A Farmer's Diary
Page 24
Wedding parties enjoy taking pictures with our farm as a backdrop. Which we don’t mind at all! But of course, it’s frustrating when people ignore our signs, leave gates open, and stray into areas that might be dangerous or easily damaged.↩
Riggs are part of ‘rigg and furrow’, a system of ploughing used in the Middle Ages that produces distinct built-up ridges and dips or furrows in a field.↩
Blind Sheep used to graze quietly in the paddock, until he suddenly realised that he couldn’t hear any of his sheepy friends. Then he would run urgently round and round in circles until he heard one of his flock and bobble unsteadily after them. At night-time he used to cuddle up next to an elderly ewe that didn’t mind his heavy breathing and general dimness.↩
Our previous collie dog, Nel, used to refuse to get off the bike when checking the sheep, and used to sit on the leather seat to survey her flock from afar, especially when she was getting on in age. She would also follow any walkers who used our footpath and sit and stare at them until they gave in and shared their packed lunches. She was much loved and eventually died of old age, and is buried under the clematis bush next door.↩
Winter
Steve works part-time as a site manager to pay household bills and help bolster the farm income.↩
The latest research says that sheep can recognise up to fifty different human faces. Our flock can definitely recognise our family members and are much more wary of strangers, refusing to come to say hello until they’re tempted with sheep feed or neck scratches.↩
That would piss me right off. There you are, having laboriously ploughed out your small wheat field, when some Italian comes and builds a bloody great wall over the top of it. So much for your harvest.↩
Although of course in the summer of 2018 our grass hardly grew at all, due to the prolonged heatwave from June to August, so rather than emerald green it was a dusty yellow colour instead.↩
Colostrum is the first milk that a new mother produces, full of antibodies and essential fats and vitamins.↩
I had a brain fart halfway through lambing last year and asked for a ‘large tube of KY Jelly please’. Steve was so embarrassed he had to walk to the back of the shop and look at shovels for ten minutes.↩
Spring
A hogg is a one-year-old first-time mum that hasn’t yet been sheared; they tend to just have a single lamb as their first baby.↩
Usually lambs stay with their mothers for around twelve weeks, until they are fully grown. As well as drinking her milk they start to eat grass from day one. Our pet lambs don’t have a mother, so at six weeks, we shut down the Titty Machine in the shed and they drink water and eat lamb feed, hay and eventually grass, when they’re turned out into the paddock.↩
RABI is a welfare charity that exists to help farming people in crisis and financial difficulties.↩
We debated long and hard whether to include this entry in the diary. It’s embarrassing that people will know how desperately we needed help. But then I thought – bugger it. In my opinion it’s important not to sugarcoat how tough it is to make money in farming. It’s also important to show anyone else who is struggling that it is OK to ask for help.↩
‘Orf’ is another name for ‘contagious pustular dermatitis’, which leads to painful spots and rashes. It can also affect humans. We had a friend who caught orf from a sheep and then scratched his bum, and he developed nasty boils all over his bottom.↩
Summer
The first year Scabby came to us she managed to give birth to a lovely little single lamb with no jaw deformity. This year she was far too thin and decrepit to breed from, but twelve months of good grass on our farm seems to have done the trick, and she should be fine to breed from this November.↩
Every year we lose one or two lambs to disease or predators – all farmers are the same, and it’s recommended to budget for losing 1–2 per cent of our lamb flock.↩
A combine harvester has a detachable ‘header bar’ or cutting bar at the front, and it’s so wide it doesn’t fit along our narrow country roads so has to be unhitched, turned horizontally and drawn along behind with a separate tractor.↩
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