Bye, Bye Birdy

What I've been thinking about this week:

1. Bravery
2. Lack thereof

I’m not a naturally brave person. In fact, I’d say I’m a naturally feardy person. My idea of taking part in an extreme sport is playing Scrabble outside. It’s hardly adrenaline racing stuff.

Extreme Sport

This week I’ve had to put my big girl pants on a couple of times (to be fair, post-lockdown all my pants are for big girls but you catch my drift).

I’ve been lucky to have a few days off here and there over the last couple of weeks. And there’s nothing I like more than to spend them in my shed reading or writing.

View from the shed

Last Tuesday I took my laptop, the book I was reading and a cuppa to the shed and made myself comfortable. This mainly involved lighting a candle, switching on the fairy lights and settling in under a cosy blanket (all permitted under the heading of ‘I am 48’).

I’d just opened my book (Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, highly recommended) when there was a fluttering from the wood burner. I ignored it and carried on reading. There was another, louder flutter.

At this point I should mention that I’m not very good with fluttery birds. I have no problem with creepy crawlies and quite happily ignore spiders around the house, letting them get on with whatever it is they do all day after they’ve made the web and had breakfast.

Living with Ivie has made me even less good with fluttery birds. I’ve become too keen to play the damsel in distress card and let him deal with them when they turn up in the stove in the house, tap-tapping on the glass asking politely to be released from captivity.

But last Tuesday Ivie was at silage at the top of the farm. Being at silage means he does not like being interrupted or any suggestion that he should do anything except continue to be at silage until he’s finished.

Another boring view? I couldn't possibly comment.

Let me give you an example. Last Wednesday I took the dog out for her mid-afternoon pee in between meetings. We strolled up to the steading where I could hear an almighty racket coming from the pen inside the shed. The sun streaming in meant I could only see the silhouette of a young bull battering the gate but that was enough to send me walking briskly back to the house and phoning Ivie.

The conversation went something like this.

Me: But what if it gets out?
Ivie: Go and shut the gates to stop them getting up the hill and then shut the ones near the house. It’ll be fine.
Me: But what if it’s already out when I go back up to shut the gate?
Ivie: Just keep out its way.
Me: I’m too scared.
Ivie: Well, I can’t come down. I’m up the top. Phone Kerr. He’s in the bottom field.
Me: But he might come and it’ll have stopped and he’ll think I’m stupid.
Ivie: Well phone Jane.
Me: OK.

Thankfully Jane was much more sympathetic, told me to shut the gates near the house and keep away from the bull which she described as a ‘lot of beast’. Crisis – and need for bravery – averted.

Back to the birds.

I gave myself a pep talk, reminding myself that I once removed a mouse from my bath that my cat had kindly gifted me just before a friend came to visit in Auchencairn, not to mention that I once moved 100 miles with no job and no plan - and that’s working out quite well so far.

So, I put up the hood of my hoodie, donned my fire gloves and opened the double doors of the shed (I’m quite glad everyone else at The Spittal was busy and couldn’t see my very attractive get-up).

PPE

I tip-toed towards the burner, opened the door then legged it outside as fast as I could. Not one but two starlings cheeped loudly, flew to the windowsill, cheeped again and flew past me, no doubt off to tell their pals about the wild adventure they’d just had.

Thank goodness that’s over (or words to that effect), I thought to myself.

And obviously I’ve just had to stop writing this to go and release another starling from my burner. Word’s obviously getting round about the middle-aged woman with the fire gloves and now they all want a look at the eejit.

Gory Stories

 What you should know:

1. I've started laughing at sheep related content online. 
2. There's no going back. 

Last night, I watched two videos online about sheep. There's a sentence I never thought I'd type. Anyone involved in lambing will already have seen them. The first showed lambs running around a field with a soundtrack reminiscent of the Grand National, basically outlining all the ways lambs can find to die. 

*Spoiler Alert* Because I Could wins the race after shrugging off the competition, including Ringworm and Fantastic Mr Fox. 

The second showed a sheep being rescued from a ditch before running away and jumping straight back into the same ditch a few feet away. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. 

They were a welcome antidote after a week of horror stories about lambing and farming in general. Rest assured, there will be no gory details because:

1. Those involved in farming will shrug and say, "yep, been there, seen that."
2. Those not involved in farming will be horrified. 
3. I am a delicate flower. 

Delicate flowers

Like many people, our social lives have been a bit lacking lately. Luckily Galloway Heathers is open again with the addition of the Moo Bar, which serves delicious hot chocolate and tray bakes (try the millionaire's shortbread if you haven't already. Seriously). It's become a bit of a weekly treat for us and, it would seem, lots of others around here, too. 

Last week we bumped into a friend who is very well-versed in all things lambing. Let's call her Ann. Because that's her name. She started regaling a story about nasty things that happen to vulnerable lambs out on the hill. I said, "I don't think I'm hardy enough to hear stories like this." So she told five more. 

I was feeling a little queasy to say the least as we bumped into someone else who asked Ivie how lambing had gone and told another couple of ghastly stories. I can't even remember the content now, I've repressed it so far down in my brain. 

Happy, healthy sheep

I don't even think any of these stories are embellished. They don't have to be, they're so awful in the first place. 

I thought we were over the worst of it but then I remembered that farming is basically the most dangerous industry you can work in. A quick Google tells me that about 360,000 people work in agriculture, or 1% of the total workforce, yet the sector is responsible for 20% of all fatal accidents at work (source: BBC).

Anyway, we had a bit of a jaunt yesterday. It did finish at the garden centre with hot chocolate and mini doughnuts but that's by the by. We took a bit of a circuitous route home, mainly so that Ivie could look at fields and show me where he's cut silage*. And tell me about farm workers' injuries. 

I'm struggling to find something to say about this

So, as you can see, it's been a week. From now on, I only want to hear about thriving animals, farmers with all their limbs intact and cake. Not too much to ask now is it. 

* If anyone can tell me the most suitable response to, "I've cut silage in that field," I would be most appreciative. I'm not sure I'm showing the requisite amount of interest and enthusiasm. 

Sheeting the Pit

Here's what I've learned:
1. It's sheeting the pit not pitting the sheet (but try telling my brain that). 
2. Apparently it was really easy this year (but try telling my body that). 

For a few weeks now I've been hearing rumours that I would be involved in sheeting the pit this year. Like many things in life, I didn't give the reality much thought (I once agreed to walk 500 miles across Spain in my summer holidays without thinking about what that actually meant. Luckily it turned out to be amazing, despite being proposed to by an Australian and an Austrian. But that's another story). 

Somewhere in Spain, 1994

Last Thursday after tea, I was instructed to don my boilersuit, leggings and wellies and join the Wacky Races to the silage pit. I ended up as a hanger-on on the loadall after turning down a lift on the quad (I didn't think Ivie's brother and nephew would appreciate me clinging to them the way I do to Ivie) and in the loadbed of the pick-up (I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of Ivie's sister-in-law, niece and two of her friends by tripping on the way in and on the way out). 

Another member of the team was already up the hill (via tractor) so that was us up to nine. 

This is how the pit looked by the time we'd finished. 

It looks that way for five or six months of the year. 

I've walked past it often in the last couple of years. 

I've never once contemplated how it gets like that. 

For the uninitiated, the pit consists of three concrete sides and an open front. It is filled with cut grass then covered in two layers of plastic, a layer of green mesh and weighted down with tyres. 

BUT the layers of plastic aren't just two single massive sheets. Because that would be too easy - and too difficult (imagine trying to transport a bin bag that size). So, there are side sheets that are rolled in from the sides then the main sheets are rolled down in sections and weighted down at the seams with tyres. I didn't quite grasp which sheets go under and which go over but Ivie seemed to have it under control. At one point, I was sure we were folding French seams Patrick and Esme would be proud of. 

Socially distant teamwork

This was us rolling down the last sheet. By this point, I was sweaty, out of breath and had aching muscles. And we hadn't even started chucking tyres around yet. It was a rude awakening from my 14 weeks of shielding where I haven't ventured off the farm. Apart from a fantastic online Pilates class (thank you, Di), there hasn't been a huge amount of lockdown exercise. That certainly changed last Thursday...

I probably did a bit less than everyone else, partly because I was always one step behind, standing on the wrong sheet or putting a tyre in the wrong place. Frequently all three. But it was one of those occasions I'd have been sad to miss (but don't remind anyone I said so this time next year). It felt like I was making a contribution, however small and unskilled, to the people and place I call home. 

Silage: The Untold Story

Things you should know:

1. The title was just to draw you in. 
2. Sometimes I don't want to know. 

Silaging began this week at The Spittal. The short version of events is that Ivie et al cut the grass, pick it up, put it in a big heap and leave it till winter. Oh, and I don't see Ivie from morning till night. It's like lambing all over again but without the cute lambs to show for it. 

#lambing2020

Of course, there's much more to it than that. I went up the hill to take a look and have a five minute tractor date and kind of wished I hadn't. One of the team was in a big tractor driving (quickly!) up and down the big pile to make it neat, tidy and compact. Obviously if you've grown up around farming things like this are an everyday sight and don't phase you in the slightest (I've yet to find something that does phase Ivie to be fair). But for a townie like me it all looked like a precarious bucking bronco and I didn't like it one bit.

#silage2018
(apparently)

One of the things that you are never far from on the farm is the changing of the seasons. There's a time for everything and it all has a knock-on effect on other jobs and other parts of the year. 

• If there's not enough silage, it will be more expensive to feed the cows in winter. And farmers don't like spending money they don't have to.
• If there's not enough water, farmers spend time filling up troughs when there are plenty of other jobs to do. Like moaning about the weather. 
• And if you don't take the tups away from the ewes by a certain date lambing will go on beyond my birthday. And we don't want that. 

Don't laugh but when I first started seeing Ivie I did a bit of research into going out with a farmer. I found this on the Farmers Weekly website, which was more helpful than it looks. 

I put together my own rules for dating a farmer (Ivie specifically 😉), which include:

• Redefine dates - if you're not going to see your farmer for a while, go to them. This once involved a 90-minute drive to another farm but we got to spend the afternoon together. 
• Have a five minute date if that's all there's time for. Jump in the tractor for a blether about the day and a discussion about what's for tea. 
• Ban phones from the kitchen table! There are times when we only see each other at meal times and I definitely want to see Ivie's smiling face, rather than the top of his head. 
• Laugh every single day. 

The last one is non negotiable. 

#actualdate2018

Of course, there are aspects of silaging that I'll never understand. Did you know that #silage2020 is trending in certain circles these days? Nope me either. Apparently farmers post countless photos and videos of tractors, rows of grass and big machines (forage wagons and choppers, I'm told). That's one circle I'm happy to stand outside. Perhaps that's what's known as a crop circle...