A Farmer's Diary

by Sally Urwin

  It’s an impressive sight, the combine rattling along the field, with Steve sticking like glue to its side while the grain pours from the unloading arm and heaps into our trailer. They’re gone all day, and when Steve comes back he’s grinning from ear to ear, covered in a dark-brown dust. The barley crop is in, and we all troop out after supper to inspect the mounds of dark, golden seed heaped up in the shed.

  That evening the porch is full of little piles of yellow barley seed as people tip out their boots or undo trouser turn-ups and scatter the barley across the stone floor.

  Monday 27th August

  The combine is back to cut the wheat crop, and brewery visitors stand and stare while John expertly guides the massive monolith through the farmyard.

  Steve eventually returns to the house late in the evening, chuckling to himself.

  Tonight, when John had finished cutting the barley, he undid the header bar,3 removed it from the front of the combine and hitched it up behind our tractor so Steve could drive it back behind the combine.

  They were trundling in convoy along a single track, and as they turned the corner they met a couple of ladies driving down the road in a tiny red car.

  Apparently, the driver immediately stopped the car in a panic, and tried to back into a gateway. But she stalled her car horizontally across the road, and then sat frozen in her driving seat with her hands covering her eyes.

  John and Steve waited for a bit, but she didn’t take her hands away from her eyes or attempt to move the car.

  After a while Steve got down from his tractor, gently helped her out of the car, reversed it into a gateway and then let the combine past.

  ‘Maybe she thought if she couldn’t see the combine, it wasn’t really there. Did you get cross or sweary at them?’ I asked.

  ‘Nooooooo. Well, John rolled his eyes a bit, but I was very patient.’

  I can sort of understand how the poor lady felt, as when I first saw a combine I couldn’t believe how bloody enormous it was. When you spot one chuntering away in a field it doesn’t look so big, but when it’s bearing down on you in a narrow country lane, it’s so massive it blocks out the light. And the full-length windscreen means you can see the driver staring beadily at you and gesticulating to get your tiny car out the way.

  Wednesday 29th August

  Harvest is a stressful time of year. At least at lambing time Steve and I are both working together, going through the same problems and managing the farm. But at harvest time we only have one tractor, so I just see a distracted Steve occasionally, when he rushes back to ring a contractor or grab a cup of tea.

  When I first married Steve I had visions of having harvest picnics in our stubble fields in lovely sunshine, with apple-cheeked children wearing tasteful Boden clothes, sitting on a Cath Kidston rug, eating wholesome, home-made sausage rolls with lashings of ginger beer.

  Instead, this evening, when I haul the kids out for a picnic in the stubble field, it’s cold, the fields are prickly, the kids are arguing over who last went on the iPad and hate my home-made sandwiches, and all we’ve got to sit on are a couple of slimy sheep feed bags.

  The kids spot Daddy in the next field, doggedly following the combine up and down in his tractor, and they wave their jumpers at him, trying to get his attention. He notices us, and waves back, the sun glinting off his windscreen. The combine is cutting the oilseed rape and there’s a cloud of dust following them both, while a stream of black seed pours from the unloading arm into the back of Steve’s trailer.

  Thursday 30th August

  In our sheep shed we now have three 100-ton piles of wheat, oilseed rape and barley grain. The golden-and-black seed looks a little like sand, and it’s with much difficulty that I persuade the kids that they can’t jump into the mounds and scatter it about as if they were on the beach.

  We’ll store the piles until Don, the wagon driver, arrives with his articulated lorry to transport the grain to a holding depot a few miles away. We’re part of a grain pool with a few other smaller farms, which gives us more clout when our harvest is sold to the big grain traders.

  I spot Marjorie and Ethel determinedly marching towards the nearest pile of barley and we shoo them out of the barn, their wings flapping in fury. The last thing I want is the chickens eating the grain and depositing large amounts of chicken poo into the harvest.

  Steve is proud. The land has averaged four tons of wheat to the acre, and three tons to the acre for the barley and the oilseed rape. These are very respectable figures, and will bring in a much-needed cheque from the grain buyers. The wheat goes for animal feed, the barley to be malted for beer and the oilseed rape is turned into cooking oil and bio diesel.

  Friday 31st August

  Don has arrived, and Steve spends all day filling the lorry with huge scoops of grain.

  We’re glad he’s turned up so soon after the harvest, as sometimes if there’s a long wait the piles of grain start heating up, and then Steve is stressed and spends hours staring at the piles and moving the grain around with shovels in the hope that it doesn’t get too hot.

  We all help by brushing up any dropped seed, and I have a happy few minutes chatting to Don and listening to his reminiscences. He’s planning to retire soon, which is a pity, as he’s a first-rate driver, and manoeuvres the enormous articulated lorry into our farmyard with skill and panache.

  Saturday 1st September

  My wonderful parents have bought a weekend’s holiday in a cottage by the Northumbrian coast for the kids and me. (Steve can’t come as he’s still knee-deep in the harvest, cutting the last fields of wheat.)

  I’m now sitting on a lovely beach with the sun belting down. Despite the heatwave I’m displaying such a bluish-white luminous skin tone it looks as if I’ve only just survived a terrible nuclear winter. Instead of a bikini I’m wearing a sensible floral swimming costume from Marks & Spencer, topped off by a straw hat with a chin strap. I realise halfway through the afternoon that I look just like Thora Hird.

  Sunday 2nd September

  The kids are loving the sea, diving in and out of the waves like tiny porpoises. I’ve been persuaded to go swimming, and I venture a slow breast stroke before being slapped in the face by a long green strand of seaweed.

  I retire to sit on a rock, book in hand, watching the kids jump the waves and gambol in the surf like a couple of bronzed puppies.

  I miss Steve. I wish he could come with us, but he rarely gets time away from the farm, and when he does, he worries about the crops and animals left behind.

  I’m not sure I’m built for holidays. The cottage is wonderful, and it’s a very welcome break. But I must admit that I’m fretting about the animals left behind too, and whether Steve is managing on his own, and whether the harvest is finally finished.

  Monday 3rd September

  Back at home I’m met by Heather holding an extremely grumpy-looking Cinders the kitten.

  She’s in disgrace. Heather found her on top of the remains of a hog roast, all four feet braced against the side of the turnspit while trying to peel off an overlooked strip of crackling.

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ I say, grabbing the cat, who hangs down either side of my grip like a deflated, stripy balloon.

  I promise to keep her inside the next time there’s a wedding, and shove the tiny cat back into the house. She kinks her tail, turns her back in disdain and starts to carefully lick her fur back into place.

  Tuesday 4th September

  Harvest is over. Thank god.

  Steve has lost half a stone in stress and worry, but the weather has held, and we now have a barn full of sweet-smelling hay bales, and all the fields have been cut.

  We’re debating whether to bale the straw or just chop it and plough it back into the soil.

  There’s a UK-wide shortage of bedding and forage due to the previous cold winter, so we would gain a significant income from selling straw bales to local farmers. However, this is balanced against the need to add good fertiliser into the soil. Ch
opped straw is free, and is a great way of nourishing the crop fields without buying in an expensive top dressing such as compost.

  ‘Why can’t you just spread the stuff in our manure pile instead?’ I ask naively.

  ‘Because it’ll only fertilise about ten acres, and then I’ll have to buy it in for the rest of the fields,’ he says.

  He finally decides to bale the majority as straw, as at least then we can sell it to local farmers who are struggling for bedding, and chop the smallest field to plough into the soil.

  I take a walk with Mavis along the golden, dusty stubble fields. She plunges into the grass at the side of the field, searching out rabbits. There’s a family of pheasants scratching about in the soil and they scatter as she bounces through them, squawking in indignation as they fly into the air.

  Wednesday 5th September

  The hedges are groaning with blackberries, so the kids and I take as many pans and bowls as we can and start picking the fruit. Mum and Dad come to help, and there’s a companionable silence as we work along the hedge together, punctuated by the occasional yelp as a thorn penetrates a sleeve or trouser leg.

  Mum wanders off to the bottom of the field. Suddenly there’s a shout and a splash as she puts a foot straight into the stream that girdles the stubble. Apparently, she was stretching over the water to reach a luscious-looking bramble when the bank gave way and she ended up in the water.

  She squelches back to the house while we totter behind with pans crammed with fruit and our mouths stained purple with juice. I towel her off and we sit in front of the TV, picking through the fruit and eating any squashed berries.

  Our hedges always produce masses of fruit, so I’ll make blackberry pie, crumble, jam and eventually, in desperation, freeze as much of the brambles as I can.

  Thursday 6th September

  We’re weighing all the lambs to make sure they’re over 40 kg, and heavy enough to sell at the Mart. Steve herds them into the shed through a narrow sheep race and then pushes them one by one into a small pen containing a flat metal weighing plate.

  As they step on the plate the scale calculates their weight, and it’s satisfying to see that every single lamb is 40 kg, and some of them are much heavier.

  The two ‘Spotty Brothers’ are now mammoth, fully grown sheep, with thick legs and broad snub-nosed faces. Fred and Fuzzy come up to mid-thigh, and have the typical ‘Beltex’ look with a wide, flat face and exaggeratedly muscled backsides. Even Titchy reaches the 40 kg mark, and is now a round, fat woolly oval with a chubby tail.

  The lambs bounce and kick through the race, jinking from side to side and digging in their feet, refusing to stand on the unfamiliar scale. Steve and I sweat and pant, hauling them from the front and pushing from behind. They bolt back into the pens and blare and jostle each other while ramming their bodies against the gate, where Mavis is watching with narrowed eyes. Cute they are not.

  Friday 7th September

  I’m staring out the window when a bevy of lads wearing luminous yellow donkey jackets appear outside and start unloading wheelbarrows, shovels and a pile of black road chippings. It’s Northumberland’s Pothole Repair Crew. Our roads are appalling, and after the bad winter and dry summer the potholes are increasing. They have already burst a couple of tyres and jiggered the suspension on passing cars. I ring round the neighbours in excitement to report the news. I stand in the kitchen window, cup of tea in one hand, and watch the crew start to fill in the holes.

  There’s a young lad with a brush that cleans up the pothole, a man with a spade who shovels in the road chippings and another with a big roller that squashes them all down. Everyone looks exceedingly grumpy.

  Every time a car comes up the road they all down tools, laboriously move the wheelbarrow and the roadroller to the side and stand on the verge as the car drives past. Usually the driver winds down the window and says something along the lines of ‘About time!’, ‘Bloody good job you’re doing there!’ or ‘Make sure it lasts through the winter’.

  One of the men then gets all red about the ears and obviously wants to welly the drivers with his spade.

  I’m on tenterhooks to see if he starts to shout at people. Eventually they move on to the next batch of potholes up the road. I reckon there’s enough work to keep them going right through the summer, autumn and into next January.

  Saturday 8th September

  I have spotted seventeen lapwings in our back field. I know that we had a pair of curlews nesting in the hay fields but I’d no idea there were so many lapwing babies.

  I’ve been hearing them call since early summer. It’s a sort of ‘wooble wooble woowoo weeeeweee wip wip’ sound.

  They have little black-and-white bodies with a tuft on top. I try to take a photo to post on Twitter, but due to the poor quality of my camera phone they come out looking like blurry sparrows.

  Monday 10th September

  We’ve run all our lambs into the sheep sheds to sort through them in preparation for selling them at the Mart tomorrow.

  They need dirty bottoms clipped out and their feet dressing to make them look presentable.

  It’s a hard and heavy day, but worthwhile if we can make the lambs look good enough to squeeze a few more pounds out of the buyers.

  Out of the 290 lambs, around twenty ewe lambs are kept back for breeding, to replace the older ewes in our flock.

  They look fabulous. Randy and Thrusty have done a good job passing on their Beltex muscling, and the lambs look fit, fat and stocky. We leave them in the paddock overnight and spend the evening creating sheep-movement forms, checking the catalogue and writing in the Mart pen cards.

  Tuesday 11th September

  It’s a very busy day at the Mart, and we’re drawn seventh on the sale ballot. We wait our turn, looking over our pens of lambs, scratching a neck here and there as they chew their cud and itch against the bars.

  The whole family goes into the ring, Steve shooing the lambs in front while the kids and I bring up the rear. As the bidding starts I try and catch the eye of the buyer, imploring him to bid to a good price, while the children stare with big eyes at the auctioneer and try to catch what he’s saying.

  Eventually, our pens are sold for an average of £75 per lamb. This is a great price and, rejoicing, we make our way back to the ring, congratulating each other on a good sale.

  The kids are given a pound each to go and present the buyers with ‘luck money’. This is a custom I found astonishing when I first met Steve.

  ‘You mean you give your money to the people that have just bought our lambs?!’ I said in amazement.

  ‘Yes, a couple of quid here and there. Just means that next time there’s a sale they might remember us and bid a little higher.’

  Most of the buyers (god rest their souls) refuse the luck money from the kids, and instead tell them to spend it on themselves. One cheery buyer gives the children a fiver to split between them, and they rush off jubilantly to spend it on sweets and pop at the café.

  This is the culmination of a year’s worth of toil, sweat and tears. It only takes around two minutes to sell each pen of lambs, and the small profit from each animal will be ploughed back into the farm, to pay our debts, to buy more animal feed and crop seed, and to maybe buy some new animals to extend our flock a little.

  We march back to the car and empty trailer, chatting excitedly about the good day we’ve had and calculating how much money the Mart cheque will bring.

  Wednesday 12th September

  Today the farm seems quiet without our flock of bolshy, noisy lambs. The ewes are grazing peacefully in the fields, and the stubble has a bevy of partridge pootling around pecking at the leftover seed.

  We’re back at the beginning of our farming year – and it’s almost time to get Thrusty and Randy into the sheep pens again, to give them the once-over before tupping season starts.

  It’s been a year of ups and downs – the weather, the lack of money and the sheer hard work of hanging on to a farm by our fing
ernails has been the overriding theme. But, more importantly, we’re still here. And I love our little patchwork of fields and woods and buildings, and if we can manage to keep our heads above water for the next few years, to keep High House in good nick to pass on to Lucy and Ben, I’ll be incredibly grateful.

  I walk towards the sheep and Mabel totters over for a neck scratch. I bury my face in her thick wool and inhale her wonderful sheepy smell. She gently huffs at my face, searches briefly for some sheep nuts, then ambles back over the short-cropped grass, to return to her flock.

  Prologue

  In my experience most farms usually have a variety of decrepit unsaleable animals hidden round the back of the sheds that have been kept on out of pity and become ‘pets’. We usually have an assortment that has included Blind Sheep, Scabby Ewe and of course the Fat Pony.↩

  A ‘hemmel’ is a Northumbrian word for a shed.↩

  Autumn

  All names and identifying characteristics have been changed as a) I haven’t asked people and b) I don’t want any cross locals throwing stones at me when I pop into our nearby shop or pub.↩

  ‘Tups’ is the word we use to mean ‘rams’ (i.e. boy sheep). ‘Tupping’ therefore means mating between a ewe and a ram. Many people also use the word ‘working’ if they’re feeling slightly coy. As in, ‘How’s your new tup doing?’ ‘Aye, he’s working well’, which usually means he’s mounting everything in sight with loads of enthusiastic grunting.↩