Memorable experiences have been the rule rather than the exception this year. The day I will never forget however, is the one I lived rather than photographed.
"Liberating" a pair of dark green Hunters from outside the pub and a pair of his stepdaughter's overalls - Tim deposited me in front of the calf barn at Eastbrook Farm one bright sunny morning. From 8am til 8pm, I shadowed Lesley, a truly remarkable homeopathic farmer.
Originally from Holland, she rediscovered a love of organic farming and animals and left her job at KLM behind without regrets. Tall, lean and incredibly strong, she pilots a beat-up land rover around the 1400 acre farm with her scruffy Jack Russell, Barry, (dubbed "tripod" in the village due to the fact he lost a leg) in her lap at all times. This isn't just a job to her - it's a calling. Frustration shows readily in her voice when she asks how people can go home for dinner when something's gone wrong and the animals haven't been fed yet. There is genuine love and affection for the animals she cares for, clearly visible in the way she cheerfully greets her girls and boys and talks gently to them all day long.
We visited every cow on the farm to feed them and check them over, lugging hay bales in and out of the back of the land rover. We helped some of the other workers herd sheep down a long country road between fields, and treated several calves with worms and eye problems - typical of the breed. We fed the chickens and set up a fence around their pen so lazy Basil, a true black sheep, couldn't steal their food. All the while she told me all about the breeds, treatment, and her views on farming.
I couldn't stop laughing over the human antics of the animals we worked with - the gangly calves who leapt out from their pens to get better access to hay, looking back gleefully over their shoulders at us, proud of their daring. Or the methods Basil used to bend the other sheep to his will to form a live battering ram at the fence around the chicken coop. Or the bull strutting around the yard eyeing the females proudly, having just finished "servicing" them.
But two experiences stood out the most. A proactive measure, vitamin pellets (boluses) are given to cows on organic farms. Cows are herded through a narrow passageway with a gate on the end that closes around their neck to hold them in place to administer the bolus. The rowdy calves who rushed furiously through bellowed loudly (although unhurt) at the loud clanking sound. The mellow ones sauntered along and received a gentle closing that merely made them blink. We had 80 cows to weigh and treat that afternoon, and many of them needed urging of the flank-slapping variety to walk through.
Now, the bolus pellets are placed two-deep in a narrow "gun" apparatus that James would then place in the frothing mouth of the cow, pull the trigger, and release the pellets into the cow's stomach. But frothing would be an understatement. Cow drool is long and slimy and oozed all down the handle of the gun. When James in fact opened his overall pocket later to check on the pay stubs inside, they were soaked beyond recognition - from cow saliva.
"Why," he moaned, "do I always get stuck with this job!!"
"Because you're the new lad!" shot back Clive from across the pen.
My job? To load the pellets into the slimy, cow-drooled gun. Clive's eyes twinkled as he watched me gingerly try to place them without getting covered in sticky saliva, all the while trying not to seem girly. Fail.
The other highlight was also drooly, but a little like a chick lit novel. Two of the newborn calves weren't feeding properly, so we went to the dairy, filled two litre bottles with fresh warm milk . . . and then I settled in the straw and laughingly fed baby cows with huge eyes. They guzzled so greedily, that when they let go of the bottle to get air, there wasn't enough time to get the teat back in their mouths before they latched onto the next closest thing. Apparently, my knee looks like a suitable subsitute.
But the peace that crept over me feeding the calves while their mothers looked patiently on was priceless. If only I had pictures...
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