot-water urn off eBay. It’s the type of urn that you see in village halls and WI meetings.

  It arrives by courier, all shiny and chrome, and I put it on my makeshift table in the middle of the lambing barn. I’ve made the table out of a sheet of old plywood balanced on four car tyres. It’s low to the ground and wobbles a bit, but it’ll do. I dust the cobwebs off the wood and add my boxes of teabags, sugar and a pile of those little fiddly pots of UHT milk you get in hotel rooms.

  I’ve also liberated a couple of old blackboard signs that the tearoom normally uses to write out their daily specials, and have bought a packet of chalks. I’ll use this to write down what time each set of lambs were born, which pens they’ve gone into and whether they’ve had any antibiotics or had a top-up of extra milk from the bottle.

  Alongside the tea urn goes a box with lambing lube, lambing ropes (to pull out lambs from inside the uterus), antibiotics, new syringes and a box of gloves.

  I don’t wear gloves normally. I can’t find them small enough to fit my hands, so they slip off. I’ve had to fish them out from inside the ewe on a couple of occasions. But I keep seeing other farmers wearing gloves on TV and on the Internet, so I thought I’d better buy a box. For the look of the thing. And I do wear them sometimes to pick up the odd stray afterbirth that’s left inside the pen.

  My final item is a big book called A Manual of Lambing Techniques by Agnes Winter and Cicely Hill. It’s a good introduction to all the different birth presentations that can happen. Well-thumbed, it’s got a huge bloodstain right across the front from last year’s lambing.

  I think I’m sorted. I recheck all my supplies then proudly show them to Steve. He tries not to laugh. He normally does the lambing on his own with nothing more than a length of baler twine and a bottle of lube.

  ‘Excellent, pet,’ he says. ‘I think you’re prepared for every eventuality I can possibly think of.’

  Tuesday 13th March

  The weather forecast is heavy snow. I have a friend who is an amateur meteorologist, and he gives me a call on my mobile.

  ‘There’s a huge polar vortex on its way,’ he says. ‘It’s going to be bad. Snowdrifts and freezing winds straight from the Arctic.’

  Oh god. This is the last thing we need, just before lambing.

  At dinner time the first few flakes start to fall. The kids sit transfixed in front of the window as light snow quickly turns into a thick, driving blizzard. Within an hour or so the road is covered and the wind starts to pick up, whipping the snow into drifts.

  Candy is standing by the gate with her bottom turned into the sleet and her head dipped below the stone wall. The snow has formed a thick layer on her back and neck. As soon as I open the gate she makes for her stable, without even stopping to let me put on her head collar. Once inside she tucks into her hay net. She’s obviously glad to be in the warmth.

  The lambing sheds aren’t ready for the ewes that are still outside. We still need to move the farm machinery from inside the shed to make enough room for the rest of the flock. And we can’t do that when it’s snowing, as the machines will get bogged down in the field gates.

  The wind starts to howl, and as darkness falls we check all the stock outside. They have plenty of haylage and shelter, so we all scurry back inside and put on the fire.

  Wednesday 14th March

  We wake up to two feet of white, crisp snow. The kids are squealing in excitement, and I ring the school to tell them not to send the school bus. It’ll have to be a snow day.

  Lucy and Ben throw on their coats and rush outside to make snow angels and find their sledge.

  Steve and I start trudging around the farm to check on all our animals.

  It’s –10°C, so cold that my face starts to sting. I’ve got a scarf so I pull that over my mouth and nose to help me breathe in the frigid air. My breath condenses on the fleece and icicles form. It’s like trying to walk in the Arctic.

  We feed the sheep inside, pushing out the snowdrifts that have piled up against the shed door.

  The water in the sheep shed is running sluggishly, always a sign that it’s about to freeze. Steve carries a clean petrol drum back to the house to fill with warm water to defrost the pipes.

  Once he’s finished faffing around with the water we get on the quad to feed the rest of the sheep.

  The ewes are pleased to see us and run after the bike, plunging through the deep drifts. We always feed them on the rigg tops as the ground is drier. Or rather it would be, if there wasn’t two feet of drifting snow.

  We dig out the sheep troughs and pour in the feed. This field is exposed to the weather and the wind chill pushes the temperature down even further. I’m shivering in my two coats and ball up my fists in my pockets to try and keep them warm. I turn my back to the wind and wipe the hail and ice off my glasses.

  This isn’t fun. I never thought marrying a farmer would be all picnics in hayfields, but this is like role-playing Scott of the Antarctic.

  ‘Happy Steve?’ I shout over the heads of the sheep. ‘Champion,’ he calls back sarcastically.

  Thursday 15th March

  School is cancelled for another day. It’s so cold that the children only manage fifteen minutes outside before they come back in complaining of frozen feet and hands. Lucy is in tears, as she’s been pushed over by the wind and her boots are full of snow. I keep the wood-burning stove on all day and they sit, noses against the window, watching the flakes fall.

  We’re marooned inside the house, only going outside to defrost pipes, feed sheep and take out more silage. I can’t get Candy into her field, as the gate won’t open against a massive drift. She stands in her stable, her nose poking over the door.

  Despite the cold, the farm looks picturesque, just like a Christmas card. The snow flattens all the bumps and hollows in the field, and the smooth white surface makes it easy to see animal tracks from hares, rabbits and pheasants.

  The gutters on our farm buildings all sport dagger-like icicles, some so long that they almost reach the ground. The road and farm track is an ice rink, and just as lethal. No cars are attempting to go down our road.

  We trudge round to our neighbours to check everyone has food, firewood and running water. Toni, our next-door neighbour, is an A&E nurse in Cumbria, and she’s on the phone to her work, telling them that she’s completely snowed in. Her children play with Lucy and Ben and make an igloo in our back garden, cutting bricks out of the snow with the help of a kitchen knife and a Tesco shopping crate.

  I drive the quad bike into the back field. The rigg and furrow lie hidden under the snow, and I mistakenly drive into a big bank of ice so that the quad becomes stuck across the top of a rigg, with both wheels churning uselessly into the snow. Steve and I try rocking it backwards and forwards and the wheels spin, throwing out big clods of mud and snow. Eventually we concede defeat and decide to carry the sheep feed to the ewes on our backs. Steve can manage a whole bag, whereas I can only carry half.

  On the way back walking is slightly easier, as it’s more downhill, but I fall over twice, face-planting into a snowdrift. By the time we reach the field gate my face and fingers are totally frozen.

  Steve sends me into the house to defrost while he starts the tractor to fetch the quad bike.

  I warm up and then set off outside again – water pipes need defrosting and I want to give Steve a hand. He’s pulled the quad bike into the farmyard and we put it back in the shed. At least we can use the tractor to take feed to the sheep and it won’t get stuck in the bumps and hollows of the field. I wish the snow would stop, but it’s still falling
– big, fat flakes blown by the howling wind into huge drifts in the lee of buildings and stone walls.

  Friday 16th March

  Third day of snow. Still no school. We need to go out to get some groceries and pick up a prescription for a neighbour. I ring Toni and ask if she needs any food. We’re all running out of milk and bread.

  A farmer has been along our road in his tractor, flattening the snow and creating a path. Steve decides to take his truck, so the kids and I pile into the car, swathed in coats and hats and gloves.

  We creep along the road, avoiding deep snow drifts and icy patches. The first thing we spot is an oil tanker stuck on the corner flanked by a police 4×4 with flashing yellow lights. The tanker driver is standing next to the cab inspecting his wheels, which are jammed into the ditch on the side of the road.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’ shouts Steve out of the car window. The policeman strolls over in his luminous yellow jacket.

  ‘Do you want me to get the tractor?’ asks Steve helpfully. ‘I’ve got a chain that would pull it out.’

  ‘No point,’ says the policeman tersely. ‘We’ve already tried, and he’s absolutely stuck.’

  Promising to check back on our way home, we gingerly drive onwards. We’ve only gone as far as the next corner when we spot a white car in the ditch next to the road. There’s a lady making hand signals at us from the driver’s seat.

  Jumping out, I haul myself through the thigh-high snow to reach her window.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says breathlessly. ‘I pulled to the side of the road to let this car past and now I’m stuck!’ She looks flustered. Peering into the car I see two young children and a very excited collie dog.