A Farmer's Diary Read online

  ‘That’s better,’ says Dad happily.

  I’ve got a flask of tea and we sit down on the turf and companionably share a drink out of the plastic cup.

  I love moments like these. The sky is blue and there’s a warm wind. It’s very peaceful at the bottom of the big field, and we can’t hear any car noise, just the occasional baa from one of our sheep. It’s a moment of much-needed quiet before the kids come home on the school bus.

  Saturday 9th September

  I’m stressing about my lack of time and amount of farm paperwork I need to deal with this month. In mid-rant, I look over and realise that Steve is happily watching tractor videos on his mobile phone.

  We are two very different people. But strangely complementary as well.

  I’m constantly talking, inherently anxious, love meeting new people, and I’m at my happiest chatting loudly over dinner to family and friends.

  Steve is a true introvert. He finds meeting new people hard work, and much prefers talking to individuals on his own wavelength about something he’s interested in. Like tractors. He has always struggled talking to strangers and has told me that he finds reading faces or understanding the subtext behind a conversation very difficult.

  He’s a deep thinker, and when he does get anxious, it’s about things that really matter, like our lack of money. He does things one at a time, beginning to end, properly and slowly, laying out all his tools first, collecting all the pieces and admiring them before starting the job. He’s great with numbers, accounts and complicated diagrams.

  I rush at stuff, wanting to get things over as soon as possible and paying no attention to the detail. My mind constantly flips from one new thing to the next. Steve often sits thinking about nothing at all. (People pay good money to learn mindfulness to calm down their anxious minds. Steve does it naturally.)

  His favourite things to do: tinker with a tractor or quad bike; plough a field in a perfect straight line; eat a hot curry; and put together an intricate model or piece of machinery.

  My favourite things to do: worry; sleep; stare at horses; read a book on my own with a cup of tea; and meet my friends to laugh over the latest piece of news and gossip.

  Steve makes me laugh and calms me down when I get upset. He’s my rock. My safe place. Do we argue? Of course, but not as much as you’d think, even though we’re such different people.

  Sunday 10th September

  September is all about preparing our flock of 200 ewes for next year’s lambing.

  Our sheep are a mixture of different lowland breeds (Texel, North of England Mule and Suffolk) that are all prized for their mothering ability and capability of producing two or more lambs.

  Our tups2 are pure Texel or Beltex, which are big, muscular animals that throw chunky lambs that can be sold for good prices for high-quality meat.

  When I first met Steve, I was bowled over by the fact that one sheep could be ‘applied’ to another sheep and then after five months, two new sheep would be born. Not coming from a country background, it seemed so clever! And surely the way to make lots of money! As in most things, it’s rather more complicated than that, and there’s lots of careful preparation before the ewes even get to see the tups.

  Last week, Steve disappeared for a whole day into Hexham and wouldn’t answer my phone calls. He came back from the Mart with a pair of cracking Beltex rams. One of the tups won second in the Mart ‘top tup’ competition, and he’s a beauty with a short stocky body and loads of muscle. They were both around £600, which wipes out all our savings, so we’ll be eating beans on toast until Christmas and dressing the kids in sheep feed bags.

  I’ve always had the job of naming our tups. They all come with their own pedigree names, but I find the usual ‘Boyo’ and ‘Buster’ completely uninspiring. Instead I rename them with the most porn-style monikers I can think of, thereby hopefully inspiring them to great things when they meet our ewes. This time, however, I got carried away with the fact that we’d bought two competition rams, and named them Wilfrid and Cuthbert – posh Northumbrian names.

  Steve pointed out that calling tups after celibate seventh-century Christian saints wasn’t exactly going to inspire their most virile performance – and so the renamed Thrusty Clappernuts and Randy Jackhammer are currently munching grass out in the front paddock. Hopefully their new names will motivate them into great things come mating season.

  So today we’re making sure our boys are ready for the mating season, which means looking at their teeth and feeling their balls for bumps or growths.

  The boys will stay in their own field until the 5th of November, when they join the ladies for the highlight of their year: the chance to mate with as many ewes as possible. This means that due to the ewe’s gestation of 150 days, our lambs will be due on 2nd April if all goes well.

  Each tup can serve around fifty to sixty ewes, so we start feeding them up to get them in the best condition. It’s bloody hard work, and after a good season of tupping, the boys get the rest of the year off, to lie in a sunny paddock and do whatever the sheepy equivalent is of scratching their balls and playing Grand Theft Auto until it’s tupping season again.

  Wednesday 13th September

  Today is a good ploughing day. It’s sunny and there’s a slight breeze, which will help dry up any moisture in the ground so the soil will be crumbly and easy to work.

  I don’t plough as I can’t reach the brakes on our tractor. Everything from the level of the plough to the height of the seat is set by computer from the tractor cab and there’s a complicated sequence of actions to take every time you set off. I can just about manage to reach the accelerator by sitting on a couple of cushions and rolling up my jumper to put in the small of my back. The brake is a different matter; to reach it I have to slide forward so my chin is level with the steering wheel before I can bring the tractor to a juddering halt.

  Today I climb up into the ‘girlfriend’ seat for a few turns around the field. The girlfriend seat is a fold-down spare stool that juts out next to the driver’s seat. It’s unpadded and lacks armrests and I find myself sitting at a constant angle, as the tractor has one wheel in the bottom of the furrow and the other on top of the unploughed earth. It is literally a pain in the back.

  Even so, I enjoy staring out the cab window, the rich smell of the newly turned soil and the satisfaction of seeing the plough converting dusty yellow stubble into long strips of brown. I love watching the seagulls swooping down for the worms and beetles unearthed by the plough and the chance of spotting deer, hares and partridge in the field.

  The sharply pointed plough share (or plough blade) digs eight inches into the soil, so that the whole layer of top earth is turned over, burying any weeds and exposing the chocolate-coloured soil to the air. It’s important to watch the plough out of the rear window to make sure it doesn’t hit any unearthed boulders and shatter. Our fields are littered with huge bluestone rocks that work their way up from the bedrock into the top soil. The corners of the fields have piles of massive stones, most of them scored with deep scars from being struck by a plough many years ago. Some of them must have been there a hundred, or even two hundred years.

  Steve derives huge satisfaction from ploughing in straight lines, entering a zen meditative state. However, I find sitting at a tilt and driving at a constant speed of 4 mph rather tedious after the first few minutes, so I hop down when we reach the top of the field nearest to our house. Once I’m out of the cab Steve chugs away down the furrow again. It will take him two days to plough this biggest field, and he won’t stop except for a quick break for a sausage roll and a can of coke.

  Friday 15th September

  Another ploughing day. I can see Steve from my kitchen window. He’s sitting in the tractor cab with the back window open and I can just hear strains of ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC wafting across the field. The cab is air-conditioned and even has a small fridge next to the seat. He’s in the lap of luxury.

  There’s a cloud of seagulls followi
ng him, looking for unearthed worms, and occasionally I see the tractor shudder to a stop and Steve urgently jump down to dig out an overzealous seagull that has been flattened by the top curve of the ploughed earth. That evening, Steve dashes in to eat his tea (standing up) and then goes straight back out. When the weather is good, I might not see him for twenty-four hours. Looking out the window at 9 p.m. I can see the tractor lit up like a Christmas tree, all fourteen headlights blazing, as he trundles over the ground.

  Saturday 16th September

  Dad and I are drinking coffee together and I’m having a moan at him. I’m feeling down as I’ve put on a lot of weight. Being very short means that every extra pound shows, and I’m bursting out of my farm jeans and leggings. When I’m stressed I can eat for England, and I’ve been worrying about the farm’s poor financial situation and how we’re going to manage over Christmas and into next year.

  Dad is full of sympathy, and he decides that we should both go to the local slimming club, which is held in our local village hall.

  Dad has never dieted in his life, managing to regulate his intake of pies and beer so that he has stayed the same weight throughout his 50s and 60s. But now that he’s nudging 75 he could afford to lose a few pounds.

  The club is held in the evening, so after a stodgy evening meal to keep us going, we trudge off into the gloom, neither of us really looking forward to the experience.

  The first happy moment is spotting one of Dad’s missing hearing aids lying in the gutter outside the hall.

  ‘Ahha!’ he says. ‘I thought I’d lost that.’

  Dad wears hearing aids in both ears and regularly loses one or both by setting them down somewhere and wandering off. Lucy has made him a ‘Special Hearing Aid Case’ from an old egg carton, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

  Before he’d gone for a haircut yesterday, outside the village hall (Dawn’s Mobile Hairdressers – £4.00 for men’s short back ‘n’ sides), he had taken them out and put them in his pocket. One must have fallen out into the gutter.

  He rubs the hearing aid against his jumper and shoves it back in his ear. Unfortunately, the battery has died. Like a lot of hard of hearing folk, Dad tends to overcompensate and talk loudly. As he’s grown older, his tact levels have decreased, which makes for some interesting experiences when he meets new people.

  In the village hall, a very nice leader sits us down and takes us both through the dos and don’ts of the food plan. Dad is fascinated. It’s never occurred to him how to count calories, and he listens carefully, making notes in his notebook, and asking lots of long-winded questions.

  ‘So, if I go cycling and stop at the café,’ he asks, ‘can I have a scone with jam?’

  The leader sighs and explains patiently that no matter how much exercise you do, it still doesn’t mean that you can go mad in the bakery section of the local tearoom. Dad’s face falls.

  The meeting is endless. The leader goes through each member’s weight loss or gain and we all clap like performing seals. After a bit my hands are red raw.

  Dad enjoys the weigh-in very much. He carefully undoes his shoes, belt and watch and makes a tottering pile of loose change on a plastic chair.

  Holding up his trousers in one hand he starts chatting and joking to the ladies in front of him in the weigh-in queue. They think he’s great. I’m alternating between embarrassment and pride as he cracks a few jokes and everyone roars with laughter.

  We stand behind a bloke dressed in a grubby Barbour and wellie boots. I’m wondering whether he’s going to take them off for his weigh-in, when he suddenly spins round. ‘Do you know what you really need to eat?’ he whispers hoarsely.

  We wordlessly shake our heads. We’ve just joined and know nothing.

  ‘Tripe. And bananas. But mainly tripe. The proper white ribby stuff from the butchers, not the bloody awful plastic crap you get in the shops.’

  His breath is so bad that I can feel my eyebrows scorching. Dad takes a wobbly step backwards, still clutching at his trousers with one hand.

  Fortunately, the strange man spins round again to face the front and spends the rest of the session rocking backwards and forwards on his heels murmuring to himself.

  Dad is weighed twice, as he can’t quite believe how heavy he’s become.

  ‘I used to be seven and a half stone when I was 18. I was so thin I would stand sideways and no one knew where I was,’ he says sadly.

  I’m not surprised by my own weight one tiny bit, as I have many years’ expertise in dieting, and like many women, know how much I weigh to the nearest ounce.

  After the meeting, however, Dad is brimming with enthusiasm, and hasn’t been put off one bit by Tripe Man. ‘I’m definitely coming next week. That was brilliant. It all seems so easy,’ he says, as I nod vaguely in response.

  Tuesday 19th September

  We need to replace some of the older ewes this year, so clutching our chequebook we go off to Hexham Mart for the ‘Breeding Sheep’ sale.

  I’m always on my best behaviour at sales and slightly terrified of doing the wrong thing. I’d never been anywhere near the Mart before I met Steve, and didn’t even realise it existed. I always want to fit in, and not be outed as a townie interloper.

  Hexham Mart is a squat grey building on the outskirts of the town, centred around four auction rings and a huge space filled with animal pens. It’s a hive of rural activity, with a great café, Mart office, Hubbucks agricultural merchants, hairdresser, insurance brokers, land agents and the Northumberland county show head office.

  The café does the best fish and chips in Northumberland. The fish is fresh, the chips are crisp, and you get your tea (milk already added) poured into mismatched cups from a huge teapot that sits behind the counter.

  Today we run our eye down the list of sheep lots, and Steve picks out the ewes he wants to see. Buyers can inspect the sheep before they go in the ring, and we make our way down to the pens to cast an eye over the stock.

  We can’t afford many sheep today. Farming is going through a slump; we’ve already borrowed money for new farm equipment to replace some that desperately needed replacing, and we’re still paying the mortgage for the farm diversification into the brewery. It’s always a juggling act as, like most small farmers, our fields and stock aren’t extensive enough to cover costs as well as bring in a living wage.

  We’re not convinced we can afford to buy any more sheep, but last week we crunched through the figures with Andrew, our friendly accountant, and he’s confirmed that buying a few more breeding ewes does stack up financially in the long run (as long as none of them get ill, injure themselves or die, of course). After some undignified pleading with our bank manager, we’ve managed to borrow a bit more money.

  We can just about afford twenty new ewes, which will replace some of the older girls in our flock, as well as adding a few more breeding sheep to the farm. If we buy younger ewe lambs we might even be able to buy a few more, if the price doesn’t go too high.

  Drew, the auctioneer, starts the bidding as the first lot of sheep run into the ring. I find it weirdly relaxing to listen to his voice. All the auctioneers rhythmically string their words together and it becomes soporific if you listen for a while.

  ‘Seventytwoseventytwoseventytwo,’ chants Drew, ‘come-on, somecannyyounglambshere, who’ll give me seventythreeseventythreeseventythree?’

  Mart auction ring number four is set like a stage, with bleachers stacked up around a small sawdust ring. Most of the bidders arrange themselves around this centre stage, with their arms resting on the top rail.

  They all bid secretively, raising just a forefinger or making the tiniest downward motion with their catalogue. It’s not the done thing to show other people that you’re bidding by waving your catalogue or arms around like a madwoman.

  When the ewe lambs we have our eye on come into the ring, Steve gets Drew’s attention by slightly tipping his catalogue and then bids by raising his right forefinger a few millimetres off his
knee. We seem to be bidding against one of the bigger landowners, who’s standing by the ring. The price goes too high and Steve shakes his head at Drew, signalling that he doesn’t want to bid any more.

  The next sheep lot come in: twelve Mule ewe lambs. They’re nice and chunky, with bright eyes and good feet with wonderful speckled legs. They’d be perfect for us. Fortunately, there’s not much competition, and after some surreptitious bidding we win. Each sheep costs us around £80. We decide to stop there, as we’re terrified we’ll overreach our budget.

  Steve wanders off to pay for his new sheep and to back the trailer into the Mart loading dock. I go and have a final cup of tea in the Mart café and watch all the farmers and visitors catching up on the gossip and exchanging snippets of news. I’m beginning to recognise a few faces. There’s a huge variety of people, from elderly retired farmers in ancient tweeds to much younger farmers, most of whom are wearing waterproof trousers and rigger boots. There are a lot of women farmers as well, which is great to see, in green wellies and waterproof coats, and some in fancy gilets and overalls with the name of their farm or flock embroidered on the back. Scattered through the crowd are kids, babies being looked after by their dads for the day, plus a few older children who must have blagged time off school. Lucy begged to come with us this morning – she adores the Mart and the café, and loves to go with Steve wearing her matching Claas overalls. But we’re mean and packed her off on the school bus.

  I buy both kids a chocolate bar from the counter, pick up a Hexham Courant and wander outside to find Steve and our brand-new sheep.

  Wednesday 20th September

  Heather from the brewery catches me walking down the drive.

  ‘There’s some lambs in the yard!’ she pants. ‘Lizzie and I have shooed them back into the field, but there’s still one left.’