by Sally Urwin
Steve and I write a heartfelt thank you letter and carefully put the cheque in a safe place to pay into the bank at the earliest opportunity.
Wednesday 13th June
I tripped over a straw bale last night and landed heavily on my outstretched arm. My elbow made a twanging noise and started to inflate. Ow. Steve took me off to Hexham Urgent Care Centre, where, according to the media, we should be prepared to battle through the pale hordes of flu-ridden undead, gnawing on toilet rolls and drinking the hand sanitiser. But I was seen in thirty minutes. And the hospital was so clean.
There was an elderly man in the waiting room. He’d hurt his finger in his wheelie bin, and we had a good chat, bonding over a chocolate finger from the vending machine.
Dr Abdul was the main doctor on duty. He has treated my family through two gall bladder attacks, a suspected miscarriage, Steve crushing his hand in a combine header, Ben chopping off his fingertip in a door, Lucy falling off the fat pony and toppling off a hay bale, Steve slicing his scalp open with the PTO tractor guard and accidentally ramming the foot-trimming shears into his hand.
Dr Abdul is from Turkey, speaks heavily accented English and is a Hexham institution. Every time I go to Hexham Hospital he’s there, but looking a bit older and wearier each time. We need to give him a medal for services to the sick and injured of Tynedale.
There are rumours that the Hexham Urgent Care unit will be shutting, but it’s an essential part of our household, and I bet an essential part of other local farming businesses.
My elbow was inspected and declared fit, and I was shown the door, all in around an hour. The nurses were cheerful, professional and efficient, and were interested to know how lambing had gone.
Friday 15th June
I’m back in Hexham Urgent Care again. It’s completely my own fault. Today we were inoculating the last few pairs of lambs with a dose of Scabivax Forte. We use Scabivax to prevent orf disease,5 and I was standing in the lambing pens, bending over each pair of lambs, carefully scratching them on the inner part of their thighs with a loaded scarification needle.
A ewe took umbrage to me lifting up one of her lambs and thumped me with her head, just as I was straightening up, needle in hand.
My arm flew up and inadvertently scratched my ear. I then gave it a right good rub with a dirty finger and carried on. Over the next few days my ear started to throb and go yellow. Today it’s leaking pus and is pulsing ominously.
I troop back to see Dr Abdul.
‘You injected yourself with what?’ he asks, bewildered, as his English isn’t that great, and my Turkish is non-existent.
‘Orf vaccine. To stop orf in sheep. When their skin goes all blistered and bumpy,’ I reply.
He inspects my ear then tuts, shakes his head and goes off to ring the NHS to ask when I last had a tetanus injection. I sit on the hospital bed, swinging my wellies backwards and forwards.
Apparently, I haven’t had a tetanus injection since 1992. I get a lecture about keeping up to date with inoculations, then a stinging jab in the arm plus a bag full of antibiotics and some squeezy stuff to put in my ear.
Dr Abdul tells me to see my GP if I suddenly break out in huge orf pustules, and escorts me out of the hospital reception. I’m fairly sure the receptionist rolls her eyes as I shamble away.
I think I can hear cheering as I push open the doors and douse myself in antibacterial hand wash.
Saturday 16th June
We race round the sheep to finish early for the evening, as tonight is the annual village Talent Show. Set up by the vicar, it’s a popular get-together, where anyone can get up and do a ‘turn’ to show off their personal talents.
My friends and I have often discussed whether we could cobble together an act, but lack of confidence means that we always bottle out.
‘Why don’t you do a reading of some of your blog?’ Steve suggests.
I’m too embarrassed. People would recognise me, and there’s nothing like sticking your head above the parapet for attracting criticism. Plus I’m still feeling too anxious to do anything to draw attention to myself.
Instead, we all gather in the village hall and sit at long tables. The vicar does a brilliant intro, and we all sing a song. The hall is packed full and we’re offered sausages in a bun, a selection of home-made puddings and warm glasses of wine.
The local art group is displaying their paintings, while the crafting group has a table covered in intricate embroidery and crochet. There’s a raffle with the usual prizes of a bottle of sherry, a chintzy toiletry set and a big box of chocolates. The entertainment starts. Lucy and Ben sit at the front of the audience, mouths open and eyes wide at the acts on stage. We hardly ever go to the theatre or the cinema, so this is a real treat for them.
First one is a chap on the bagpipes. We all clap along with enthusiasm. Following that is a comedy skit, a young lassie singing songs, some tiny kids playing the violin and the keyboards and eventually, my favourite bit of the show – the Armstrong brothers.
Willie and Ted, 85 and 92, sit on chairs and have a bit of a blether about the old farming community, telling stories from the 1940s and 1950s.
Their accents are proper Northumbrian, with a rolling ‘r’ sound, and they still use words like ‘cowp ow’er the dyke’ (fall over the dyke) and ‘muckle’ (big). Willie tells a story about a farmhand who ‘used to get a bit angry like when we were bairns. We nivver crossed him, but he’d get into a fettle with summat, and when he got these two red dots on his cheeks ye had to run fast into the hoose before he belted you one.’
Fabulous.
It’s a great night. Everyone joins in the singing, laughs uproariously at the sketches and has a fair bit to drink. The kids are bright-eyed with excitement, and don’t want to go home.
When we get back sometime after 10 p.m., we all go around the sheep sheds together, repeating bits of comedy skits to each other and giggling like loons.
Monday 18th June
Steve has brought my car into the shed and is busily trying to fix it himself.
He’s ordered all the parts and bought a book off the Internet to show him what to do. I take him a cup of tea and find him underneath the car, clanking away with a screwdriver and an oily rag.
He pushes himself upright and takes the steaming cuppa out of my hands.
‘I can’t afford to pay for someone to fix it,’ he says sheepishly, ‘but if I have a go, I might be able to do it myself.’
He takes a swig of his tea then crouches down again to get back under the car.
My eyes get all misty. Steve might not be the most romantic bloke in the world, but he’ll work his socks off to keep our little family going.
Summer
Summer is all about watching the weather and hoping it will allow us to make great hay and harvest a good crop of oilseed rape, wheat and barley. We’re also checking our flock for any heat-related health problems, shearing our sheep for the hot weather, weaning the lambs and getting them ready for sale at the Mart.
Wednesday 20th June
The weather forecasters are predicting a heatwave for the next few weeks.
We’ve not had any significant rain for over ten days, and the Sparrow’s Letch is now down to a miserly trickle, the water choked by great swathes of dark-green bittercress weeds.
The terrible winter and spring has checked the growth of our grass anyway, and I dread to think what a prolonged drought might do.
Thursday 21st June
Steve and I are gearing up to do a nekkid summer solstice dance around the hay bales, to ensure a good harvest (with strategically placed chickens for warmth and modesty). Although I’ll also have to tie my bosoms in a bow to keep them out of the dust.
I’ve been watching the crowds gather around Stonehenge on TV, which got me thinking about old farming superstitions. (I was going to get up to take a picture of the solstice dawn over our wheat fields, but I’m crappy at getting up in the morning, and it was cold.)
Some of the
farmers I know are still superstitious – but it’s understandable when your harvest and livelihood depends on the whims of the weather gods. It’s important to keep them happy.
We still know people who can make beautiful corn dollies from the last sheaf of cut wheat or barley. Originally, they were kept safe until the new year, when they were ploughed into the first furrow – a sacrifice to keep the harvest god happy. The Church Christianised the whole idea, so now corn dollies are displayed in the local church for Harvest Festival.
Whalton, a village twelve miles away, used to make a ‘kern babby’ (corn baby) from the last sheaf of the harvest, dress it up and display it in the church until the Harvest Festival. I’ve seen an old picture of a kern babby with children dancing around it – the babby is set up like a maypole and looks well over seven foot tall, wrapped in a long white dress with an explosion of wheat and flowers for a head. It’s a bit unnerving, to be honest.
Old iron is nailed up over doorways to keep away bad luck, usually in the form of a horseshoe. (We have some huge shoes that must have been used by heavy horses pre-war.)
The wooden beams in our old buildings have the occasional scratched ‘VV’ mark. Steve thinks they’re just carpenter’s marks, but they do look very like the ‘witch prevention’ marks I’ve seen. VV refers to ‘Virgo Virginum’, or the Virgin Mary. It’s often scratched in plaster or woodwork over doorways and windows to prevent evil spirits entering a building.
When the farm buildings were converted into the brewery in 2003, our builders pressed copper coins into the wet plaster near the roof to ensure good luck. Old traditions die hard around these parts.
Friday 22nd June
The summer is underway, and every weekend the brewery hosts one or two wedding ceremonies. The kids and I like to hang over the stone wall and watch the bride arriving. Today is a particularly upmarket event. The guests gather outside our kitchen window and we stare at them in their beautiful dresses, morning coats and big hats.
We’re becoming experts in wedding dress fashions. For a long time, it was all about strapless corsets, but now, lace is back in vogue, and almost every bride has a beautiful lacey bodice to their dress, with long, silky skirts.
This bride is wearing a long-sleeved lace dress with a circlet of pink flowers in her hair, and her many bridesmaids are dressed in a bright, retro fuschia and orange flowered fabric.
‘My nanna used to have that as her bedroom curtains,’ says Steve, pointing at the flowery dresses of the bridesmaids, who are now lining up outside our window. I shut the window in case someone overhears. I must admit they do have a certain 1970s sort of vibe, and I’m pretty sure I can remember a childhood bedspread in the same material.
The guests follow the registrar for the ceremony in the hay barn, which has been decorated with big bunches of bright pink flowers, fairy lights and huge cream paper globes. We lurk in our front garden listening to the tinkle of polite conversation and the pop and fizz of champagne bottles being opened and poured.
We must be very quiet when the ceremony is taking place, as it’s held in the open-sided hay barn, so we all tiptoe around in the background, feeding sheep and bedding up the pet lambs. Steve tries hard not to crank up any tractors or quad bikes when the marriage ceremony is happening, although during a stressful harvest he has been known to just keep on driving his tractor and trailer right through a wedding reception.
Then the party starts, and we can hear the strains of music and hum of conversation drifting from the brewery buildings. During the summer many brides hire a marquee, and then you can really hear the live bands or the ceilidh dance caller. Some of them are great, some are not so good, but in any case, I’m now word perfect to ‘Come on Eileen’ and most of the Coldplay back catalogue.
After I put the kids to bed I go out for my late-night check and there’s a chap staggering around the farm machines in the barn. He’s absolutely hammered.
‘I like your tractorshh,’ he slurs happily at me. I nod and smile and try to steer him out of the barn. He must have ignored all the warning signs.
‘Can I have a go on it?’ he asks. ‘Go on. The big one. Over there. That one.’ He points unsteadily to our black Valtra tractor that’s parked up in the corner, while his body takes on a sideways lean.
‘Errrr, no?’ I quaver, trying to shoo him out of the shed without getting a face full of hot, beery breath.
‘Ahhhhhhhhhh, gan on. Gan onnnnn,’ he wheedles. ‘I’ll be ever so careful. I promishhh.’
I manage to get him to the barn door and then tell him that he needs to go back to the party, in case he falls over.
He suddenly hauls himself up to his full height and shouts ‘I can go where i likes!’
Fair enough. I’m not about to start fighting with a big hairy drunk. I back away and, uncharitably hoping he manages to impale himself on the tractor bale spikes, go and find who he belongs to. Eventually his embarrassed wife manages to coax him out of the barn and back into the party.
She’s ever so apologetic. Warning signs and door locks don’t seem to work against the average determined drunk wedding guest. I hope he has a satanic hangover the next morning.
Saturday 23rd June
On the morning after the wedding Lucy and Ben gallop out to the hay barn to pick over the party detritus.
I discover Lucy has claimed some party hats and has found a stash of unopened confetti under one of the tables. I’ve stopped trying to prevent them from scavenging for things after a wedding. The kids see it as their haul, and the brewery staff don’t seem to mind. If they’re not peeling up sweets from the cobbles or chugging half-drunk glasses of champagne, I’m OK.
However, I spot Ben firkling in one corner of the farmyard, turning his body away from me so I can’t see what he’s doing.
‘What is it?!’ There’s no response. ‘Come on, hand it over!’ I demand, holding my hand out flat.
Sheepishly he turns around and I see that he’s eating a discarded packet of Doritos that have lain half opened next to the sheep feed all night.
‘Ben, that’s disgusting!’ I snap. ‘God knows where they’ve been.’
It’s not like I don’t feed the kids. They get three solid meals a day plus ad-lib snacks. And sweets too. It must be the thrill of finding ‘treasure’ left behind by party guests.
When wedding parties lay on children’s entertainment for their younger guests I have great difficulty in persuading Lucy and Ben that they can’t join in and watch the magician or have a go on someone else’s bouncy castle.
‘Just because you live here doesn’t mean that you’re automatically invited to someone else’s wedding,’ I instruct, as they press their noses inconsolably against the lounge window, watching kids in party dresses bouncing up and down and hooting with excitement.
I did find Ben in his pyjamas having a sneaky go on a pirate bouncy castle last year. At six years old the temptation had become too much, and he’d got up, undone the front door and rushed out in his onesie and wellies to join the other kids. I heard him over the hedge and marched out to haul him back into the house. He had such a telling off that I’m hoping he won’t dare to do it again. The children also don’t realise, in their innocence, that as we don’t know the guests, I don’t want them wandering up to them and chatting, as they do with other farm visitors.
Lucy now watches guests like a hawk out of her upstairs bedroom window.
‘They’re all drunk again Mum!’ she calls down to me. ‘Good for them!’ I shout up the stairs. I’m glad people have a good time on the farm. And if everyone gets a bit merry, I’m not going to judge. When I go to a wedding I like to get my money’s worth, and have a right good go at the buffet and bar, until I get too over-excited and Steve has to drag me home.
Sunday 24th June
I’m balancing precariously on the roof of Candy’s stable, legs on either side of the top ridge, holding a brush and long rake in both hands.
‘I’m not enjoying this very much,’ I say.
Steve is sitting on the bottom rung of the ladder. He looks up and shades his eyes against the sun.
‘Don’t move around a lot. I don’t want you to go through the roof. Fixing it will cost a fortune.’
We’re clearing out the gutters, as otherwise they clog with leaves and rainwater pours over the top and drips onto Candy and our sheep below. One year we were too busy to dig them out and we ended up with a torrent of water that soaked the straw and ruined a few bales of hay.
I’m on the roof as I’m lighter than Steve, although I’m not convinced that this is the real reason. He doesn’t much like heights and prefers to shout up commands while I totter unsteadily up the ladder and balance on the tiles.
There’s an actual tree sapling growing in one of the gutters round the back of the building, and I inch down to hoick it out, wobbling dangerously when I throw it over the side. It misses Steve by inches. I start to poke out the clumps of decaying twigs and leaves and haul up the thick carpet of moss that covers the gutters. I throw it into the stable yard, taking great delight in aiming at Steve’s head. He ducks under the shelter of the stable door until I’ve finished, and then hands up the handle of the power washer. This is much more fun. I scour out the pipes and gutters, managing to accidentally soak Steve a few times as well. The job is finally done, and I shuffle my way back to the ladder and creep down the rungs, inadvertently standing on Steve’s hand in the process. It’s a good feeling knowing that the gutters are clear, and our buildings will now cope with any torrential rainstorms.