The (Wash) Cycle of Life

Two nights ago I went to bed early. This was not because:

1. I was tired (even though I was);
or
2. I wanted to read more of my book (even though I did). 

Nope. It was because Ivie stank. 

I thought I'd become immune to farm smells but it seems my nostrils still have an ounce of sensitivity left. 

During lambing Ivie basically lives in his working clothes. He gets up, puts the same clothes on as yesterday, works, checks the lambing shed, snoozes on the sofa, checks the lambing shed again and comes to bed somewhere between midnight and 2am. 'Putting the same clothes on as yesterday' generally lasts a week then the whole lot goes in the washing machine and he moves on to the next set of working clothes for a bit of variety. 

This was ok when we didn't live together because my weekly visit was a marker for him to swap clothes. Not so much this year, especially during isolation when neither of us is entirely sure what day it is. 

Not Lambs (I'm learning...)

I'd already had a hint that working clothes were a complicated business when I tried to get him to put his long johns in the bin about a fortnight ago. They were like a spider's web with more holes than Swiss cheese (how's that for mixed metaphors?). 

Me: Don't you have another pair of long johns in the wardrobe? 

Ivie: Yes but they're my good ones. 

Me: But they'd keep you warm in the lambing shed. 

Ivie: I can't just wear them during lambing! They're my good ones! 

Me: Sigh. 

As far as I can make out, the working clothes system basically involves keeping every item of clothing ever purchased and filtering it through convoluted and unexplained categories such as working clothes, good working clothes, clothes for lambing and a 'polo shirt I was given in 1996 that was too big for me even then'. 

Our friend, Una, who you'll remember from this blog, suggested that this is something farmers learn alongside crop rotation. It's certainly impenetrable to the uninitiated. 

To save you from nightmares I have not included a photograph of the aforementioned thermals. You're welcome. 

Lambing: Part 3

Things I learned this week:

1. There are far worse places to be in self-isolation
2. Life (and lambing) goes on

It's been a funny old week for everyone. I'm now in lockdown for 12 weeks since I had a kidney transplant in 1997. I'm lucky that I don't live on my own anymore and that I have Ivie to go to the supermarket and listen to my inane witterings. It's going to be tougher on him than me, to be fair. 

I'd hoped that by the time Lambing: Part 3 came around that I'd be able to tell you that I'd delivered my first live lamb and could now wrestle a ewe in labour to the ground. But the only progress I've made is to feed the pet lambs - one of which is going to die anyway Ivie's brother informed me the other night (cheers for that) - and help Ivie give a wee triplet colostrum. 

The next section is for non-farmers. Farmers - skip this paragraph because:

a. I might have got it wrong

b. I still think lambs are cute (even more so after three glasses of wine) 🍷🍷🍷

Pet lambs are the ones that need a bit more TLC. They might be orphans or more often they're the smallest of a set of triplets. A ewe only has two teats so twins generally fare better. It is possible for a ewe with a single lamb to take on another ewe's triplet but that's a story for another day. 

Colostrum is contained in a lamb's first feed and is full of antibodies. If a lamb doesn't get any in its first 6-12 hours then it might not survive. Giving a new lamb colostrum involves a syringe and a tube down its throat into its stomach. Not as horrific as it sounds. 

Calves and Lambs
Photo by Ivie

*** Farmers rejoin here ***

Lambing has reminded me of the things you take for granted when you're dating a non-farmer:

• going to bed at the same time as each other
• having a lazy Sunday morning together reading the papers
• entire evenings when your partner is wide awake

But the positives far outweigh the negatives:

• at least an hour and a half on my own every morning before I have to interact with another human being
• really appreciating a surprise night off when Ivie's brother was waiting for his daughter to arrive home from college 
• being surrounded by new life and signs of Spring

And, as I said at the beginning of this post, there are far, far worse places to be in self-isolation. 

View from the front step
Photo by Ivie

Home Sweet Home

Things I Know
It feels like home

I've lived at the farm for about two and a half months now. Not very long in the scheme of things but in some ways it feels like I've always been here. 

My brother came to visit last weekend. It was the first time he'd been here in daylight so we went for a walk around with Isa the border collie. My brother has always taken loads of photos and is good at spotting the little things that make up the day. 

My wellies and leggings at the back door

He sent me a few and one of the things that struck me was that I looked relaxed and at home. I'm not just visiting, I live here! 

I mentioned in an earlier post that I never thought I'd live with anyone again. There was lots about living on my own that I loved and my independence was hard won. But then Ivie came along and changed my mind. 

It's been a while since either of us has had a housemate so we're figuring it out as we go along. And every day I realise how lucky I am to live: 

• with someone that makes me laugh every day and puts up with me laughing at my own (hilarious) jokes. 
• next door to Ivie's family that include me in things and don't make me feel stupid when I don't know about farm life.
• somewhere with views like this a few minutes' walk from my back door (with a borrowed collie).

So, it looks like Ivie and The Spittal are stuck with me for a while. Even the cat's decided she's staying. 

Lambing: Part 2

Things I've learned this week

I can be useful

Ivie came in from the lambing shed last night about 11pm with three photos for me (see below) and a big smile on his face. They knew that one ewe was expecting quads but one that had scanned for triplets had a sneaky wee lamb hiding behind her ribs. Ivie's brother delivered the triplets and went to bed. Ivie went to the shed an hour later and there was a fourth lamb up on its feet and sooking.

1,2,3,4....

We're now at the end of the third week of lambing at the Spittal. I'm told they're about halfway through and I've even been given one or two useful things to do.

Today there was a cast of thousands working in the shed. Ivie's brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew were all getting their sleeves rolled up, along with a young girl doing work experience who already knows more than I do. I hovered around trying not to get into the way, half of me hoping I'd be given something to do and the other half slightly hoping I wouldn't.

It's not that I don't want to help. It's just that they all know what they're doing and don't have to be given instructions in words of one syllable. My nightmare would be to stand in the wrong place and make a field full of sheep go in the wrong direction. 

One of the things I'm most conscious of at this time of year is how busy Ivie and his family are every day (and night) and how little use I am. I'm also conscious of everyone out being productive at weekends while I'm basically just fannying around.

Today I felt a bit more part of the gang. I managed to stand in the right place (twice!) to first help move sheep who had lost their lambs back to the field and then to help move a field full of sheep into the lambing shed. I felt a bit like the office junior being given one instruction at a time and then going back for my next task.

I cleaned the blackboards for the pens that had been emptied so that the next mama could be moved in with her lamb(s).

I filled water buckets, moved feeding troughs and after a cuppa I stood around while Ivie and his sister-in-law both lambed ewes that had three live lambs each. It's amazing watching anyone do something they're good at but there's something even more amazing about watching someone help a ewe give birth. They know by the colour sprayed on the ewe's back how many lambs are expected, but there are a lot of unknowns.

Which way will the lambs be facing (the 'right' way is head and front feet first)? Will any of them be alive? Will it go to plan?

My job was to squirt iodine on the lamb's navels to prevent infection, which is the most I've got involved up till now. Who knows, maybe this time next year I'll take the week off work during lambing and will be doing a shift myself.

Is this what's known as a sheepy-back? 

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.