The Farmer's Son Page 12

  He has not lost his deep love for nature and often goes on long country walks, where he takes pictures or paints watercolors. He has shown them to me, and he has an artist’s eye. He was once an architect before becoming a man of the cloth. He was once in love before becoming a priest. He has lived a full life.

  Father Seán’s family have been in Longford for over a thousand years, as keepers of the church land in his native Killashee. His is an old faith.

  Our movie nights break the routine of the farm, and do me good.

  Accidents

  I’ve a sore foot, and I thought a few days’ rest from running would cure it, but when a hungry ewe stood on me yesterday and I promptly spent several minutes hopping about and swearing for the pain she had caused me, I knew something else was up.

  I’ve asked around and have been told to go to a local physio. She is a no-fuss woman and puts me upon her treatment table. She inquires what my profession is, and I tell her “farmer.”

  She inspects my foot, pushes the tendons this way and that, then looks up and informs me that I have damaged the ligament.

  “It was either your wellingtons or you hit it running.”

  “I thought it would heal itself,” I say.

  “No, hasn’t a hope in hell, but I’ll fix it right up,” she says. “You don’t mind needles, do you?”

  I shake my head. “Whatever it takes, I want to get back to the farm.”

  “That’ll do. You might want to tell me to fuck off in a few minutes and that’ll be OK too.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I say.

  She instructs me to lie flat and begins to dry-needle my foot. On her wall is a chart of acupuncture points; the parts of the body are written in Chinese and English. I study this map as she prods and pins, and I feel a calm come over me. There is a great surety in her hands, an understanding of the body and how it works. I think of my own work with the lambs and how I know what I must do with each of them and how I am gradually coming to understand the subtleties of the cows too. It takes years to learn their ways. It is a special knowledge to have, for not all possess it.

  “Fuck!” I yell suddenly, as she locates the pain and the needle scratches what seems my very bone.

  “Now, didn’t I tell ya?” she says.

  “You did.” I laugh.

  The process takes a few more minutes. I begin to feel the pressure lift and it seems that the pain does not leave but flows away. We talk now of farming and football, of Australia and Canada, and of Uncle Davy, for she knows him well. It seems there is no one in the county who does not know him. She fixed his back, she tells me.

  “The Connell men are prone to a bad back,” she says.

  “Well, it’s funny you should say that. I’ve been getting a twinge.”

  “Well, roll over, there, and we’ll take a look.”

  “My foot?”

  “It’s done. I finished when you were chatting there. It will be fine in a few days.”

  I roll over and take off my top and she runs her fingers along my lower back.

  She prods and feels and informs me I have a popped pelvis and that it’s been that way for some time.

  “Begod, and what caused that?” I ask.

  “Well, farming is hard work. You’ve been doing a lot of lifting and repetitive movement, no doubt?”

  “I have.”

  “Well, that would be it. This is going to hurt. You can curse again if you want,” she says.

  I swear and curse loudly as she rights me. I stand upright and walk straighter now. I am mended and feel clearer. She does not overcharge me and I can afford the fee. I have not earned much money in the last few months, for the farm has been my job, but what little bits of writing or journalism I have done have kept me afloat, and I have not starved or wanted.

  We bid each other well and I thank her, for my foot feels so much better already. I know now how the cattle feel when they are unwell and I fix them. I smile and think how simple that was, and feel foolish for not having gone sooner. I think then too that this is so small a matter in the great scheme, for I heard only a few days ago that a man had died in a farm accident.

  Farming is the most dangerous job in Ireland. There have been two hundred deaths on farms in the past decade. Some have been horrible, some resulted from carelessness, all have been heartbreaking. It is a small island we live upon, and each death is known throughout the country. Behind every statistic there is an individual, there is a story.

  There was an incident, some years ago now, in which a family lost a father and two sons in a slurry pit. It was spring and the tank was to be emptied. To do this, you must first agitate the manure using a giant mechanical blender, which liquefies the shit, making it easier for the slurry tanker to suck it up and spread it on the fields.

  Agitation is a dangerous process, for cow dung is full of methane and the gas released can cause blackouts and dizziness. It must be done in a well-ventilated shed, and you always need a second man present in case the fumes consume the operator.

  A dog caused this accident, for it somehow fell into the tank. It was near the end of the day and there were but a few feet of dung left to be spread. The farmer had done everything right, but on seeing the dog stuck, he forgot himself and went to rescue it. I suppose he thought that with so little left in the tank it would be safe. But the fumes knocked him out and he fell into the manure. His son next went to save the father, and it took him also, and the last of the brothers died trying vainly to save his father and sibling. They were all of them drowned in a few inches of slurry. The dog alone survived.

  The priests prayed for that family at mass. We mourned their loss and thought how easily it could have been us. It is only in the presence of death that we remember our transience, our fragility. We are but passing through this world and passing through these farms.

  Out with the Old

  Some of the cows are getting old and worn out and must be replaced. One or two have not gone into calf this year and have been fallow. Sometimes this happens, and if they are good cows, we allow them a year’s rest. But these two ladies are old now and the calves they gave us each year were only ever average, so it is time to let them off.

  A new system has been introduced by the Department of Agriculture which rates all cattle from one to five stars in an effort to raise the bloodlines of the national herd. Farmers must now aim to have a majority five-star herd. So far there has been a lot of resistance to this new system, for farmers have spent generations breeding up their herds to a point where they are happy. The star system does not favor self-breeding. Rory, our neighbor, calls it a monopoly by the genetics companies to impose their sperm banks on farmers. Perhaps there is truth in that.

  We tell ourselves that the purebred bull calf will surely be a five star, though we have not yet traced his breeding to find out. He is growing well, and we agree that it is time to let him and his brother out to grass, now that the weather has calmed somewhat and there has been some growth. It is healthier for them outside, with less chance of disease. We will put them in a small paddock and bring them nuts each day and keep a good eye on them. The purebred calf is like a baby still, and he must be minded and cared for.

  The remaining four weanlings who were too young to sell can also go outside, along with two of the cows. We will move them to our hill farm of Clonfin, which was once part of the Thompson estate. With its fields lined with beech and oak, it has the touch of England about it. The house, which still stands, is from the 1700s and belonged to the gamekeeper. It was last occupied twenty years ago, by an old relation, Dolly. She is dead and her line is gone, for she was a spinster, and the home is now a ruin.

  Dolly lived a frugal life, without running water or electricity, and her world was unchanged from that of her parents in the late nineteenth century. Her father was killed by the English during the War of Independence, in reprisal for the Clonfin Ambush in February 1921, where Seán Mac Eoin, our local hero and commander of the Irish Republican Ar
my, led an attack on the occupying forces. We won the day, killing many of their men. Dolly’s father was too old to fight but not old enough to die. They smashed his face open with a rifle butt. It must have been a horrible end. Afterwards, it was said that bad luck flowed upon the ground from that act.

  Moving the cattle takes most of the morning, but finally the weanlings are settled in Clonfin, and the purebred and his family are placed in the small Garden field by my brother’s house, over the road. Because our farm is spread over many parishes, we have to move the cows to different locations according to the season. But when the cows arrive back in a field they haven’t seen for a year, we never have to show them the water drinkers or springs or hidden places of shade and rest; they remember it all. Thinking thus, I wonder: do the cows remember their losses, the crops of calves we take from them each year? I do not know.

  Thanks to the poor weather, the field isn’t nearly as lush as it was last year. At least there is grass in the ground now, not so much to cheer about, but it will feed them for a time. Anything over 10 degrees C will make grass grow, so we must pray for warmer days.

  Returning home, we prepare the two old cows for their departure. Da will do this business, for he knows and likes the mart. He never asks me to come, though I think I am getting to be a good judge of cattle.

  “One good heifer would make up for them both,” he says as we load up the trailer.

  I wish him luck and safety.

  He does as he says and brings back a cow in calf. She will calve in three weeks. He tells me she was a fair price. I give her a house to herself for the night. I will move her to join the rest of the herd in a few days, when she has settled.

  His Master’s Voice

  Every farm and every family have their own unique calls for cattle. These noises are a form of oral culture passed down father to son. The cows know this language and newcomers to the herd quickly learn it, so that they all understand what the words or cadences mean and respond when we want to move them. So often, the words are not words at all. They are neither English nor Gaelic; they are of an older sort of sound, perhaps from before, from the long ago.

  I have read of the Fulani people of Africa, who are the largest group of nomadic herdsmen in the world, numbering some thirteen million people. They still adhere to their traditional way of life, moving their animals across the plains of central Africa through the seasons. I would love to hear their calls, for they must be very old, unchanged for centuries.

  In Australia, where the farms are vast, I have seen dogs used to herd the cattle. They jump on the back of a quad and travel with the farmer out to the bush. The blue heeler is a powerfully built animal, with great personality and tenacity. It will bite cows on the nose and hush them forwards. Here, though, things are different. Our cows do not fear the dog and will stand and fight him. Vinny is young and, with that, foolish, but he knows enough not to go up against the bigger cows. He is, after all, a sheepdog, and it is not in his nature or instinct to move cattle.

  And so with sticks and wire and calling we move the herd. There is a psychology to this act: one must predict what the cows will do when certain calls are made. To gather them to us, we shout, “Suck, suck, sucky,” which grows faster, eventually flowing into a continuous rolling s sound. This calling may take several minutes if the herd is in fresh grass, and sometimes it does not work, for, being sentient creatures, cows have their own free will.

  Family calls can sometimes change. I learned a wolf call from old Robin Redbreast at Ruske’s years ago, and now it is part of our farm’s vocabulary. It mimics the sound of a wild dog, and it has never failed to move a cow or sheep forwards. For though neither the cows nor I have ever seen or heard a wolf, the noise is buried in the cows’ DNA, in their instinct, and they fear it.

  When the pack is moving, we yell and keep up our shouts: “Hup, hup, hup, ya, ya, ya, heyup.” These are old words, words that were used on the ox and working horses by Grandda and Great-Grandda. With them, we sing the cows into the crush or holding pens. We picture them in our minds standing in the holding pen, and the song is the vehicle for that vision. This reminds me of the Aboriginal people of Australia, who sang their country into existence through their songlines. After all, as Bruce Chatwin wrote, the first words began as song.

  The cows answer us with moos and calls. We try not to run them, for one may break away from the herd and cross ditches and perhaps bound into a neighbor’s field, and so, as we move closer to our goal, our calls grow softer and we tell them then that they are good girls. We cluck and coo and they calm and slow, and in the end we soothe them with gentle shushes. In this they know the annoyance is nearly over. Sometimes on hot days when they are in the crush, we scratch their backs with our sticks; they enjoy this and keep calm and docile.

  It is how we speak, they and I, and yet there have been times when I have spent many days straight with these creatures and have wished we could communicate properly. When the Tower of Babel fell, it not only divided man, but species too.

  Sticks

  What with all the moving of livestock, it has become clear that we are low on herding sticks. We sometimes use rubber piping or plastic rods, but they soon break or bend. It is my job to get new sticks each season. I have collected them every winter for the last five years. I only take from the trees what we will use.

  Today I bring Vinny with me to do this job. It will be exercise for him and good training. He must learn the different fields and farms and how to negotiate them. One day he will be grown and working alongside us. He must be taught how to work, as I was.

  The hill farm Clonfin has the best plantings. Herding sticks must be straight and are best taken from a growing tree and left to harden. A good stick might last years. It is an investment in time to find the right ones.

  There is a place at the bottom of Clonfin where the land meets the nearby bog. It is a wilderness now, for the bog is no longer used and the whole area has returned to nature. We have dubbed it the Wild Wood, from the children’s story The Wind in the Willows. When Javine, my sister, was a child, we told her this was where Ratty and Mole and Badger lived. When she was naughty, we threatened her with the weasels, who would steal her away as they had done with Mr. Toad. Though a teenager now, she still remembers the weasels and the wood. The place has always held great magic for her. It feels old, older than this land. This is where I harvest my herding sticks.

  Vinny and I travel up together in the jeep. He has learned to jump in and out of the vehicle. He is not afraid of driving anymore and he no longer defecates in the back. I talk to him as we drive and tell him it’s fine and we are nearly there.

  The cows and the four weanlings are on the back hill when we arrive. They are busy eating and do not bother looking up, perhaps sensing that we have come for another purpose.

  The ground is still wet and Vinny’s paws are soon mucked and dirty. He jumps on me from time to time and I shout to him to sit down, for I do not want to be tracked in mud.

  We walk towards the Wild Wood and a pigeon bursts from the ditch. It flutters through the air and comes to land on the other side of the field. I photograph it in my mind’s eye. There are hawks here too, and owls. Once, months ago, I saw a great battle take place here between a hen harrier and a pheasant. The pheasant, though agile, was soon killed.

  The Golden Eagle Trust has done great work to help Ireland’s birds of prey in recent years, and more and more great hunters have emerged once again, including buzzards, falcons and kestrels. Sadly, not everyone has welcomed these creatures, and some men of my profession lay poison bait for them, fearing that they will take lambs and fowl from their farms. These fears are not unfounded, for I have seen a buzzard kill turkeys that my aunt was rearing. The buzzard was shot in the end. It hurt me to see the great creature laid low, but, as my aunt said, what could be done?

  There is just one tree I harvest each year. I have not told Da or the others about it, for I do not want it to be cut too much. By the brow of
a ditch it stands waiting. It is an ash tree. The wood of the ash is good, and its saplings have grown straight and hard. They are perhaps seven or eight years old. They are just the right width for a man’s hand. A sapling too big will not make for a good stick, for it will not have the right balance and will not sing through the air. I have brought with me a small saw and begin to cut the saplings. Each stick needs to be around a meter and a half long. There is no give in this wood, which means that when it strikes the cow she shall feel it. But it is foolish to overuse the stick, for you will scare the animal, and a worried beast is a dangerous one.

  The ash is a magic tree and one of the seven mystical ancient trees of Ireland. In older times it was used for spears and weapon handles. It is also known as the World Tree, for it was said to be the route from the underworld to the very heavens above. Everything in this country has a story. Everything is rich with meaning.

  Vinny plays in the undergrowth as I finish my chore. I am careful to cut the sticks fully. I want a clean cut; to simply snap or break off the end will fray and wear the timber unnecessarily. I take six sticks. Two will be for Da and me, another two for extra help from Mam or my brother, and two spares, for they may be taken to a mart or another farm and forgotten. That should see us through the year.

  Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s holiest mountain, also has a connection with sticks. The last Sunday in July is Reek Sunday (or Garland Sunday), a day when tens of thousands ascend Croagh Patrick, where it is said Saint Patrick fasted for forty days and did battle with the devil. It is an ancient place, and in older times we worshiped other gods upon it. On Reek Sunday, Gypsies sell and rent sticks to pilgrims. Two euro will rent you a stick up and down the mountain, and three euro will buy you one to keep. The tinkers’ sticks are always good and straight. The climb takes many hours, and some do it barefoot. A few years ago, I myself felt the need to climb it. I was looking for a connection with the mystical, which is why so many climb. There are people who will tell you that when they reach the summit, bloodied and beaten, and look out on Clew Bay with its hundreds of islands, they have found that connection. But I think I was looking for answers that no mountain could bring.