Ice, Ice Baby

 What I’ve been thinking about this week:

• Socialising

What I haven’t been thinking about:

• Fertiliser prices

Over the last few weeks, it feels like that world has started to open up a lot more. I’ve gone from being a bit anxious about leaving the farm to looking forward to seeing other people. I’ve still got some anti-social tendencies but they’re more personality-related than covid-related. 

For the last couple of years, we’ve all been making our own entertainment at home. Being middle-aged, ours has revolved around drinking wine, eating salty snacks and laughing at our own jokes. Now that we’re comfortable being out and about much more, I’m cutting down on the frazzles so that my going out clothes still fit but I’ll hold on to the vino and hilarity if you don’t mind.

Last week, we were at a curling club dinner to celebrate 50 years of the local ice rink. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d type.)

Over 300 people were packed on to the iceless ice rink for dinner, drinks and a lot of speeches. It was a good night, catching up with people we hadn’t seen for a long time and being in the same room as a lot of Olympians and shiny medals. There was a shout-out to all the clubs represented and I was more than a little disappointed that ‘curling widows’ wasn’t a recognised group in its own right. 

What I’d forgotten about socialising in the outside world with Ivie was the topics of conversation. There’s a lot of crossover between the curling and farming communities so inevitably the chat around our table turned to lambing, silaging and fertiliser prices. In fact, one couple even had to leave early because a cow was calving at home. Another sentence I never thought I’d type. 

Very expensive, apparently

I like to think I can hold my own a bit more these days when it comes to farming chat. Gone are the days when I didn’t recognise anything or anyone being discussed and drifted off in my own head, circling back when we got to more familiar ground (or asking really, really stupid questions). Having said that, there was the party where the men I was standing with got on to different brands of wellies and which cattle breeds were their favourites to cross. Even I couldn’t fake interest in that. 

What’s changed, though, is that I know more people and I can go off and find someone who wants to talk about the important things in life. Like Sewing Bee, the age spaniels finally calm the **** down and how long it’ll be before we’ll need varifocals. I told you I was middle-aged. 

Ambitious stick carrying

Rain, Rain Come Away In

Things you should know:

1. Farmers like it when it rains

2. You're unlikely to go on a date with a farmer on a sunny day

As I write these points above it makes me realise that the chances of actually going on a date with a farmer at all are pretty slim. Even when we're not in isolation. 

Throughout the year, Ivie and I joke that we'll see each other in November - it's no coincidence that we got together one November. Our first date was crammed in between curling fixtures and car maintenance but we made it. Just. 

So, we've just had some of the warmest, driest weeks on record. It's been great for someone like me who's been shielding since mid-March as I've been able to sit outside and drink tea, go for walks (within the confines of the farm) and top up my vitamin D. 

Not so great for farmers or their cows. Cows drink a HUGE amount of water every day. I've just googled it to try and get a definitive answer but answers varied between 3 and 70 gallons so we'll just leave it at A Lot. 

                   

Ivie has spent an inordinate amount of time guddling about with water, topping up troughs that the cows empty as soon as he can fill them and shaking his head at the low levels in the hydro pond. 

Aside from having an impact on the water needed for cows, the rain (or lack thereof) also affects every single other bloody thing that Ivie does. I don't pretend to understand what conditions are required for each job but it's along the lines of:

"I hope the wind dies down/picks up, the rain starts/stops and the sun shines/doesn't so that I can spray/spread/cut/disc/roll...."

Remember the old cliche of British Rail and the wrong sort of leaves on the line...?

Anyway, this week the dry spell has ended and we've had almost enough rain. Ivie's as happy as Larry, whoever Larry was. 

I've just googled that, too, and got a more satisfactory answer than to cows' capacity for drink:

It originates from an Australian boxer called Larry Foley in the 1890s, who never lost a fight. He retired at 32 and collected a purse of £1,000 for his final fight. 

Thank you, google.

Tuesday morning was the happiest I'd seen Ivie in weeks. He came in for breakfast head to toe in waterproofs, dripping wet and beaming from ear to ear. I half expected him to shake himself like a dog all over the kitchen floor before lying in front of the fire for the rest of the day.

Suffice to say, I'm looking forward to our second date in November 2021. 

Add the Number You First Thought Of....

Things you should know:
1. Farmers don't always mean what they say or say what they mean.

2. They're all better at maths than Rachel Riley.

3. It's all voodoo.  

Before I started seeing Ivie, I hadn't really thought about what farmers do all day but it turns out the answer is mental arithmetic. 

I'd been thinking about writing this blog post for a while but have been procrastinating. Mainly because I knew I'd have to understand the ins and outs of it before I started writing. Today, I sat Ivie down with a coffee and interviewed him. Here's a brief summary...

When Ivie is going to spread fertiliser at another farm, the farmer will tell him how much (in hundredweight or cwt) he wants spread per acre. So far, so old school. 

BUT the machinery is modern and measures in kilos per hectare. 

A hectare is 2.47 acres and 1 cwt (112 lbs) is 50 kilos. Still with me?

So, 1cwt per acre is roughly the same as 125kg per hectare apparently.

Fertiliser comes in 600kg bags but used to come in 1cwt bags. So to complicate things even further, some farmers still talk in terms of 'bags' per acre when what they mean is 'one twelfth of a bag' per acre. And then you get into fractions of hundredweights but that's when my head starts to explode. Or implode. Or both.

At this point, Ivie started trying to explain units of nitrogen per acre but I had to stop him. That was plenty enough for one day.