A Farmer's Lot E-Book

Roger Evans

• Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 358

Beschreibung

Roger Evans, everyone's favourite dairy farmer, is back with his daily account of rural life, full of laughter, grumbles and witty observations about what makes life tick in the real countryside. From his own farmyard, or looking down on his village from his tractor or on a stool in the local bar, Roger tells it like it is.   

Leseprobe

To all of my family and my friends in the Powis Arms

Autumn

SEPTEMBER 11TH 2010

It’s a nice sunny Sunday afternoon and I’ve been to feed the calves and look at the dry cows. Driving slowly home, there’s a man with a telescope just inside one of my fields. I’ve seen him about the area before, it’s always seemed obvious that he’s watching wildlife but this is the first time I’ve had chance to speak to him. So I ask him what he’s doing, not as in ‘What do you think you are doing in my field?’ but as in ‘What has caught your attention, because I’m interested?’ So he tells me that he’s heard that there are some hobbies in the area. Hobbies, he tells me, are small birds of prey of a similar size to kestrels or sparrowhawks. So that’s news to me and he goes on to tell me that he monitors the red kites in the area and that his telescope is so powerful that, should one alight in one of the trees around this field (and it’s a 25-acre field), he could read its tag.

So we talk about red kites and I tell him how they have gone from one occasional pair to several in just a few years. He obviously knows that anyway, if he’s monitoring them, so I ask him at what stage he would consider that there were too many kites. He says that would be when there were no crows or magpies left because that’s what kites largely feed on. I tell him that that would be a good thing and he says that he thought I would say that.

So already in a congenial conversation, we are setting out our markers. Privately I think that if I were reincarnated as a red kite I would find easier prey than crows and magpies. So I tell him about how the skylarks have declined on my top ground. Without preamble he says, ‘So you’ve changed your farming system then.’ I find this so annoying: it is a given assumption that farmers are to blame. So I am able to tell him that the system is just as it has always been.

So he asks me why I think the skylarks have declined and I tell him ‘red kites, buzzards and badgers.’ He ignores the first two completely, no surprises there. ‘I think you are wrong: a badger always travels across a field in a straight line so the chances of it coming across a skylark’s nest on that line are very remote.’

I tell him that when I fetch the cows in, in early mornings in the summer, I can see how badgers have been busy because I can track their movements in the dew as they work a field comprehensively, and that I know it’s badgers because I can see where they’ve turned dung pats over looking for grubs. He tells me that he thinks I must be mistaken. So no common ground there then. We say goodbye and I reflect that the encounter has been very much like the encounter I have with opposition supporters at the rugby club. We are all decent, likeable people, we’ll have a drink together after the game, but while the game is going on, we see things completely differently.

***

A few years ago I was out visiting farmers in West Wales. I was being taken around by a farmer in that area. It was in January and it was a foul day. The cloud cover was low, it had rained steadily all morning, and some of the raindrops were white and drifted down in a more leisurely fashion. You knew, because it was such a raw cold day, that by the evening, and with just a slight drop in temperature, it would all be coming down white. It wasn’t a good day for what we were about either. Farmers were outside in this weather, clad in most of the clothes they possessed and were not that inclined to take off all their outdoor gear and take you into a warm kitchen.

We, for our part, did not have the luxury of several layers of clothes and what conversations we had were of a shivery sort and the return to the car and its heater was welcome. So I didn’t need much encouragement when my companion pulled up outside a pub and suggested we have a bar meal. The man I was with was a bit of a local character and he was made very welcome by the ten or so folk in the pub, most of whom also seemed to be farmers. I was introduced all around, ordered fish and chips and backed myself into a corner to watch life and people. It was grand in there, a roaring fire and the rest of the company were all in animated conversation and I enjoyed just watching. To my right hand was a large window and a tractor pulled up outside. It had one of those big spikes fitted to the back, that farmers use to take big bales of silage around when they are feeding cattle in the winter. The farmer gets off and he is clad in his waterproof trousers, wellies and waterproof coat as well though, as I was soon to find, he isn’t wet because his gear has done its job.

He comes into the pub, and is greeted by all the company, he takes off all his gear including his wellies and as he makes his way across the bar in his stockinged feet to the toilets, presumably to wash his hands etc, he makes a small diversion to be introduced to me. I’m watching the landlady while he’s gone and she pulls a pint of Guinness, unbidden, then while it is settling she goes to the whisky optic and takes two pulls at that, puts it next to the Guinness, which she tops up.

My tractor driver returns, knocks back the whisky in one go and then sips away at his Guinness. I’m in that pub for an hour watching what goes on. During the hour he has five pints and ten whiskies. So when we get back in the car, I ask my companion about him. ‘That’s his farm there.’ It’s a job to tell if the pub is in the farmyard or the farm is in the pub car park, they are so close. I ask about the Guinness and the Scotch. ‘That’s what he always drinks; he’s in there every lunchtime and every night. He pays by cheque once a month and the bill is always over £1,000.’ (5 years ago!) ‘How can he afford that?’ I ask. ‘It’s not bad, he makes the cheque out to the landlord by name and has him on his books as a self-employed shepherd.’

SEPTEMBER 18TH 2010

My wife had a big birthday the other day. She said that there were three things that she didn’t want. She said she didn’t want another corgi (We’ve been ‘corgi-less’ for six months now since Toby committed suicide under the electrician’s van). She said she didn’t want a party. She said she didn’t want the bloody birthday anyway. There was nothing at all she could do about the latter; but the first two fell within my remit.

Never very good at doing what I’m told not to do, I made enquiries for a corgi at an early stage. Not that easy to find, corgi pups, but I did eventually locate a litter on a dairy farm in West Wales. They weren’t ready to leave their mum at that stage so we had a three-week-long negotiation, I’ve still not come to terms with the cost, (because buy it I did), how much a kilo it must have been was beyond belief! I struggled to knock them down on price until I happened on another advert for the same pups in a different newspaper at a lower price, which was the price we settled on.

So now we’ve got this lovely little corgi bitch puppy, intent on wrecking the kitchen, and it seems strange to have to go through all the old routine of being careful where you step and putting your best shirts, that are due to be washed, well out of reach. Mert hates it and has given it the odd nip, just to establish a pecking-order; the puppy for its part is fascinated with Mert and follows him about endlessly. It must be the canine equivalent of being plagued by a wasp. Looking further ahead, Mert may have to go to the vets one day because sheep dog cross corgi pups are something I don’t want but, as the pup is only as big as a bag of sugar, it’s not something we need to worry about just yet.

The only part of the pup we haven’t come to terms with is that it has a tail. It doesn’t look right, probably because we are not used to it. I see old pictures of horses with docked tails and I think it’s awful and docking dogs’ tails surely comes in the same category so we’ll have to get used to it.

The party took more planning, because we weren’t to have one, it had to be a surprise. So I invited about 80 people to come at 2.30pm on the Bank Holiday Monday afternoon and at 2.15pm she knew nothing at all about it. She only knew then because some people came early. So all the food prepared by daughter and daughter-in-law appeared out of car boots, a barrel of beer came out of the back of my son’s 4x4 and we were away. Surprises can be good.

***

I know this man who is a Holstein cattle breeder of some repute. He was asked last year, if he would go to judge the dairy cattle at an agricultural show in southern Ireland. If cattle breeding is your particular goal in life, invitations like this sort are the icing on the cake, because just to be asked is an accolade and a really nice sort of recognition and add to that a free trip to Ireland for a couple of days in such lovely countryside and a welcome from such friendly, hospitable people. So go he did, without needing much time to consider. He was met by his hosts when he arrived the day before the show and they had a good evening in the pub they had booked him into. Life did not come much better.

Next day, best suit on, he was collected and taken to the show and he set about his work. There are always lots of classes of dairy cattle, different ages, different breeds and he worked his way diligently through them all and then had to pick out various animals from different breeds as he compared one breed with another until he completed his work by selecting the best dairy animal in the show. It’s a very demanding job and inevitably you don’t please everybody, you just have to give it your best and job done.

He had chance to pause for breath, as it were, and reflect on the outcome of his efforts, with which he was pleased, and more importantly, he was confident that he’d got it right. Leaning on the rail as the last animals were led away, his host steward came up and congratulated him and thanked him for his efforts. ‘I wonder,’ said the steward, ‘if you could help us out. You see, we’ve got a bit of a problem.’ How can you resist such people; he’d enjoyed himself so much. ‘Of course I will, I’ll do anything I can.’ ‘Well,’ and the steward leans closer as if about to impart a confidence, (which as we are soon to find out, he is), ‘The problem is, the donkey judge hasn’t turned up, and we wondered if you would judge them as well.’ My friend is on full alert now, he can feel himself drifting into dangerous territory, ‘But I’ve never owned a donkey in my life, I know nothing about them.’

The man leans even closer, looks furtively to right and left to make sure the conversation is still private, ‘Yes, but there’s only me and you that know that.’ So my friend is eventually persuaded, charmed might be a better word, and to the best of his ability and not without some trepidation, he judges the donkeys. There’s only one big class and he eventually lines them up in what he considers to be the right order. ‘Well,’ says the steward, ‘That’s grand, that’s grand and no mistake, I can see you’ve got a natural eye for a good donkey. But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll put the rosette on the donkey at the other end of the line not this one, because the donkey at the other end, that you’ve put last, hasn’t been beaten in a show for three years.’

***

As you know, I write these notes in the early morning in the kitchen, I’ve just been reminded that if there is a new puppy in a kitchen, it’s a big mistake to walk about in your bare feet.

SEPTEMBER 25TH 2010

When we have calves born here they are allowed to suckle their mums for about three days. After that mums have to get back to work, produce milk to sell, and the calves can go either of two ways. Some of them go on to suckle ‘aunties’ which are usually older cows that are kept separately from the rest of the herd, just for this purpose. There are usually four or five aunties in this group with eight to ten calves and they live as a sort of commune and the calves take milk from wherever they will. Other calves move to a teat feeder where they are also in groups but in this case, milk is fed to them twice a day and they have to be taught to suck the teat. We have two groups of calves on teats: one group will become herd replacements and the other group are beef calves that we will sell at a month old. It usually takes 24 hours or two feeds to get the calves to switch from suckling a cow to suck this teat, they are fed twice during that 24 hours but usually need some guidance and help to make sure they are getting a proper feed. It’s no big deal but it hasn’t gone unnoticed that a popular time to move calves from cow to teat is on Friday afternoons, because it’s me that has to do the training on Saturday mornings. Sometimes it’s just the one calf, sometimes it’s two, today it’s eight!

This is quite a big job because you have to catch each calf and push it up to the teat, put the teat in its mouth and teach it to suck. When it’s sucking you catch the next calf and so on. But it’s not that easy because calf number one will stop sucking and fail to relocate the teat so you have to repeat the procedure endlessly. But I can cope with all that except that today there is a further complication. In amongst these calves, yapping and nipping away at them is our corgi pup. It’s followed me up the yard for the first time, has shot under the gate into the calf pen without any hesitation and is creating chaos. I like a pup that will follow you about the yard without whinging at every puddle and whimpering at any mud, so I put up with the disturbance it is causing. We go back down the yard, Mert and I, with the pup hanging on Mert’s tail. Could be that I’ve paid £400 for a fox?

***

I’ve made lots of mistakes in my life, and hope to make some more, but one of my recent ones was the buying of a ‘new’ Discovery. The man at the garage put me on to it, told me it was for sale and that it was in good order. And it is in good order, except for what is under the bonnet. It goes well for half an hour and then it boils. I’ve spent a lot of money on all the obvious possibilities and we are now left with the one that costs the most money, a cracked block. But not to worry, it will usually take me around the cattle OK but I’ve got two friends staying and they want to see hares. ‘Where’s all these hares you write about?’ It’s a hot day and we’ve not seen one: ‘They are probably in the woods in the shade.’ ‘There you are, told you, he makes it all up.’

So we drive around several fields that are shut up for third cut silage and I show them lots of hares and that shuts them up. But it’s a longer journey than usual and just when we are right on the top of the top field, the Disco boils over. ‘What do we do now?’ ‘We walk down to the road and I’ll phone for someone to fetch us.’ And they get out and they go quiet. No complaints about the walk. They just stand and take in the breath-taking views; they can’t get over how nice it is up here. I see it most days. I know how lucky I am.

SEPTEMBER 30TH 2010

I recently described the behaviour of our new corgi pup, towards Mert, my sheepdog, as similar in nuisance-value to that of an angry wasp. Enough is enough. Mert has lived quite contentedly in what we call our boiler house, a room just outside our kitchen door. The corgi for her part is very much an outdoor dog and moved in there with him. But you don’t need a canine wasp pestering you all day and all night as well. So the corgi lives in the boiler house now in splendid isolation and Mert lives up the yard somewhere. Where he sleeps I’m not sure, he has plenty of warm dry places to choose from, but he’s not happy about it. Luckily, justice in life is never very far away. Moles are back in to our lawn and I recently purchased a device that is supposed to move them on. It gives out intermittent vibrations and is put in a hole in the ground. So while I am making a hole in the lawn to put it in, I notice, just a yard away, another hole in the lawn which is the entrance to a very busy wasps’ nest. I continue quietly with my work but the corgi pup, who is busily trying to eat the batteries I have with me, notices the wasps as well. In no time at all her nose is down the hole and she has been stung on the ear. Her cries of anguish bring the women out of the house. Mert, who is lying 20 yards away, gives just a flicker of a smile.

OCTOBER 9TH 2010

It’s a raw cold wet day. The rain is driving at me on a blustery wind. It’s as unpleasant as it ever gets in December or January and I need to remind myself, fairly regularly, that it is still October. I’m not best pleased. I’m not best pleased on three counts. It’s the time of year when, gradually, your working apparel starts to change with the season. It’s probably 12-13 degrees colder today than it was a couple of days ago. I’ve got a waterproof coat on, but there’s little substance to it and underneath I’m shivering in a thin t-shirt. Today was the day I needed a ‘working’ pullover. I couldn’t find one anywhere, I ransacked the airing cupboard before I came out, to no avail. There will be a row about that before the day’s out, I will be on the receiving end of the row, the fact that I think that working pullovers should be close at hand will do little to help.

In the fields around me are fifty acres of cut grass, what we call third-cut silage. It’s out there in the wet, just like me, and just like me it doesn’t like it and it’s spoiling. We had worked it out right. The weather forecast was right and the grass was right, so the grass was all cut, nearly 100 acres and the contractors gang would have picked it all up safely and easily in one day, before a belt of rain arrived. The same belt of rain that is falling on us, the grass and me, right now. But good plans often suffer little setbacks.

Next machine into the field after the mower is the rake. This gathers about 30 feet of cut grass in to one big swathe ready for the self-propelled chopper to gobble it all up. Rakes do a very fine job of gathering the cut grass together. I don’t know if it’s a design fault or not, but they are not so good at gathering electric poles. So yesterday the rake was wrapped around an electric pole, on another farm, and it took four hours to straighten it and mend it and that is the four hours that the silage gang lost that would have gathered my grass safely in. It’s the sort of thing that happens in farming: you do your best, you make your plans and something totally out of your control contrives to spoil it all, and your crops of grass as well. I don’t know who was driving the rake into the electric pole, but with very little effort, I could hate him.

***

However, believe it nor not, there are bigger issues at hand. The reason I’m out, wet and cold, is that we are TB testing. The cows are injected on Monday and the heifers, which are all over the place at this time of year, are injected on Tuesday. The cows were checked yesterday, Thursday, and today we are doing the dry cows and heifers. The milking cows passed the test, which came as a surprise. This, I had decided, was the year we would fail. The vet had told me that it was a case of when, not if. There’s TB on farms all around me and, a bit like my grass, I had started to make plans in my mind that would cope with the difficulties of TB restrictions. The vet measures skin-reaction with callipers and every time she takes a bit longer with an animal, my heart starts its descent into my stomach.

But these cows are all clear and we move a couple of miles to the last 30 that are with the Limousin bull. And so we go on and on and we are down to the last heifer. I can’t believe it; this heifer has to have several checks with the callipers. The last one! How ironic is that? But she’s clear. I still can’t believe it! Cold and wet, spoilt grass are forgotten. I’ve made crap silage before and will do so again. A warm pullover is found in the airing cupboard in about three seconds. All is well with the world.

***

Most of the cows around here are suckler cows. Beef-type that rear one calf a year and the calf stays with mother until it is weaned and mother prepares for her next calf. These cows live a free sort of life compared with dairy cows. They are obviously handled a lot less and inevitably some of them can be a bit of a handful. Limousin cross cows are reputed to be the worst but all sorts of cows can be a bit of a handful. I know a man who had Welsh Black cows with Limousin cross calves on them that were so wild they could never get them out of a field, so that if ever they wanted to move them they just left the gate open and hoped they would come out on their own. British Blue cows are reckoned to be quite docile and are now fairly popular around here. There are lots of stories about escapades farmers have with these cows but the reality is that if you have a wildish cow that needs some assistance to calve, well it’s not funny, especially if you are on your own.

So it’s caused a lot of amusement locally that one of my neighbours had ten or so cattle that he wants to sell (since the spring) and he can’t get them home into his yard. They’ve been giving him the run-around for four months now. He did get them into a shed one day by mixing them with some quieter cattle but as soon as he shut the shed door, one of them jumped through the asbestos sheets at the other end and the others just followed through the hole it had made. So I think it’s funny until I go around the heifers one afternoon and this group of cattle are in with mine. That’s no big deal as far as I’m concerned, his cattle in my field this year, could be the other way round next. But as I’ve said, these are no ordinary cattle: when they see you they get up and threaten you. I phoned the keeper to warn him they are about. He has to go feeding in the dark mornings and I wouldn’t like him to get caught out.

David and I go up to them one afternoon and from the safety of a four wheel drive we part our cattle from the visitors and drive them to a distant field. I phone the owner and tell him they are on their own now and he can fetch them. A few days later they are back on their own field. Story was, in the pub Saturday night, that the owner moved them on his quad bike. Story was, that one of the cattle jumped over both him and the quad bike and bent the handlebars. Story was, that the animal concerned was 600 kilos and it was chasing him at the time.

OCTOBER 16TH 2010

I was ecstatic that I had passed the TB test, (well the cattle passed it), but I still had those 50 acres of cut grass out in the wet. The next day was unbelievably dry, sunny and windy. The ground and all the grass dried out so quickly that the contractors were able to pick it all up in good order on the Sunday, and little harm was done. I only tell you this in case you were all really worried about that grass and were losing sleep. In the context of the weather we have had since, those were two almost freak dry days. Just have to be grateful for what we get and if it’s good luck, make the most of it.

***

My daughter has a book of photographs of farming scenes taken in the first 20 years or so of the last century. I love looking at these old photographs but there are two in particular that draw my attention. The first shows a line of 14 Shire horses on their way to work in the fields. They are magnificent horses, harnessed together in pairs, and sitting sort of sidesaddle with each pair are seven waggoners who will work the horses all day.

The other photograph is taken on a downland farm with large fields in the background. It is ‘bait’ time, so several teams are drawn up at the top of the field, some have ploughs behind them, others have rollers and cultivators as they work the fresh ploughing down. Every horse has a nosebag on and a blanket over its back. The waggoners are resting as well, backed up to the hedgerow, to shelter from the wind, almost certainly eating bread and cheese and drinking cold tea from bottles.

I suppose we all have things that we regret in life but one of mine is that I never spent more time talking to men who worked the land with horses. There are plenty of people about with horses that can plough an acre at a ploughing match or demonstration at a farm museum, but men who went to work every day to work Shire horses, as they ploughed, sowed and harvested, are mostly gone. And inevitably their stories have gone with them. If you know of one, get yourself down there, or better still point him out to me. It’s almost impossible for us to conceive what a hard life it must have been, but we can give it a good guess. So many of the things we take for granted would be missing.

Those men under the hedge taking their break would certainly be wearing hob nailed boots. If it was very cold, and it probably was, because most of this tillage work would be in the cold winds of March, extra warmth would come from the sack fixed over their shoulders and secured with a horseshoe nail. Rain would only stop them if the land became too wet, never mind how wet they were. No likelihood of a thermos flask to hold a warm drink. They would walk miles and miles every day, and think of the care and attention they would have to give their horses, so that they could do the same. Working horses were the ultimate in reducing the carbon footprint, not that that was an issue in those days. The power was bred on the land and the land fed that power for the rest of its useful life.

My wife’s father would send two Waggoners to catch rabbits until the springtime came around. The sale of the rabbits would pay the rent! He would tell me a bit about working with horses, and he would have told me a lot more but at the time I didn’t realise just how precious that knowledge was. I often tell stories I heard from a man who worked for me, Bill, but Bill was a groom. His world was hunters and riding horses, horses that pulled traps. He had his annual excursion with the travelling Shire stallion but he could never have handled a plough, for instance. He was of very slight build. The story was that he would have made a good jockey. He was starved as a child to give him the right physique, but no one ever trained him.

My father-in-law’s highest land was on top of a hill; it was 40 acres altogether, two long narrow fields that straddled the crest of the hill. Down the crest itself was a long line of beech trees. He did tell me that when they were young, he and his brother would plough those forty acres with a single furrow plough each. I can see that line of trees from our yard. I’ve been up there in the spring when the east wind would cut you in half. I can only guess at the miles they must have walked to plough those 40 acres, with a plough that only took 12 inches at a time. I can certainly imagine them taking their lunch break, backed up against those same beech trees.

I wonder if they lit a fire from dead twigs to warm themselves. They would certainly have matches with them because they both smoked Senior Service at about 60 a day. I wonder about the detail. When they were ploughing, they would be walking in the flat furrow bottom, but later on they would have to work the ground down for roots or spring barley, so just how hard would it be to walk on that rough ground all day behind a cultivator? I wonder what my father-in-law thought in his later years when he would take a ride up there in his Land Rover to see how the ploughing was progressing with a 130hp tractor pulling a five furrow reversible plough at six or seven miles per hour. I wonder what went through his mind? One thing would be for sure, if he had his time over again, I bet he’d prefer to be on the tractor!

Presumably my own generation will also have stories to tell. Not for me, in my youth, the romantic picture of me perched on the back of one of a pair of magnificent polished Shire horses effortlessly moving off the yard to go to plough, sow, reap or mow. Off-hand I can’t remember anyone coming to take a photograph of me with a wheelbarrow and shovel. When there was tillage work going on, I would be out there in the thick of it, but with a bucket picking up stones. My tillage work would be done in the evenings astride a little grey Fergie tractor. Not that it was important to work that land in the evenings: the importance came from the fact that I didn’t get paid overtime. So if some earnest young person wants to know, I’ve got stories to tell.

OCTOBER 23RD 2010

There’s the Big Issue that you have the opportunity to buy in city centres, and there’s the big issue of our kitchen table. At the one end of the table is a pile of newspapers, magazines and the post, which just grows and grows. As it grows it moves further down the table so the people sitting at the table have less and less room to eat. If it moves the other way it inevitably falls on the floor. It’s a big issue because about every three weeks there’s a bit of a row and a bit of a tidy up until the whole process starts over again. But, for this particular pile of various forms and paper, its time has come.

As I sit here writing (on the clear bit) I can hear our corgi pup working assiduously away, chewing one leg off the table. There are wood chips all around as it bites further and further into the wood. There’s no point in stopping it, because it works away at it all night as well but when a piece of the leg falls off, as it surely will, it won’t matter because, waiting at the end, and only needing moving to the corner, is the perfect counterbalance, our pile of paper. It will keep the table nicely balanced on three legs. I must check the corgi’s pedigree; see how much beaver is in it.

***

I may have told you that our ‘broiler’ sheds now produce pullets that go, at point-of-lay, to outdoor laying units. Well, not long ago, one escaped. What shooters would call ‘a runner.’ So this lonely pullet makes its way into the farm buildings and lives there. It’s been there five months now. It’s obviously survived the attentions of any foxes about. Where it sleeps, we don’t know. Its comb is bright red so it must be laying somewhere, but we are yet to find any eggs. You would assume that, as a lone bird living in isolation amongst the buildings, it would be living a solitary life, but creatures have a way of finding company, even with different species, and for the most part, our lonely hen is to be seen with or around the cows.

***

It’s Sunday evening, we milk three times a day at the moment, and my son is on duty for the night milking. My conscience nags at me to go and help him, but it doesn’t nag for long. What I do is go out on the lawn and put my dog Mert around the cows, to fetch them home, to save David some time. The corgi comes across the lawn with us. I am convinced that this corgi will become a cow dog. Once she sees Mert doing his work, she struggles through the fence after him and I think to myself, this is the start of her working career. But she discovers a kitten in some nettles and is distracted as she tries to do something unspeakable to it. Mert has the cows all heading in the right direction now and I stand and watch as they pass up the track about 20 yards from me. We’ve been cross-breeding for some time now as we try to breed a cow that will live a longer and contented life. So our cows are quite a mixture, a couple of black Holsteins, some all-black Swedish Red crosses, a roan Shorthorn, a fawn Jersey, and there, just visible in the deepening twilight, making her way in single file like all the others, is a brown hen.

***

We’ve been away one night to attend a wedding and it’s early on Sunday evening. I could do with a quiet evening in the chair but our living room is dominated on television by people who can’t dance. This makes me restless; it’s a lovely evening so I start to think about what I could be doing outside. I remember that there are ten heifers in the wrong field that will need moving the next day. The first part of the move will take them from where they are into the succession of fields that comprise a small valley. What I want is for them to re-join their group right on the very top where they are supposed to graze off a field we need to plough for wheat. So I think to myself that, if I complete the first part of the move tonight, they will have probably made their way up to the top by tomorrow morning. We only have one old 4x4 that’s roadworthy now and it’s nowhere to be seen so I put Mert into the boot of my Honda and we set off. I’ve got to do a bit of planning now. I’ve got to get the heifers out of the field onto a farm road.

I’ve got to shut the gate behind them and then open an adjoining gate to send them down a track to the little valley. But if I’ve got multiple-choice options, so have the heifers. If they will come out of the field on their own, I reckon me and the dog will manage, but if they won’t, well, I can only stop them going one way and my preferred option will be to stop them going down to the main road.

But I didn’t get where I am today without a bit of ingenuity. One of the advantages of having a big old car, apart from the comfort and the performance it affords, is that, should the need arise, it can be placed in a strategic position that will block a lane off. So I shunt it back and fro until it fits neatly across the lane, the bonnet touching one hedge and the boot the other. Then I open the gate and call the heifers out onto the road. They come to the gate but will come no further. The next obvious option is to put the dog around them, which I do and the downside to this is that I’ve been away for the weekend and the dog has missed me. He, for his part, is determined to show me just how important he is in my life so that I don’t go off and leave him again.

The heifers don’t come out of the field at a trot; they come out of the field at a gallop. My car, the barrier, is 30 yards away, put there as a deterrent to going in that direction, not to be mistaken for the wall of a pen to be jostled against. But the heifers are in full flight, the first one there jumps up on the boot and off the other side and all the others follow it.

My first job now is to shut the field gate to reduce their future options by one. But Mert is still keen to make an impression and without any bidding he’s gone under the car, off down the lane, overtaken the heifers, turned them back and as I get back into the lane they are coming nicely over the boot of the car again in the other direction. They set off quietly now down the track I want them to and the dog and I follow them. We shut the gate behind them; the dog knows he’s done really well and keeps pushing his head against my legs for congratulations, which he gets. I put him back in the car boot, which will still open. It’s getting quite dark now; I’ll have a look at the damage in the morning.

OCTOBER 30TH 2010

So I’m driving up the track to our other land. I do it every day, but it’s a slow drive today, because moving up the track in front of me is a carpet of partridge. I have a great affection for these little birds. It must be something to do with the busy way they scuttle about their business in their large coveys.

It’s evening now and there are quite large numbers making their way to wherever it is that they intend to settle for the night. It’s no wonder the keeper is so vigilant in his continual war against foxes, because these partridge would surely make an easy meal for the nocturnal fox, wherever it is they snuggle down in long grass or game cover. I’ve not seen the guns out after these partridge yet but it can only be a matter of time, and I expect to see them out on any Saturday soon.

NOVEMBER 6TH 2010

‘Eighty four.’ ‘Eighty four what?’ It’s the keeper, he’s been out lamping and he reckons that’s how many hares he’s seen. I’ve been a bit worried about meeting the keeper. The keeper’s got a copy of my first book and he is probably mentioned more than anyone else, so I was just a bit wary. But it’s not a problem. He likes the book and enjoys his role in it. So he is counting hares with even more enthusiasm. He tells me that there have been people caught coursing hares on the next-door estate and that he will keep a special eye out in future. I will as well. There’s lots of signs you can read to see if there’s been someone about. Is that puddle in a gateway clear and undisturbed or has someone driven through it, and if they have, who was it? The keeper uses what we call a mule and it has a narrower track than a normal 4x4 so I always know if it’s him. Some gates I tie with string as well as use its catch, and I tie the knot so that I can tell if someone else has undone it and been through.

***

I took some calves to market yesterday. For the first time in over 12 months the lights were working on the trailer. For the first time in 12 months, I didn’t have to plan my route so that it was nearly all left turns. You can sneak off to the left with fewer problems than turning right. I like to feel that during the year I played a part in bringing back hand signals into this area. If I wind the windows down in the Disco very far I can’t get them back up again, and who wants to drive about on a wet day with the windows down?

When I got back home I felt really good about myself because I’d been legal. I had a crap price for the calves but the well-being outweighed that. On reflection, if a good day is driven by having indicators on a trailer, is that a bit sad? I was thinking recently about the huge value of the reminiscences of older people, and in particular I lamented the fact that I had never spent more time talking to horsemen. The coincidence was that a lady I’d met at a milk meeting turned up next day to show me the books she’d written about local history in the area where she lives, Stafford-shire and the Peak District of Derbyshire. She should be so proud of what she has done because she went to great trouble to record older people’s memories of their lives and the anecdotes that go with those lives, in the person’s own words. I’m reading one book at the moment. It’s enjoyable reading but more important than that, it’s an important work of local history which will be invaluable for generations to come. My own work often takes me into that part of the country: the people are as nice as people you meet anywhere. The scenery in the Peak District is spectacular; well worth a visit.