For The Love Of Lambing
It’s 7pm on Sunday the 6th of March and I’m in the barn with Graham and a sheep that’s due twins but has only ‘dropped’ one. A few hours ago I arrived at Slade farm and Polly had given me a rapid paper-based refresher on how to deliver lambs in trouble. Now it’s time to put that into practice. With the sheep on its side in the straw, and its first lamb already stumbling around, I feel for the second lamb inside her as carefully as I can. One of the most surprising things about lambing is how hot a sheep is when you’ve got your hand inside them. I feel for the lambs front feet and head, then pop the first, then second leg out and pull. The lamb slips out, fresh gooey life. She’s a bit yellow, a sign she got distressed. Mum sheep sets to work licking her new lamb clean.
On the first night at Slade farm I assisted a few different sheep with Graham as the head midwife. The sheep are kept in a few different places on the farm: wherever there’s space. We wander around the farm with a torch under a cold, clear night sky and canopy of stars, our wellies and the mud making thick noises at our feet.
Over the week I’m there I help in the evenings and on the days I have off my regular job. The following day, I arrive in the morning and meet Ffion, one of the full-time workers on the farm. She instantly makes me feel welcome and it surprises me when she says she doesn’t like people. I think that’s just in comparison to how much she loves the animals. She’s dedicated, hard-working and enthusiastic but still somehow manages to be down to Earth. Ffion is 28, has long hair and a nose ring, not the typical image that springs to mind when you think of a farmer. We chat while we bag up the feed for the pigs, barely dust fills the air in the draughty old stone building.
Slade farm is a traditional mixed farm with pigs, sheep, beef cattle and vegetables. It’s also organic and a closed system. This means that all the food and bedding for the animals is grown on the farm, and the manure and old straw bedding is used to fertilise the fields. I say this like I know what I’m talking about, I learnt all this while on the farm.
When all the feed is bagged we go down to see the pigs - ginger pigs with black spots. Ffion introduces me to Brian, one of the pigs who was a bit sick recently but with some TLC and a few bananas has made a full recovery. Ffion jumps in the run with them and gives Brian a good scratch. The rest of the day is spent feeding and watering all the animals, changing the bedding and iodine-ing the lambs umbilical cords so they don’t get an infection. That’s my favourite part, the lambs, they are quite happy to be picked up and make quiet little grunting noises, utterly adorable. I leave around 6 and go down to the local beach in time to watch a spectacular sunset.
Later in the week I meet two of the other volunteers: Matt and Henry. Matt is a professor of bio-medical science and Henry is a high-flying chef who works in Michelen star restaurants. Both have ambitions to own a small-holding and want to get some experience to supplement their reading and YouTube videos. Meeting interesting people is an added bonus I hadn’t anticipated. Polly & Graham, the farmers, have interesting previous lives as high-flying professionals in London. They’ve opened their farm life and business to strangers through volunteering and initiatives like ‘lambing-live’ where those who buy veg boxes can visit the sheep and lambs on a Saturday morning. I enjoy feeling like I’m ‘on the inside’, handing lambs to the children and answering questions as best I can.
I find it interesting that so many people from so many different walks of life are drawn to farming in one way or another. For me it’s because it feels tangible, an important job creating the food we depend on to survive. But it’s more than that. Late at night in the sheds, with the animals sleeping and no one else around there’s a calm in the stillness, it’s not empty or silent or lonely, it’s a comforting, pleasing quiet. The shed is warm despite being open to the elements on the sides, the sweet golden straw rustles as animals shift in their sleep, the bull draws deep, slow breaths, it’s breathing like the waves on a shore.
At the end of the last day all the volunteers, Ffion and Leon, the lad who works the weekend, walk down to the end of a track on the farm. We drink beer with a view over the fields to the sea, the fields full of sheep we’ve helped lamb. It’s a cold, grey day but the weather doesn’t matter.
My time on Slade farm was one of those concentrated experiences, where the memories seem to fill more than the one week I was there. I’m really grateful to Polly and Graham and their family. I can’t wait to go back, assuming they’ll have me!
