Lambing: Part 1

Things I know:

1. This is the third lambing since I started seeing Ivie (I know this because I have made three swear jars).
2. That's a potty-mouthed cow on the top one, not a sheep (I adapted it for calving).

Lambing began at the Spittal about ten days ago and, so far, there are around a dozen lambs. I have to admit, I'm still at the developmental stage of a three year old, "Look! Baby lambs!". I don't think anyone that actually lives on a farm ever passes through that stage. Farmers are born rolling their eyes and swearing at ewes. 

Sheep have a death wish, you see. I have it on good authority that from the moment they're born, their main aim is to die. They don't seem to have that survival instinct the rest of us have and, instead, they're looking for ways to roll on to their backs and die, prolapse and die and get stuck in a ditch and die. I detect a pattern emerging...

We haven't reached 'peak lambing' - as I like to call it - yet so Ivie still spends almost a full night in bed and conversation at lunchtime is as coherent as normal (on both sides). Give it a couple of weeks and Ivie will be snatching a couple of hours' kip here and there on the sofa and wandering through his days like a bit of a zombie. 

It's the time of year I feel most useless on the farm. It would take longer for Ivie to tell me what to do than to just do it himself so all I can do is keep a pot of soup on the cooker, keep the baking tin well-stocked and not make too many demands.

I like to go up to the lambing shed with Ivie last thing at night to see what's happening. So far this year I haven't seen any lambs being born but I did have a mama ewe glare and stamp her hooves at me last night as I tried to take a closer look at her baby. I left her to it and made Ivie pose for a selfie instead. 

Talking the Talk

What I've learned
You have to choose your moment

One of the things about going out with a farmer is that you often don't have a lot of time together all in one go. Depending on the time of year, sometimes it's just a quick catch up over lunch at midday and that's it until lunch the next day.

That's fine when all we have to catch up on is whether we're running out of milk, what we might fancy for tea or jokes about Iceland (the supermarket, not the country). But when there are bigger things to discuss, it can be hard to find the right time.

For example, back when we'd been seeing each other for about six months, I wanted to talk to Ivie about feelings and stuff. It was the longest relationship I'd been in for 20 years and it felt like things were getting a bit more serious. Ivie had had a terrifying accident in his tractor a few weeks previously and it had made me realise (a) how dangerous his industry is (b) how I felt about him and (c) that I should probably tell him.

But it was May. So we went on a tractor date.

I drove an hour and a half to Snudge's farm* where Ivie was spreading fertiliser. After accompanying him for about two hours I figured I'd better tell him why I was there and muttered those three little terrifying words. He muttered three little words back ("the feeling's mutual") but I wasn't really expecting what happened next.

"Get out," he said, pointing to the tractor door.
"What?!" I asked, feeling a bit confused (especially as we were at least three fields away from my car).
"Get out," he said a bit more forcefully.
"What do you mean?," I asked.
"That gate's needing opened," he pointed, grinning.
"Bloody hell," I muttered as I jumped down from the cab and stomped to the next gate.

Tractor Date View

* I learned the other day that one of the fields at Snudge's is called Bagswallop. Ivie's lucky I didn't bagswallop him.

I Name This Field

Things I Didn't Know
1. Fields have names
2. That's not always useful

Not long after I started seeing Ivie, my friend Sheena casually dropped into conversation that fields have names. 

Isa looking at a field

"What?" I asked idly before realising that, of course, that makes sense. If it was up to me to describe places on the farm, it would probably be along the lines of:

• that field where the sheep was on its back. I was wearing my blue jumper. It might have been a Tuesday.
• that field we were in when you told me that joke about Iceland. The supermarket, not the country. 
• the field where you asked me if I wanted to drive the quad bike and I said no. 

Ivie in a field

So, as you can see, it's much better that fields have names. 

When I asked Ivie about the names of the fields at the Spittal he reeled off a list of names, some that made more sense than others. 

• Papa's Park. His Papa? Nope, it was already called that when Ivie Snr bought the farm in the 60s. 
• The Cairn Field. At least there's actually a cairn in it. 
• The Top of the 50 Acre and The Bottom of the 50 Acre (I didn't get a satisfactory answer to why they're not called the Top 25 and Bottom 25).
• High Piquant and Low Piquant. These aren't the real names but there are definitely Ps and Qs in there somewhere. 
• The House Field. It's in front of the house. Obviously. 
• I think there might also be one called the Keystone which is in the middle. Possibly...
• The Dandy Field. I made that one up. But I kinda like it. 

Cows in a field

As you can tell by the captions on the photos, my learning is progressing well. I'd be interested to hear from other farm residents what their fields are called and to see if they make any more sense.