Farm life for a city dweller Alan had not spent much of his life on a farm. There had been short visits in the summers to his cousins’ farm in Devon, but he had never actually done any labour. He and his parents would stay for a couple of days, ride horses, have some nice meals and head back to London. His aunt had always said kindly and generously, ‘Why don’t you stay with us for the whole summer? We’ll teach you how to milk the cows.’ He would just chuckle and answer with a polite but mildly sarcastic response, ‘Oh, don’t tempt me, Aunt Jean.’
During his penultimate year at secondary school, he began to take more of an interest in nature. He decided that the upcoming summer would be the perfect opportunity to spend more time on the farm. He made the arrangements with his elated aunt and uncle, packed two months-worth of clothes and set off for the country.
Despite not having spent much time on a farm, Alan knew it would not be an easy experience. As a child he had noticed his aunt and uncle’s weathered hands. At the time he didn’t know why, but as he grew older he came to realise the reason. ‘That’s what farming does to you,’ his mum confirmed when he asked her about it.
Still, hard work aside, Alan was curious about all the various tasks a farm had to offer. He resisted the urge to behave like a tourist, even though he knew that after the two months had finished, he’d return to his privileged life in the city, where the most difficult manual labour was carrying a rucksack over his shoulder. But there were some things he wasn’t prepared for. Farming can be remarkably dirty work.
His aunt and uncle’s farm had a variety of animals to tend to, as well as an extensive vegetable garden. His aunt spent hours every day weeding the garden. It was not something that could be done in one day, or even one week. There was no end to the number of unwanted plants that grew alongside the wanted ones. But Alan spent more time with his uncle and the animals. The stables housed the horses, which, these days, were less like a second set of farm workers and more like pets, and there were fields of sheep, cattle and a chicken coop. He, his uncle and his cousin Fred would ride in his uncle’s lorry and unload bales of hay in the fields for the cows. They had to feed them, and the other animals, as often as they themselves needed to eat.
The feeding of animals, the collecting of chicken eggs from the coop, even the shearing of sheep was all child’s play, and was perhaps as deep into farm life as Alan wanted to venture. The holding pens had to be cleaned, though, and even worse was the sad fact about animal farming, which was that some animals weren’t long for this world. This particular aspect wasn’t something that Alan could muster the strength to endure. When the time came, he bowed out, feeling in the end more cowardly than sorrowful.
His uncle understood. Alan wasn’t from the farm, and he couldn’t expect him to accept every aspect of the life in just a few short weeks. ‘There are many things I would rather not do out here, but it’s part and parcel of the life,’ his uncle tried to explain. ‘People take these things for granted when somebody else does the work for them.’ While Alan respected his uncle’s words, he spent more and more time in the garden as the weeks went by. |