Over the Farmer's Gate (6 page)

Yesterday, as I drove along our road, in 200 yards I passed two
empty sandwich containers, two polystyrene containers that had probably contained chips, two plastic drink bottles and then, to finish, two paper napkins. It marked the clear sequence of two people’s meals as they drove along, and then the sequence with which they had thrown the debris from the car.

THIS STORY has a sadness to it. I haven’t kept sheep for several years now but still have a ‘shepherd’s eye’, which I run over my neighbour’s sheep (or anyone else’s) as I pass by on my daily travels.

I’ve had some of my heifers over-wintered at a farm a couple of miles away and on one of my recent visits to see the heifers I was surprised to see them preparing a lambing pen.

I was surprised because they keep about 200 Beulah ewes – a hardy ewe, excellent mothers – and in the first week of April I had thought they would have been well able to look after themselves lambing outside.

I just love the word Beulah, it’s a beautiful word, I could almost write a novel just so I could include it in the last line, ‘and behold, they came over the hills and into Beulah’.

That was what they call a digression, almost a biblical type of digression. Beulah is a village in mid-Wales. Beulah ewes fill the fields for miles around, easily identifiable with their black and white, speckled faces. I expressed my surprise to those preparing the lambing pen, but to them lambing outside wasn’t an option – because of the ravens.

Ravens are quite difficult to distinguish from carrion crows apart from being bigger and having a very different call.

As you know, I concern myself with the need for balance. Years ago, ravens would have been comparatively rare. The damage they would do to livestock would be occasional and not
a big issue. Quite clearly the balance in this area has swung the other way and as I was finding out at first hand, it is starting to affect the way that people can farm. It is not uncommon for ewes to suffer a prolapse at lambing. Too much straining, lambs lying in the wrong position, and the odd ewe will eject her uterus. A skilled shepherd or the vet will soon put this right, administer some antibiotic and the ewe will fully recover.

In the trailer behind the quad-bike, parked alongside the lambing shed in question was a dead ewe; she had suffered a prolapse that morning, the ravens had eaten it away and she bled to death.

Lambs born outside are particularly vulnerable. While the ewe is down lambing, eyes are quickly removed from a lamb only half born. If the ewe has to leave the lamb unattended for a few minutes while she gives birth to a second, the first lamb will soon be dead because it would be attacked by the ravens. It’s a sorry tale, one that I thought of quite a lot that day.

In early evening, taking a drive around, I met another neighbour who keeps sheep, driving down the lane towards me.

People who keep a lot of sheep have to be approached with caution at this time of year; they’ve usually got their eyes held open with matchsticks.

I pulled on to the grass verge in case he hadn’t seen me, but he had, and he stopped. I told him about the ravens on the other farm and asked if he was affected. He told me that every year he has his ewes scanned to find out how many lambs a pregnant ewe is carrying. It was, therefore, his practice to lamb those ewes carrying a single lamb outside where they were able to tend to it properly and the ewes carrying two or more lambs would lamb inside where he could help them if it were needed.

Last year, several of the ‘single’ lambs had lost eyes to ravens but, what had particularly upset him, 20 lost their tongues while
being born. These had to be put down as they were unable to suckle. This begs the question, why are there so many ravens about?

Local opinion is that they have proliferated because of the advent, locally, of large commercial shoots. These shoots provide an ample year-round supply of food; animal and vegetable. More food, more eggs, bigger hatches, fewer deaths, more ravens.

DRIVING HOME last night I saw a tiny baby rabbit on the road. It’s the first one I’ve seen this year but I’ve been looking out for them because you may remember that I had noted a lot of rabbit activity just a few weeks ago. It’s just another positive sign of the approach of spring.

There is another sign, actually less welcome. Around our yard there are fornicating cats everywhere. It’s a part of the dilemma of feral cats about a farmyard. Ignore them, don’t feed them, and they are a sickly emaciated bunch of cats that give you cause for concern. But feed them regularly, as I do, and you have a group of fit, glossy-coated cats that will breed lots and lots of kittens that will just compound the problem. Cat flu will eventually appear among the kittens, which will be a distressing sight.

I should qualify all this by saying that although I feed them all every day, there isn’t one cat that we can get closer to than a couple of yards.

The answer is to have them all spayed, or neutered, and a few years ago I did try this. I caught about 20 and took them to the vet. Some escaped while there and we had cats everywhere, over the furniture, under the furniture, climbing the walls, swinging from the lights. When we finally caught them all, the vet said: ‘Don’t you ever bring any more like that here again.’

It’s not the simple, one-off fix that people would have you
believe. New cats, male and female, turn up here quite regularly, so the problem will always be there. In the meantime we have to endure all the caterwauling and all the spitting and fighting.

YESTERDAY I saw a pheasant with 13 chicks, oh dear. Today she was in roughly the same place with 10. They seem to be very poor mothers and the approach of my tractor sends them scattering in all directions, mother leading the flight. If I was a pheasant chick I think I’d be on the phone to ChildLine to complain about the care I was receiving. There were a pair of buzzards sitting on a fence not far away and I could almost sense them licking their lips. Thirteen yesterday, 10 today, it has something about it of a rhyme I know of which is definitely not politically correct any more. Past experience tells me that she’ll soon be down to one chick but that will be temporary.

ONE OF THE advantages of living in a hilly border area is superb views in all directions almost wherever we are.

I am much given to elaborating on this theme by suggesting that it isn’t worth having a tidy garden because anyone visiting our garden tends to look at the views. This well-worn argument carries little credibility with my wife, who is self-appointed head gardener.

Over the years, we have settled into an uneasy truce whereby I am responsible for cutting the grass and she tends the flower beds. It’s a bit like all truces, it can break down at any time. So, inevitably, we reach the time of year when I have to make a start on my
lawnmowing
duties.

The lawn has, over the winter, acquired a bedraggled, unkempt look and seems to be looking at me and asking an unspoken
question: ‘When are you going to cut me?’

For my part, I turn my attention to the lawnmower, and look at that as well. It has become inevitable in my life that, come the day I need it for the first time, the lawnmower will not start.

It is a phenomenon that has caused many a breakdown of the aforementioned truce, because, believe it or not, it can take two weeks to start a reluctant lawnmower and we all know how much a lawn will grow in two weeks in the spring.

The two weeks is readily explained. You take the mower to your local dealer and tell him that it won’t start.

But do they reach for a spanner? No they do not, they reach for a label, they write your name on it, tie it to the mower, and push it around the back where it joins a queue of other reluctant lawn mowers that is already as long as the queue at a fish and chip shop on a Friday night.

This year was going to be different, this year I was going to take the mower to the dealers just after Christmas for a check up, before the queue formed.

Inevitably, that didn’t happen, so here we are, mid-March, a lawn looking at me, me looking at the mower, and my wife rolling her eyes and sighing every time she looks out of the window.

I know I need a new battery, so I get that anyway. There’s a conversation at the dealers between the man in the stores and the proprietor over whether the battery needs charging or not. They decide it doesn’t. I take the battery home and fit it on and I fill the tank up with petrol and determine to leave it for 24 hours – this is the lawnmower equivalent of poking a stick into a squirrel’s drey and telling it: ‘Spring is here’.

A day later, I return, make a big, slow deal of putting all the controls in the right places, turn the key and the battery is flat as a pancake. This is the sort of setback I’m well used to, so I put the battery on charge and go away and leave it.

I almost forget all about it the next day, but it’s Friday evening, the boys have nearly finished washing the parlour out. It’s time for tea but I decide to try the mower. I turn the key and it bursts into life first turn. This completely throws me. I sit there for a minute and it doesn’t stop. I’m now in shock – still, make hay while the sun shines, etc, and off I go, there’s nearly an hour of daylight yet and I cut most of the lawns. I leave the worst piece for another day.

If I am thrown, pity my wife. She can’t believe what’s happened – never had the grass cut so soon. Next day I tell her I will take her out for supper if Wales win the Triple Crown. Cut grass, an unexpected meal – she thinks I’m having an affair.