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?