Y Bont: 2006: May: Wellies & Wheelbarrows

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2006 May

WELLIES & WHEELBARROWS

At lambing time every sheep farmer whether they be Welsh, Scottish, Irish or English don their waterproofs when the first lamb arrives and don’t seem to take them off for weeks on end and things are no different at the Llan.

I’ve spent the last month trying to keep as many lambs as possible alive and in spite of the combined efforts of some bloody minded sheep and mother nature to put me in the workhouse, we appear to have had quite a successful time. Barring the odd thrown muck fork (and tantrums) and the nightly ravings at mis-mothering ewes in the sheds, everything went according to plan - that at least is my story and I am sticking to it.

As usual part of the success of the lambing in the Llan is down to the many people in the Village who let me know when something is wrong, so thanks very much to everyone who ’phoned up or called at the house. A special thanks to Alun Rhyd Ornen Isaf who jumped off the the school minibus and ran over to tell me that a new born lamb was stuck down the bank in the Dorlas. I was very grateful especially as when I initially saw then running towards me I thought I was about to be mugged.

No matter how hard the lambing period has been, as the weather warms up and the grass starts to grow and the lambs start to play in the fields, all the previous hardships are forgotten. That is unless you happen to have lambs like mine that seem to prefer to graze the roadside and then when when I try to get them back in the field they can’t find the way they got out in the first place!

With the lambing all but over and the ground drying up I decided to get on and spread the muck heap before the muck heap spread itself onto the road. Every year, through what I would call wear and tear, and my father would call abuse, a couple of tines on the loader tend to get bent out of shape and this year was no exception. This in itself presented no problem, I removed the first tine and heated it until it was red hot, then straightened it on the anvil, then replaced it in its slot on the loader. I then removed the next tine and started to heat that. The burning smell didn’t register with me immediately. However, when it did and I looked over my shoulder I had a bit of a shock to see the front end loader going up in smoke. The hot tine had set fire to some old hay and muck at the back of the loader which in turn had set the oil and grease, which had built up over the last forty years, to smoulder. After a brief moment of panic some bad language and a mad dash to get a bucket of water, the fire was extinguished and no lasting damage was incurred.

When I finally got around to spreading the muck, things went smoothly although there are two new holes in the side of the muck spreader where my foot slipped off the clutch at an inopportune moment. Arwel Bach once told me, ‘There are tractor drivers and there are screw drivers’, although I was never quite sure what he meant by that, I am pretty certain that I’m in the latter category and it was not intended as a compliment to my driving skills.

Now that the sheep have passed their major headache

inducing season, it’s the turn of the cows to have some fun at my expense. With hay reserves running low I decided to turn a small bunch of calves out to Cae Dan Ty (a nice lush green field). After five months inside they went mad and I watched them play and enjoy their new found freedom. Once they’d settled down and run out of stem I left them alone. Half an hour later when I returned they’d smashed the fence, forded the river and were happily trotting around my neighbours field. To be fair to them when I went to fetch them they came back without too much fuss. However, when after my best attempts at fence patching the next day they had repeated their feat, I decided enough was enough and I shifted them across the road to Cae Ysgol.

Everything was quiet for a few days. The sun was shining, the sheep were happy, the cows were happy and I was less grumpy than usual. Sadly the illusion of rural bliss was shattered when Tina ’phoned me to inform me that the calves were on the rampage and were doing their version of the tango in one of the gardens down Maes y Llan! Needless to say they have since been moved to another field where up to now they appear to be behaving themselves.