It’s 7 in the morning. The kids open the bedroom door. “There’s a powercut”. It’s still semi dark. But the sun has risen behind the thick grey clouds. Storm Ali, the first of the season has made landfall. We are in the North Roscommon. I propel myself out the door. Quickly. The electric fences are off.
I’m half asleep out into the wind, the crack of falling trees and breaking branches splits the sound of the wind in two. Every three minutes or so something breaks and falls. The wind in the tree tops is the sound of the sea on sand and gravel. The falling trees are gunshots.
The side field is filled with rams. Three intact. Once friendly docile wooly puffballs mating season has made them all macho curling lip, muscle and sharpened horn. They buck, sprunk and fight. They think about standing their ground with me. They would if there were female sheep. And their fence is off. It’s only a matter of time before they notice. Machismo has it’s place on a farm. It’s on the other side of a working electric fence.
If they see or hear the ewes, I’m done for. They will break through gates and go right through me to get to them. I need to move quickly. Think quickly. But despite the wind and rain I am still half asleep.
I haul down a battery run energiser from the chicken run to energise their fence. If they get out it’s bad. It’s work. It’s damage. And, if they notice the ewes, it’s utter carnage. Macho chaos. They will plunge through steel mesh fencing and deep dug posts to get to them. It will be difficult and dangerous to separate them. More so in a storm. And the rams will fight. Gethen is capable of breaking a smaller rams neck. Or my leg, in a pinch.
I connect the energiser. The tick, tick, tick of the pulses is the sound of calm. Of order. Of macho chaos temporarily contained. They will, eventually notice it’s not the mains.
I corral the ewes again. The pulse of the battery is fainter still on their line, and several have gone wandering. Though not within eye or scent range of the rams, luckily. I gather them up quite calmly. They are as leery of sheepish machismo as I am. The doe goats are, as expected, everywhere. And happily taking to their vocation in life which is destroying electrical fences that have been switched off for more than 3.5 seconds. It’s their job in life. And it’s a blessing to love your work.
The empty turkey house has cartwheeled across the poultry run in the storm, and the run is damaged. Turkeys and chickens fraternise willy nilly. The chickens, being opportunists, raid the turkeys food mercilessly. The turkeys, not being the brightest pennies in the poultry fountain ( and the poultry fountain is not renowned for mental acuity) fail to notice. Or raid the chickens feed in return. They have also failed to notice their house, again. Or water. Or anything that could help them in the prosecution and continuation of their poultry existence (geddit…)
In the next few days we will scout the farm, looking for damaged fences and felled trees. We will cull leaning willows and ash from the drive way, stack downed branches to be hauled to the firewood stands. The sound of chainsaws will ring the farm, as farmers clear, clean, process and manage the windfall from neighbouring holdings. We’ll move the rams, and the ewes, and continue the project of turkey re-education.
But for now, the storm has passed.
