Foot-and-mouth Crisis
A good site on foot and mouth
The full text of the research on vaccination and the virus is on the Elm
Farm Site with other interesting documents.
Cathy is a sheep farmer with a prize winning flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep
in South Devon. She has been sending me wonderfuly heartening emails, full
of hope and faith and stories of her animals. Click here
to read them.
These pages start with the latest. 29th march is at the bottom. I will sort
them out when we're not lambing.
4th April
Whitethorn (otherwise known as blackthorn!)
The ITN site readers asked me some questions. My answers are
on http://www.itn.co.uk/interactive/your_say/farmer.shtml
.
If you don't want to wade through my acres of prose, ITN are
cleverly picking out the main bits and making it sound quite good. on http://www.itn.co.uk/interactive/footandmouth/diaryfront.shtml
(or go to www.itn.co.uk which is worth going to
anyway and look on the interactive pages)
We are frantically busy with lambing just now. I am writing
things on bits of paper but it takes time to type things out. Lambing is going
well. Just terrified that someone less than 1.5 km away gets foot -and-mouth.
If they do the new rules state that our pigs and sheep are definitely killed
and maybe the cows or maybe not. Someone hasn't done their sums. more on that
later. I must go back up to the shed. Gertie is definitely nesting now too.
But first I must just copy this from Anthony Gibson (our local
NFU representative) in todays local paper. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our
leaders in Westminster could have as much courage to admit their mistakes:
.".......Much of what I wrote last week about vaccination
.... was misleading and mistaken. The only excuse I can offer is that the
misinformation which has been put about on the subject, by the Ministry of
Agriculture especially, but also by the European union, beggars belief. Never
can such a vital scientific issue have been shrouded in such a fog of misinformation
and obfuscation.." If you live somewhere where you can buy a copy
of theWestern Morning News, do so. It is a paper that understands about farming.
The farming editor, Carol Trewin has been voted Britain's best farming writer.
Is she read by Mr Brown and his civil servants?
Up in the lambing shed. I'm sitting watching sheep and trying
to catch up with what I didn't say yesterday. I did write something down but
I can't find it.
We had some really good triplets in the afternoon. only spoilt by the ewe
not having any milk to speak of. We mixed up some powdered colostrum, but
it's not the same. We tried fostering one of them onto a single in the evening,
but it didn't work. Now its real mother won't take it back.
Earlier I was sitting on the straw next to a ewe in labour, leaning back against
the wall, and listening to the racket as James and Bill did the feeding. The
ewe kept getting up and looking for her lamb (something they do do in labour)
and then turning to me and licking at my hands and sleeve, very tickly. I
had to climb out of the pen before she adopted me.
James went down to cook supper while I stayed up here with a gimmer that was
lambing. We have a portable TV up here for news, teletext (and the rugby,
when it's on). I was watching the news whilst I was waiting. I have been haunted
ever since by the sight of a little lamb dragging itself through thick mud.
It is inexcusable. They were talking as if the only solution were to cull
the poor things under the welfare scheme. There are already more than a million
and a half animals booked into the welfare scheme, and that's only animals
booked in by farmers who have had time to get the forms and do all the paperwork.
There will be at least three, and I reckon more like ten, million animals
to be disposed of in this way and that's on top of the millions in the contiguous
cull scheme. Mad. It's mad even if you are only thinking of the practicalities
of it. If you are thinking of animal welfare it is barbaric --indeed downright
evil.
That little lamb is probably dead by now, choked on mud, together with thousands
of others. The weather last night was cruel, driving wind and rain. The Government
answer to lambs drowning in muddy fields is "kill them!", but it
isn't even possible to put them out of their misery quickly. They have to
wait in the long, long queue. The RSPCA wrote to the Armed Forces Minister
John Spellar to ask if the armed forces would provide tents for shelter for
sheep that are lambing and I know that Anthony Gibson made the same request.
Agricultural students have been sent home. I am sure that many of them would
have been happy to volunteer to help the army. Why, why, why are the government
getting away with it? It is their responsibility. They could muster
the resources.
While I was watching the news I was watching the gimmer. She didn't notice
the second lamb when it slid out. It was still in it's bag. If I had not been
there it would have suffocated without ever breathing. It can happen when
a ewe lambs alone.
10 minutes after birth.
Can anyone tell me why uninfected animals in restricted areas (and they can
be many miles from an infected farm) are being paid for by tax payers money
and dumped, rendered or burnt? I am not talking about animals like the poor
drowning lambs, but about animals ready to be eaten, pigs sheep and cattle.
I have heard that the supermarkets won't buy them. Not because of any risk
from FMD but because at the start of this crisis they forward-bought cheap
meat from abroad, much of it not raised to our welfare standards, and some
of it from countries where foot-and-mouth is endemic. The bill to the tax-payer
for this wasted meat will run into millions. The cost to the environment is
incalculable.
Do people know, that at the same time, lorries are driving past these restricted
farms bringing animals from "clean" areas to be slaughtered in abattoirs
in the restricted areas. Abattoirs that may have brought the infection into
the area in the first place.
I was interupted a few times whilst I was writing that. One of our older ewes,
M32, 7 years old, went into labour, her water bag just burst on the straw.
I quickly got the rejected triplet and rolled it in the fluid. M32 started
to lick it before her own lamb was born. We had a bucket handy and there was
a wonderful rush of fluid as the lamb was born, so the poor triplet was 'marinaded'
in it. M32 assumed she had had twins and licked them both. Some hours later
she sniffed at her foster lamb and head butted him into a trough. We had kept
the bucket of fluid and the poor lamb got another soaking. It seems to have
worked. But what a start in life for a very confused little lamb.
No.3 with her hoof on her lamb
."..The millionth animal consigned for culling, the thousandth
infected farm identified...and the disease has, according to the government's
chief scientist, turned the corner: vaccination is for the moment to be abandoned........the
Ministry's figures have been re-jigged no fewer than three times in the past
four days and it's getting increasingly hard for us to unscramble what's really
going on...." Jon Snow from Channel 4 news.
"...There has been so much information and misinformation
about vaccination that I don't know what to think but surely the powers that
be must consider it for breeds such as Herdwicks which are unique to Cumbria
otherwise they will simply disappear and our well trimmed attractive fells
with them ! I was irritated to hear on the National news tonight that the
foot and mouth epidemic has "turned the corner" , whose leg do they think
they are pulling ? To me it has spread its tentacles out towards the western
lakes and the south lakes too . " Email from Cumbria.
I feel so angry with the contiguous cull policy I don't think
I can be very coherent about it. I am too tired now. It has been a very happily
sheepy day. lots of lambs and most doing really well. here is what I wrote
in an email sometime after 2.00 am this morning.:
"I will never never accept that my sheep should be killed.
Nothing is logical, nothing makes sense. Our cows and sheep are in the same
shed. The ministry vet when he came round said, 'don't worry about the sheep,.
you'll see it in the cows first'. Then why kill the sheep? If the cattle are
not infected neither are the sheep.
If this contiguous cull is really necessary then all the farms round Jasper's
should have caught FMD. If contiguous animals are safe to go in a land fill
site because 'they are not infected' , why were they culled in the first place?"
We have been very busy with lambing. We're more than half way
now. The calves have been weaned from their mothers. The cows do need a month
or two's rest before they calve in June and July. We divide off a section
of the shed with hurdles and the calves and cows can still see each other
and lick each other a bit. Last year, I remember, there wasn't any fuss at
all. This year Astrid nd Buttercup have been bellowing and setting all the
others off. They make the sheep sound quiet. Before we started farming I thought
that lambing just meant being there when the ewe lambed in case she needed
help. That's the easy bit. There are always lambs needing attention. We have
one little tiny one who has had to have electrolyte solution for the last
3 feeds as it was scouring badly. One that was a breach birth this afternoon
has been very weak and its mother has been milked and the milk tubed into
it. After birth with all of them it is vital to make sure that they have a
proper drink from thier mothers.
Another totally random picture of lambs!
3rd April
The sun is shining (it was a horrid wet day yesterday) and
the view towards Dartmoor is beautiful. Some days you can scarcely see the
Moor, but today it is shining in the sun. No more lambs in the night. Still
not sure about dates with the pigs. Gertie is looking very close, and there
is milk in her teats. There might be piglets before tonight. It's strange
that even with all this horror around us, I can still feel so excited about
our first piglets.
Thank you, the love and support of strangers is something to
hang on to. A farmer over the valley, was talking about how his old age pension
is subsidising his farm. He's had some good lambs this year, but now, at six
weeks old, and out in the field, he's losing strong lambs to foxes. He watched
the Panorama programme last night, and said "we'm finished". There
is no place for anything except nature reserves, theme parks and factory farms.
The young couple with a dairy herd of 54 cows were subsidising milk production
by 2 or 3 pence for every litre. How long could they carry on doing that?
One idiot ( A Richard North) was saying we should buy food from 'peasants'
in the 3rd world, who would be happy with a pittance. Peasant farmers in the
3rd World should be able to be self-sufficient and not have to grow cash crops
for export and for profits of multinational agri-businesses. He talked of
"middle-class" farmers wanting "middle-class" incomes.
I'm not sure what point he was trying to make. A fair profit in return for
labour and investment is certainly not what our farmers are getting now. £5000
a year is only too common an income for at least a 60 hour week. Did you see
the big sheds where 5,000 pigs could be looked after by one man? and where
2,500,000 chickens were produced every week (only seven weeks from egg to
table)? If that were the only meat available to me I would certainly be vegetarian.
Horrible. Very clean and efficient. They showed the labels on the packagd
food, some of them were own brand for supermarkets, like Marks and Spencer,
some of them were "Grampian Country Foods" "Traditional Goodness".
Are consumers so easily fooled? My stomach turns at the thought of eating
such stuff. They did not show the cattle and lamb sheds, but apparently they
are producing beef and lamb in the same way. The animals produced on traditional
family farms are having to compete with this rubbish, and with meat produced
in far worse conditions from abroad.
Small farms having been bleeding to death over the last few
years. they are now receiving their death blow. Grampian Foods are buying
more land for more big sheds. The bright way forward.
I've just been watching the lunch time news. I can't type very
easily for the tears. I have to keep stopping and correcting wrong keys. They're
killing the animals now on the farms around the infected one. When will they
stop? This was jus ton the local news. National news is only interested in
FMD as far as it affects the election.
On Bodmin Moor 50 commoners have blocked MAFF from making a
bonfire of infected bodies. A farmer in Devon told me that the smoke from
one big fire hang heavily all down the valley where there were several outbreaks
some days later. Nick Brown was on the news saying the14 day incubation period
is why there are so many outbreaks. Can't he read? Is he a total moron? or
is he just a liar? 4 days , not 14 , is the usual period and it can be as
little as 2 days.
Sorry. I've ranted on for too long. I'm off back to the lambs
and some sanity. Little Fred seems to be settled with his new foster mum.
W88 whose picture you saw a couple of days ago, is having problems with milk
production (she had plenty to start with, and it's not mastitis), so we've
taken her larger lamb and fostered her on to a single that gave birth this
morning. She doesn't seem to have noticed that she's lost one lamb.
A heap of lambs just before they fell asleep
Most of them asleep (they all were before I disturbed them).
Just as I was turning the computer off earlier I had a lovely
email from a year 8 student. It finished; "P.s never give up always keep
tryin ,things will get back to normal its just gona take a very long time!
p.p.s NNEEVVEERR GGIIVVEE UUPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" We won't
give up. I promise.
I've just checked the sheep and I'm staying up a little longer
to check again. It does mean that I don't have to get up so early, and I'm
better at late nights than early mornings. I wish I had the means of recording
the noise in the shed at feeding time. Some of the sheep were bleating at
us in rather an indignant way when we were having a cup of tea on the hay.
Then when they were being fed later the noise would make you laugh. Worse
than a whole school of unruly children. The cows mooing as a deeper tone underneath,
and the lambs joining in with high pitched bleats. I'm smiling to think of
it. Just before supper I was sitting in the straw holding a ewe who was having
a very big lamb with one leg back and needing a bit of help from James. He
would have been big for a single, but she had a big twin too, and that was
breach and needing help as well. We were both smiling at the lambs as their
mother licked them, and they struggled so bravely to stand on their legs that
are too long and wobbly, and I wish we could just concentrate on lambing and
not have all this always in our minds.
Tony Blair has ben dithering about his election, as he has been
dithering about vaccination. Six weeks into this catastrophe he is "
putting the mechanisms into place" for dealing with this crisis. Vaccination
is "undr review, under consideration". It was good to see Julian
Rush on the Channel 4 news saying that farmers had been misinformed about
vaccination and that the blame rests with the NFU whose leaders confuse routine
vaccination with emergency vaccination. The NFU "leaders" have been
turning a deaf ear to their grass-roots membership. So when Brown says he
has "consulted with farmers' leaders at National level" and "they
support the present strategy" He cannot mean that he has consulted with
farmers as a whole.
More
here
As for Mr Brown, "......angrier and angrier, did you see
that b****d Nick Brown on the news? Does he really think that we are all so
gullible to believe his constant drivel about the outbreaks being under control?
Which particular piece of sand does he have his head buried in?" Thank
you, Sarah. It's good to see someone else sharing my anger. The words "under
control" have forever lost their meaning. On Sunday, the lay preacher
gave a sermon that I don't remember at all except that near the end, he said
"....people do say that MAFF couldn't organise a day trip from Exeter
to Barnstaple.." Brown and MAFF deserve each other. I wrote this in an
email this morning and I'm too tired to do more than copy and paste just now.
"We have been struck, over the past 5 years, by the contempt shown for
MAFF by anyone down here who has anything to do with them. Contempt from men
who are honest, hard-working and level -headed. You can imagine how recent
events have refined those feelings."
I've just had an email from someone whose animals were slaughtered
last night.
1st April
All OK (for now). The ewe is still accepting little Fred (misnamed
because she's a ewe lamb) I keep forgetting to say that I got the date of
the first piglets wrong. Not today, the 6th. Write later.
Little Fred with her big foster brother.
Now it's after 1.00am and so strictly speaking it's tomorrow.
Sorry everybody. I've just come down from the lambing shed. Here's something
I wrote up there, but I think I'm too tired to correct any typos as I go along.
It's nearly midnight and I'm writng this sitting on the straw
next to a gimmer who's lambing. She's a bit nervous, poor thing, and is obviouslyy
uncomfortable. She keeps backing into the wall. Her water bag has burst. I'm
going to give her a little while to see if she can manage on her own but I've
a feeling she'll be a problem. I've been up here since supper, more lambs
being born, and some needing supplementary feeding. The larger of W12's tiny
lambs has developed watery mouth (sometimes called rattly belly). It can kill
a lamb, so he's had antibiotic and I've tubed some milk into him as he won't
be able to suckle for a while.
I came up oin a seething rage and now I'm sitting here feeling
very tired and very sad and very very deeply calmly angry. There are ewes
coming up and sniffing at me, wondering what I'm doing with this notebook,
and the sound of chewing close to my ears is drowning out the sound of the
Easterly wind that has got up outside. W88 is pawing at the ground a bit,
and then standing still. She doesn't feel quite right and I can't quite see
why I feel that.
I keep thinking that if I go to sleep, to a proper long deep
sleep, I'll wake up and laugh that I could have been so taken in by a bad
dream.
There's a ewe lying stretched out against the hurdle on one
side, and another is having a good rub of her backsidee against the hurdle
on the other.
I heard this morning that FMD had reached Camworthy Water --
it wasn't a farm I know. I phoned a farmer I know up there and heard that
tomorrow all of their dairy cows will be killed because the infected farm
is their neighbour. There is a lane with high hedge banks between the two
farms and their cattle are inside in sheds. There has been no contact. This
is madness. by the same rules, they should have slaughtered all th eanimals
on the farms round Jasper's ( at South Petherwin). It's four weeks now since
they were infected and has no-one at MAFF noticed that no other farms in the
neighbourhood have been infected? Have they wondered why? At Jasper's they
set a 24 hour watch on the carcasses so that no vermin could spread the disease.
It was diagnosed quickly and the diagnosis was acted on quickly. I've heard
that at Camworthy Water they were investigating the infected farm for several
days and I heard yesterday that the vet who authorized th eslaughter at Jasper's
has been reprimanded for acting "too swiftly". Her swift actions,
and those of Mr Jasper in setting his "fox watch" saved us from
being infected from that source. We'll get it from the East instead. Why can't
MAFF look at the case here and say "yes, that's where we've gone wrong,
" instead of this mindless slash and burn. Ask a firefighter and he'll
tell you that slash and burn only works when it is done in time and efficiently.
They're not just destroying irreplaceable breeding animals, they're destroying
lives.
I had to stop in the middle of that while the ewe had the first
of her twins. She was quite uninterested in it for the first few minutes.
Now we are waiting for the second one. The water bag came out with a rush
so it won't be long.
Just born, W88's twins
Now I'm inside. I'll go and have a final check and go to bed.
The twins are fine. My feelings of things not being right are probably just
this whole situation. We're bringing new life into the world, and the rightness
and order of it is being wrenched apart. I can't write any more now. I want
to try and make you see how wrong it is. And I meant to sort out these pages
so they don't take so long to download and put up some of the emails I'm getting.
Maybe there'll be time tomorrow.
31st March
Just come down for a late breakfast. We're getting better sized, full-term
lambs now. Got to go back up again now. I'll write more later.
W38, a gimmer. The other twin is behind her.
I've just had some coffee, sitting on the hay. I find it easier
to write up here. I need to write something of what it's like here on a normal,
dull, daily basis. I want you to see what has already been lost on so many
farms and is being lost, and will be lost, on so many more.
When I came up before breakfast (James had been up in the night
and we overslept), W38 had just had one lamb. I was going round the individual
mothering-up pens giving them their cake (a great bleating, shouting noise
from all the ewes waiting to be fed, meanwhile, some of them almost climbing
out over the hurdles with impatience), thinking how nice it is when we have
children here, and they help with jobs like this. The work takes longer when
you have a young helper, but it is a joy to see them involved and learning.
Then W38 had the second lamb. I spent a long time just watching, as she licked
them both. Lovely big ewe lambs and she's only a little sheep, no wonder she
had had a prolapse.
You can see from the photo, how she is tipping her udder forward
to make it easier for the lamb to drink. Not all the ewes have the instinct
to do that. Some have teats tucked right up under their legs, and it can be
difficult for the lamb to find them. If you hear James saying "nice teats"
he's referring to good sized, well positioned teats that are easy for a lamb
to drink from. I love helping a lamb to have it's first drink. The ewes know
us and are unworried by us being there. The mother will often turn and lick
my hand, very soft, whiskery little licks, as I smell like one of her lambs.
Some of you might be wondering about all the coloured marks on
our sheep. When we have them scanned, we mark them in wax crayon on the head,
blue for singles, red for twins, and green for triplets. Red spots on their
behinds are for prolapses. Then, 24 hours or so (longer if things are not
straightforward) after the birth we spray a number on the mother and a matching
one on her lambs. A red spot on her side is for twins.
We've managed to foster on the third lamb of each set of triplets
so far. Or we thought we had. One ewe seemed quite happy with her adopted
lamb and has suddenly taken against it, 36 hours later. It's too late to put
him back with his original mother, and the foster mother is pushing him away
quite gently so we'll leave him there for today, and hold her while he drinks,
and see if she'll have a change of heart. One ewe that had a small lamb yesterday,
has no milk at all. We fostered her lamb onto a single, and it seemed to take,
but this morning we had to rescue the lamb, as the old foster ewe was trying
to kill it (head butting it against the hurdles). There's a robin building
a nest up in the oat straw. It will be a smelly nest, as it's taking bits
of silage up there. Should we chase it off, or make sure that whatever happens
that corner of the stack doesn't get touched? If we get FMD would MAFF's servants
let the straw stay there till the fledglings have flown, or would they rip
the nest down? It's good to get absorbed in problems of fostering lambs, worrying
about the nesting robin,clearing space to put up more hurdles to make another
big pen so we can still keep them inside. We are acutely aware that we are
a lot more fortunate than most in having plenty of good buildings, and no
stock that's ready to go.
. I am sorry about yesterday. I had a lot to say, and then when
I came to write it down in the evening it took half an hour to type five lines,
my fingers kept tapping the wrong keys. Did you hear T Blair yesterday repeating
his mantra about only 1% again? What total does he base his 1% on?. I doubt
it's the breeding stock. A lot of what's been lost is irreplaceable. Tony
Blair was quoted in the Sunday Telegraph recently " It's amazing how many
of my friends I was at school and university with, they ended up so rich..."
an interesting comment from a Labour Prime Minister. Does he know what
it is to lie in bed at night, feeling sick with worry, wondering where the
money can come from to pay the basic bills? I doubt it. In Devon alone, 10,000
jobs are likely to be lost and that's if things don't get any worse. The informed
opinion of local vets is that it will. The news is full of sound bites from
politicians saying things are getting better. I'm glad I missed nick brown's
interview on radio 4 earlier today. My brother's reaction: "How could
anyone allow Nick Brown to get away with claiming to have things under control
when we heard the same thing weeks ago?" He's sent me anotherof his posters.
(click here to see more).
I have just heard from the farmer in Cumbria who told me last
Sunday that the sheep on their farm were finally going to be culled. Well,
they are still there. "We .....haven't got our sheep away in spite of
the cull being announced is it two or three weeks ago ? We are now quite desperate
to have them away because the neighbour whose land adjoins us where the sheep
have been all winter was confirmed to have Foot and mouth last weekend. He
pointed out to the Ministry that our sheep were dangerous contacts and should
be culled along with his as they had been touching through the gates ( his
land was originally part of our farm before we bought) and was told that it
had nothing to do with them it was a different holding !! No wonder the
disease has spread like wildfire !"
I was going to write more about the culling on welfare grounds,
and the shambles that that is too, plus the vet who has been reprimanded for
acting promptly in the obvious clinical diagnosis of the infected cattle at
our local abbatoir (thus saving us from infection from that source). But I
stopped to check sheep and a single was about to produce and I think I've
managed to get her to take little Fred, one of the triplets. It's coming up
to 1.00 am and I'm going to bed.
30th March
A quiet night in the shed. All I had to do was help the tiniest
of W12's lambs have a drink. It's wonderfully strong, but can't reach the
teat very well on its own! Most of the other lambs were asleep. Some ewes
are very protective and they lie with the lambs tucked in under their chins
or against their sides.
W12 and her tiny lambs. They are lying under a red heat lamp.
I just came down to check emails and fetch some biscuits up for
our coffee break. I'd been feeling, angry, no that's not the right word, well.
angry combined with total disbelieve I suppose, after hearing our Prime Minister
speaking in the USA. I've just been smiling at two comments in emails. I'd
better be quick putting them up, as J &B are waiting. The first from the
USA and the second from an arable farmer.
"I am absolutely furious with your prime minister- along with
thousands of people in Great Britain!! He was interviewed on our national
news tonight (comparable to your BBC) and said that there is absolutely no
reason why people can't come and visit England this year as this disease will
not hurt humans!! He said that the tourists are free to travel about the country.
What an incredible liar!! If you people are in quarantine how can he say that
tourists will be allowed to travel everywhere????? Isn't he worried about
spreading it further in your country- let alone someone bringing it back here??
That man doesn't have a clue- he is a lot like our former president Clinton-
a slick ................(I've just come down from the lambing shed, and James
reckoned I ought to edit that bit!)
"I find that I cannot write about our leaders at the moment as
I have no way of bridging the gulf that seems to separate our respective view
of the world. The Prime Minister flaunting his 'christian principles' left
me feeling distinctly queasy. "
Astrid licking her calfs ear.
Coffee was a little interrupted by one of the gimmers (two year
old ewe having her first lamb) having a lovely pair of twins. I stayed up
there till lunch time, mostly just sitting and watching and listening and
smelling. There's a very distinctive smell to a lambing shed, not one that's
easy to describe, new lamb and iodine. It is so good being able to forget
what's going on when we're up there. Other farmers feel the same. A bad day
is lightened by a calf being born, or a worry feels smaller when leaning against
a cow. What happens when the animals go? I'm haunted by a poignant image on
the television - an old man limping across an empty hillside, only his dog
by his side, his sheep gone.
One of my sisters-in-law, June, rang from Sussex. She's calved
cows, foaled horses, farrowed pigs and kidded (?) goats, but sheep are new
to her, and her neighbour with only a handful of pet sheep was needing help
lambing. James talked her through what she needed to know on the mobile phone
whilst she was feeling inside the ewe. Usually it's us asking her or my brother
for advice. The neighbours had hoggs ready to go at the end of February, so
they are running out of grass.
One of the first triplets with his foster mum.
Tony Blair was referred to as "conspicuously devout" on the Channel
4 news today. "Whitened sepulchre" springs to mind. His publicity people are
using every opportunity to show him in "action man mode", photographed standing
next to men in uniform, pointing at a map, striding, grinning, down a road
wearing a yellow boiler suit. Was he actually doing anything? We haven't seen
him standing next to a pile of rotting carcasses yet, but that is probably
because he hasn't seen or smelled any - - and they wouldn't do his electioneering
image much good.
Why can't the man tell the truth? Doesn't he realise that tourists
would be more likely to come here if what he said was believable? He seemed
to be suggesting that there were few areas of the country that had any livestock.
Maybe that's how he would prefer it.
Sarah raised more than £1500, last night and she has kept her
hair! here is the web site of the ARC Addington fund again.
James went up to the shed an hour ago. I said I'd finish this
and then take over. If nothing's happening I'll go to bed and get up later
to check.
29th March
"The attitude that you simply get rid of a disease by killing enough animals
is scientifically naïve, and it is morally repugnant," Patrick Holden,
director of the Soil Association
It has been such a relief to have Peter and Juliet Kindersley
using their powerful voices and rallying support. (See Sheepdrove site). But
the battle is not won yet. The government is only "considering" vaccination.
They are talking of only vaccinating dairy cows in Cumbria, and if they do
vaccinate more widely of still slaughtering all sheep and pigs in the vacinated
area. When are they going to stop talking and act? And when is the head office
of the NFU going to stop pretending that it is speaking for more than a handful
of agri-businesses and start to listen to its membership?
I took a notebook up to the lambing shed this morning (not quite
true, I stole some pages out of the lambing notebook that we keep up there).
When I'm sitting here at this screen things seem different. Here's what I
wrote:
It's late morning. I'm sitting up on the haystack looking down
on all the sheep and lambs. The cows are in their section on the other side,
a couple of them eating hay and silage, but the rest just standing quietly.
There is the high pitched squeak of the wheelbarrow as Bill carts muck up
from the pigstye. One of the ewes has a whistly way of breathing, rather like
the wind blowing through a crack in the wall. Lambs (21 of them now), are
mostly curled up asleep. One of them is bleating, trying to rouse its mother.
There's the occasional "baa-aa" of a mother just below me. In the distance
I can hear ewes and lambs from the field beyond our farm. A robin perches
on one of the hurdles and flies out again --- birds are singing in the hedge
outside and I can just hear a lark above the field behind.
While writing this, T114 stands up and two of her lambs are having a drink,
the third one is still fast asleep. She's turning her head and making soft
whickering noises at her lambs. One of the twins in the "mothering-up" pen
directly under me has managed to get out through the bars and is looking a
bit surprised and unsure how to get back. James joined me a minute or two
ago, with another cup of tea, so he's gone down to put the lamb back.
There's a ewe in pen 4 who's getting up and lying down and getting up again.
She can't get comfortable, lying on a full udder, she'll lamb in the next
day or so. There's a rattling, crashing sound, briefly, as a ewe has a good
rub against a trough that's strapped off the ground against a hurdle. There's
the constant background noise of chewing, and the almost-hissing sound of
water filling the automatic drinking bowls. Bill has just walked quietly into
pen 2 to look at a ewe just over in pen 1, and the sheep in the pen scarcely
notice him.
James is saying "these are always some of the best moments in the year", sitting
on the hay , the peace almost tangible, waiting. Part of that unending cycle.
Now I can hear James and Bill, calmly, unhurriedly, talking about individual
sheep. How can I show you the rightness and goodness of all this? I could
fill 10 pages with the minutiae of this half hour and still not convey it.
I feel the tension easing out of my shoulders as I sit here.
The ewe in pen 1 is starting to lamb, she's pawing at the ground and circling,
and licking her lips very fast. Then she's lying still for a while.
I am building up a store of memories , hanging on to the belief that, even
with this way of life being wrenched and torn apart with such ruthless, mindless
violence - what my brother Nick said is true "……….remember
that it is what farming is about, that unending cycle that whatever
anyone of us does Will go on and on and on. …."
our Triticale as it ought to be in July
The first white thorn is coming out in the hedges, the Triticale
that wasn't sown till February (the autumn rains were heavier than anyone
remembers) is beginning to sprout.
James has gone to sleep in the hay. Bill is quietly and slowly putting hurdles
ready for the ewe in pen 1.
I'd like to share another poem with you. My sister Christine wrote
it after a walk in autumn woods together, was it more than a year ago? It
captures what I have been doing with these memories.
Light Harvest
October is the time to harvest light,
on days when lingering strands of summer
drift into a sky that rings like glass,
honing the dulled edges of your sight
to gather all the shift and shimmer
of slanting sun on trees and tawny grass,
gilding the familiar with surprise.
This morning I escaped into a park
where light lay ripe and waiting for my eyes,
trapped on wet black mud – splintering on dark
green spikes of holly into shards so bright
I’ll feast all winter on this hoard of light.
Just a quick plug. Christine will be at a poetry performance at
the Indian King at Camelford, Cornwall, at 9.00pm, on this Saturday. I'd love
to go and support her, but I don't think I will.
We had some tiny premature triplets this afternoon. The first
one was born dead, and the other two are minute. They are strong and vigorous,
though they looked like little frogs when they were born.
It's horrible news that FMD has reached down near Ermington. It's
too close to Cathy's farm. What are those idiots doing? They are still "discussing".
One farmer's wife I was talking to yesterday was saying " those government
people in London don't know anything about the countryside. They come out
like frightened rabbits, and run straight back."
I'm sorry. I've forgotten just what I was going to say. I'm feeling
very tired and glad that I wrote something earlier. My brain just feels fuzzy.
Normally during lambing we eat, sleep, breath, sheep and everything else gets
pushed to one side. Now I'm just so worried. Sorry. But here's an optimistic
little lamb.
