Winter routines

Autumn has gently wandered into winter here in North Devon.  Grey, damp days are interspersed with icy mornings, bright and crisp.  The house sparrows chirrup around my frozen birdbath and dash back to the roof cavity when I come out with replacement water – no doubt they are snug in our insulation, and welcome residents at that.

The farm routine has settled again, revolving now mostly around the cattle rather than the sheep.   Ewes should be pregnant, last year's lambs are setting off in batches to their final destination, and the rams are breathing a sigh of relief and hanging out in their all-male gang in Little Field.  Apart from scattering cake and the occasional pedicure, their needs are simple.

The cattle on the other hand take a lot of looking after now that they are in the sheds for the winter.  Twice daily feedings, regular shovelling of the results of their feedings, spreading of straw – our back muscles ache and we smell even less pleasant than usual (especially when slipping over in the yard).  Sonny positively hums – it's very hard to cuddle a dog that desperately wants a hug when he smells rank.   But we do our best.

Even now our thoughts are on lambing, although we don't start until the end of March.  It'll be the first time in many years that lambing has taken place in our sheds and we have to plan our approach…with 350+ ewes expecting at least some form of midwifery or post-natal care and attention (even if it is just feeding), we need to be on the ball and have any repairs completed, the kitchen up-and-running…

I also realised something interesting - when we lamb depends on Jesus.  That might make sense anyway if you are religious, and plenty of farming-related activities traditionally revolve around the Christian calendar.  However, I don't mean it quite so theologically.  Our season depends on Ian's dad's season (so that we don't overlap too much and we can help on the other farm) - that in turn depends on when the veterinary students are available for their two weeks of training - and their availability depends on their Easter holidays - which depend on Jesus.  Or maybe that's just interesting to me.

To everyone who has time off over the holiday season, make sure you relax and recharge.  Joey and Freddy plan to (and no, they are not allowed on the sofa!)

The cattle are lowing

No, I haven't suddenly had a burst of excitement for Christmas.  The cattle really are lowing…as well as belly-aching, moaning, snorting, and fog-horning (which is appropriate for the weather).  This spring's calves have finally been separated from their mothers, and both cows and young are complaining vociferously, although I would have thought that six months of udder-feeding was enough for any mother.  However, peace reigns when we fork in the silage – just the comfortable sounds of chewing, with the occasional chirp from visiting chaffinches and robins, and the soft splattering of the inevitable reaction at the other end of the beasts.  Contrary to expectation, the sheds have a heady and quite pleasant aroma of fermented grass and hay – from the silage and cow breath.  Unfortunately, so does our kitchen where the wellies and overalls live.

Meanwhile, elsewhere the autumn calvers are doing just that.  Three new little-uns in the past week.

 One of the new calves

While the cattle are enjoying their winter quarters, the sheep are still out and about in the fields.  The twelve weedy lambs are now looking good, thriving on extra cake.  It's not quite a mobbing when they are fed, but their enthusiasm is infectious and cheering.  Their bigger brothers and sisters are having a little extra too – it doesn't pay to be too greedy though, as the fatter you are, the quicker you go off to fulfil your destiny.

The rams have gone in with the ewes here and elsewhere – across the county you can see sheep with coloured bottoms.  During tupping, the rams have complicated leather-wear for courting, marking their conquests with grease-paint.  On the way to Tiverton we saw one sheep that was completely red - I shall draw no conclusions.

Our girls in the fog

In absentia - Ann's diary

Autumn is here and, having been on holiday to sunny climes, it was a rude shock to return to colder weather and turning trees.  However, the animals made us feel back at home very quickly, each in their own way.  Cody brought us a pheasant for dinner (not quick enough off the mark, he was grabbed by the tail-feathers and dispatched posthaste), sheep wandered out into the lane after someone left the gate open, and later in the evening a cow and calf made a bid for freedom through a dodgy bit of fence.

While we were away, Ann held the reins.  Her notes for us of farm-related happenings deserve a guest spot on the blog, so here are some highlights…with explanatory comments from me in [brackets].   A lovely flavour of the ebb and flow of the farming week.

Wednesday 10^th.  You have been gone for two hours and the calves are breaking out between Cathy and Paul's and Rabbity Gate.  Was on my way to wish Cathy a Happy Birthday, but changed into wellies and went off, armed with baling twine!

Thursday 11^th.  Awake at 4am worrying about calves getting out and being away from the farm until lunchtime before feeding the stock.  So got up and fed the cows at 5:30!  I still got to market on time.  Dad came out to mend the fence.  Horrendous rain – for the second time in 20 years the backyard flooded.

Friday 12^th. Waited until daylight today, and yet more rain. Went to check stock, but dad had forgotten to turn off the battery, so no tractor!  And no quad bike as it was behind the tractor as usual.  OK, so I thought I'd use Peanut [the pickup truck] and jump leads, but we now need to add them to the list of things that were stolen.  Wheezy ram is not looking very well.  On a much lighter note, Sonny has just moved the lambs from 5 Acres to 7 Acres in a very steady fashion. 10 out of 10.

Saturday 13^th.  Everything OK today except the calf is still lame. More rats in the cake bag [not Victoria sponge, but nuggets of goodies for stock], so I had a session venting my fury at yesterday.  Banging rats with a plastic tube is very effective.  Three dispatched and one escaped.

Sunday 14^th. Wall-to-wall sunshine!  Well almost.  Cows and calves all lying on the hillside.

Monday 15^th.  Yet more rain, particularly after lunch.  Dad came up to inject the lame calf, although it was not as lame as Saturday.  We put up the creep gate [to let calves in and keep cows out] on the left-hand side of the sheds.  Went back later to make sure all was OK.  All calves lying in a bed of straw with their eyes shut!

Tuesday 16^th. We did 15 Acres calves for worms and 3 lambs for maggots.  The weedy lambs are now in 4 Acres, and the black-faced 2ths [last year's ewes that were kept for breeding, pronounced tudduths] are in Cleeve.

Wednesday 17^th. The lippy lamb [swollen lip – obvious, really!] came for cake this morning, so I hope he will make it.  Mr Trick came to trim the road hedges.  Two cows and their calves arrived from Catcombe Auction – very good looking.

Thursday 18^th. Still a few showers.  Lippy lamb not going to make it.

Friday 19^th. Dad came to do everything today as I had to be elsewhere.  Lippy lamb died – sorry!

Saturday 20^th. A lovely day after the fog cleared!

Sunday 21^st. Just a bit of fog, then wall-to-wall sunshine.  Everything now basking in the sun at last.  Barney [Ann's name for all bulls, so this is Comet] has been coming to the crossroad gate for cake, and we usually manage to do it without the cows seeing!

Coming to a burger near you

Buffalo Bill hoofed in to take care of the cows' conjugal needs while Comet was incapacitated – saved from a trip to the abattoir for another year of hanky panky, a final fling in his old age.  But alas the season is over and a final destination has been found that can deal with such a huge beast.

So Bill is gone, the cows are lowing a sigh of relief as his bedside manner was a bit brusque, and Comet is back with his girls.

Buffalo Bill RIP 2012

It's all in the way you get in the way

I've found my role in life.  Did you know that an important part of farming is standing around?  Not non-specific standing around, but carefully co-ordinated standing in the middle of the road to direct (delete as appropriate) sheep / cattle / cars / tractors / horny bulls.  I seem to do a lot of this – and apparently am quite good at it. 

Chewing grass at a junction, I idly wonder if perhaps I am slightly over-educated to be a traffic cone in North Devon (although the now-automatic reaching into the hedge for something to put in my mouth to chew probably indicates otherwise).  However, having watched Ian M running down the road after a (delete as appropriate) cow / ram / lamb (that one was my fault) that has bucked the trend and taken a new direction in life, I can conclude that standing is a vital function for farming.  It can be undertaken in a slapdash manner, or elevated to a noble and brave art.

  

You need poise (so you can jump out of the way when something big runs towards you), intelligence (to know when to jump and when to stand your ground to turn the tide), courage (not to take off in a sprint in the opposite direction), and humour (so you can laugh at yourself when all dignity flies out of the window as you leap around making funny noises and flapping your arms in front of assembled onlookers who are being inconvenienced by the Carnival of Animals passing by … of course, you are not facing the onlookers as the whole point is to chivvy along the stock, so they get the back view, which must be even stranger).

So I enjoy my standing (and chewing), and take great pleasure in knowing that without me the sheep or cows would end up all over the countryside.  It also gives me time to notice things that were before unknown.  For example, I'd never realised that udders are covered in hair.  Of course, I hadn't given much thought to udders, but it surprised me nevertheless.  Reading that back, perhaps I need to get out a bit more often.

Mules mules everywhere

We've just become the proud owners of 40 of our own sheep, all mules.  In the interests of educating myself, I turned to the dictionary – and who knew there were so many uses for such a humble word?  A mule can be a backless shoe or slipper, a stubborn person, a spinning machine, or any hybrid animal.  Aussies use 'mules' as a verb, to mean surgical removal of folds of skin on a sheep's butt to reduce blowfly strike (ugg).  And a more conventional mule is the sterile offspring of a male donkey and female horse.  Meanwhile, the offspring of a female donkey and male horse is actually called a hinny (I'm making no comment on why it is that northern folk call their wives and girlfriends hinny, other than I assume it is derived from honey rather than something more equine!)

Our girls are Exmoor Horn x Blue-faced Leicester crosses, so are pure white, quite smiley, and have sticky-up ears (that's not the technical term I am told).  Here they are with their friends: Blackface x Blue-faced Leicester 'Scotch mules' (spotty faces) and Suffolk crosses (Suffolks crossed with a mule, and they have the black faces – you think you're confused!)

So, another month to go and we'll have these lovely ladies knocked up – and as the rams are of several breeds or crosses, the lambs are going to be a real mix of things.  Hybrid vigour.  In the meantime, Sonny is having a great time 'herding' them…the quotes will remain until he and Ian M have gone on their dog training course.

Farming 101 – describing a sheep

The sheep are the white ones, right?   Hang on, some of the cattle are also white, so sheep are small and white…except that there are also white ones with black faces, and one completely black lamb, and some that are sort of spotty (in the Dalmatian sense of the word, rather than hormonal teenage yobbo sense).  And some of the calves are small too.

So we need to find something else to define them.  How about  - sheep are the ones with two udders instead of four?  Great!  But what about those without udders?  Yes, they have something dangling underneath, and there are two of them, but it's quite another set-up down there.  Some of them look like they need the ram equivalent of a sports bra, as running is quite awkward and not at all comfortable.  Timing your gait with the swing of your money-makers is probably as difficult to perfect as patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time.  Lambs don't have udders yet either (I know, I turned one over to check).

What about wool?  Hooray, sheep have wool!  Apparently so do mammoths, but they are in short supply in Devon, so no likelihood of mixing them up.  The only trouble is, sometimes sheep don't have wool.  It's all in big bags at the Wool Marketing Board.

Well, we all know what a sheep looks like, right?  So just call a sheep a sheep.  Unless of course it's a mule (a type of cross-breed) or a hog (a second-year).  I have a sneaky suspicion that this can lead to a lot of confusion. 

Apparently, not a sheep.

The world's best sheepdog

The world's best sheepdog yaps at the quad bike, barks at the tractor and howls when locked in the car to keep him out of harm's way.  He nips at the heels of sheep, eats crap and cools off in fetid green pools.  With pupils dilated from adrenalin, he overdoes it to the point of collapse and then has to be carried up the hill, stinking, wet and panting bad (dung) breath.  The next day he'll look very sorry for himself, muscles aching and coat matted, pathetic eyes beseeching a treat that will make it all better, or at least the next treat after next would possibly do it…please dad.  Butter wouldn't melt.

And of course, he learns from experience and does exactly the same thing the following week.

Meanwhile, others take life a little more slowly…

Perhaps both of them could learn from the new kid on the block, as Sonny joins the team?

Baaa humbug!

What a racket!  Moving ewes and lambs between the sheds and fields, you can hear us coming along the lanes long before we hove into view.  Entertainment for the stray tourist who watches the woolly procession amble forth, rubbing clean the side of the car as it passes by.  An annoyance to anyone trying to get somewhere quickly, as is evidenced by several faces that put me in mind of a bulldog licking a nettle – well, if you live in the country, expect country life.

A sheep's ass view of the proceedings.

Some of the ewes are completely unperturbed by the drama unfolding around them, and happily nibble on the passing vegetation with that strange mindless blissfulness that sheep manage to cultivate, but some of their sorority bellow out their angst at losing their lambs (who are a merely a few feet back in the throng) – great deep maaas that, if I were made of weaker stuff, would tug at the heartstrings.  And yet others appear to be baa-ing because it is expected of them, rather than paying any real attention to what they are doing – indiscriminate belly-aching.  Daft buggers.

The lambs are much more entertaining...  "Where is mum?  Shall I run forwards or backwards?  Oh, look, a nice bit of willow-herb, wait, where's my brother?  Yikes, a dog!  Maybe I can get away by climbing over the back of these slow-pokes.  That's not my mum!  Oh, look, a nice bit of willow-herb."  And so we progress up the hill.  Some lambs bleating continually, others stopping and putting every last bit of effort into a long baaaaaaaaaaaa, then piddling and rushing on. 

Suddenly, as if co-ordinated by some ovine conductor in the ether, everyone shuts up at the same time – a perfect second of silence – before cacophony returns.  I look at a particularly tiny lamb wandering along beside me, calm and chewing.  She looks back and says 'Bah!' and nothing more.  The lamb teenage equivalent of 'whatever'.  Indeed.

A mizzle a day keeps the shearers away

There is an Exmoor saying that seems to be particularly pertinent this week: "If you can't see Dartmoor, then it's raining.  If you can see Dartmoor, it's about to rain."  This morning as I walked across the heather, I could barely see Exmoor – and I was standing on it.

Reminding myself that the needles of horizontal rain are good for my skin tone and that the liquid running down my face is in fact not blood, I ponder on the weather.   According to common dogma, Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow (not actually correct, but never let the truth get in the way of a good 'factoid'), and so we have many ways of talking about rain: drizzling, mizzling (down here), pouring, sleeting, spitting, sheeting … and a plethora of incredibly inventive euphemisms: raining cats and dogs, or stair-rods.  Pissing it down.  And my personal favourite from my friend Kay, it's toad-strangler weather.

So here I am, trudging across the sopping landscape.  The sheep and cows are tightly tucked under the hedges out of the wind (common sense from inordinately daft animals), but I have to take three keen and bright-eyed dogs for a walk, twice a day, whatever the weather.  Bedraggled and dripping, oh the joy they get from finding the muddiest pool to roll in (then almost smiling, they wait until they are in the house before shaking themselves off, and for the rest of the day lie contentedly steaming 'aromas of the moors').

While they run around in naked abandon, I look like a walking tent.  Boots, leggings, waterproof jacket, hat – all to keep the rain out, while my trapped body heat ensures that I arrive home completely drenched anyway.  And it all has to be done right – the jeans go in the boots, the leggings outside (otherwise you end up with boots filled with water – see, I have less common sense than the sheep), and the jacket pocket tabs must go on the outside, otherwise you end up with pockets filled with water in which your mobile phone floats about (that day Ian M had even less common sense than me, but unfortunately, it was my mobile that died an ignominious death at his hands).

But hey, the good news is that by September, it may stop raining.  We can take out the garden table just in time for a BBQ before we pack it away again for the winter.  And we will be pathetically grateful for it too.

Poor old Comet

The bull is having a bad reaction to daylight.  I know it sounds strange, but the poor chap really does have an intolerance to light.  He's eaten something untoward, our best guess is St John's wort or a related plant (although how and where, no idea yet), and has rapidly developed what looks like severe sunburn. 

At first we thought he had cut himself.  On closer inspection, his skin was not cut, but has split - and the poor beast is looking decidedly sorry for himself.  He's not the most expressive animal at the best of times, but it must sting dreadfully, and apart from injections, there's not much we can do other than keep him inside out of harm's (light's!) way. I for one am not offering to rub lotion into his hide - he may look docile, but he's a big bugger and might not take kindly to it.  As farmer R says, it's the wettest June in Devon for a long time, and his bloody bull gets sunburnt.

His name isn't actually Comet - I don't think he has one, at least not to us humans, but his cattle chums may defer to him in one way or another.  Comet is my attempt at light farm irony.  He is white(-ish), but he doesn't streak anywhere (although now I come to think of it, he must streak all the time, being naked) - in fact, I would say that lugubrious is the perfect word for him...excessively doleful.  He looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and servicing his cows is a duty that must be fulfilled, rather than enjoyed.

So, don't eat anything strange in the countryside - even if you are a bull.  I am reminded of my American friend Brett who visited, and decided that he would taste some of the wild mint.  Looking at his swollen mouth, I told him the difference between mint and stinging nettles.  His plaintive response was "But there's nothing dangerous in the UK!"

Just tell that to Comet.

[update 23rd - yes, we found St John's wort!  Even in humans taking it for depression, sensitivity to light can be a side effect.  Now you know.]