It is dark. The trailer ramp clatters and rings. The whinge of it as it swings open. The rams are gathered. Mostly. My hands are aching. The worst of the work is still to come. It is Autumn. Frost almost come. The month now fading into the first touch of winter. Today we harvest our lambs.
I have trained them to the pen. Built it from gates and old folds. A pallet here and there. A ramshackle thing. But my farm has always been held together with optimism and bailing twine. I call. The rattle of a metal pale with a scrape of oats. I call between shakes of the bucket. Cold enough so clouds of breath drift across the field as I breathe. A long call “Heeeeeeeeeeey Boys” and a sharp barked “c’mon”. Curved horned heads turn up from the field. They call back to me and break into a canter. Some sniffing the air, tasting it with their tongues. Eager and hunting for ewes they have been rucking amongst themselves for the past 6 weeks. The bulked muscle they have built in the fields showing in their flanks. They sniff and lick the air, trot, shaking their heads, spiral horns shimmying above the tops of rushes. They funnel themselves into the pen. The last few I gather and they follow, and the gate is closed. The are penned in the field ready for loading.
Towards dark I have the trailer in place. I am tired. Last years ram has broken out three times. It has been work to gather him and I am not yet healed from the broken arm. Through three wire fences and three electric ones into a field of ewes. Then from the stables where he lifted the door off the hinges. Calmly. Quietly. No aggression. Just steady and certain power. Then he climbed a four foot door to a gap at the top and jumped clear. I fed him by hand as a lamb. His mother my lead ewe and her loss like a solid thump to my chest. I gather him time and again, catch him by his spiral horns as he hunts for ewes. He is calm, handled. Cossets often are. But catching him to calm him takes running. I fetch folds from across the farm, pallets, to shore up the stables he is to be in. Making five foot pens. Hauling hay feeders, rebuilding doors. Screwing door jambs back together. Wiring back gaps in doors, repairing stall walls. He is held. Just about. It will not take for more than a day or two.
I scour the lower field again. I am missing two rams. They have found the ewes and are testing the last fence to find them. These I gather with feed and flailing arms, push them to a gap in the electric fence. They follow the sound of the ram flock to the pen. There are two ewes there. The familiarity still, just about, enough to call them in.
My neighbour calls. She has come to help. Calm. Patient. Quiet. Things I sometimes am. Am often not. I could learn much from her. Have already. Two rams have escaped the pen. The first, the biggest Ram, a white three year old Lleyn for a South African customer, I have caught. Just about. Wrangled him one handed into the trailer. My still recovering arm gingerly working the rasping clasps and hinges. The second she catches with me. Slow. Patient. Her headtorch bobbing in the dark across the field. We shepherd it in to a new jury rigged pen. The ewes who have autumned with him follow me and the feed. He follows them. The pressure of my neghbours newness who is sweeping in behind to close off the field to the ram pushing him forward. The familiar rattle of pail and my call and the following ewes pulling him on.
The last ram in the stable takes us both. Big. Powerful. His horns a triple spiral. She makes a harness. Calmly. Carefully. Is as calm and careful with him. I am on his left so I can protect my healing arm. She on the right. He is loaded. The trailer ramp whinges shut one las time. The stable would not have held him for one more day.
I have worked for a year for this. From tupping – when the rams are with the ewes, through to lambing. We are returned to tupping time again when I take them. One years sun, and grass, and water and work. One years sweat, and care and learning. Contained in a trailer. We pack them close while we load. The closeness calming for them. Then we scatter the ewes to the field quickly. The scent and sight and separation will have them buck and rut and jump. And I am gone, rattling down the lane away from the farm and temptation. Motion has them calmed. Their familiar flockmates with them.
They will feed family, friends, customers. The work and sun and grass and growth of a year. Something I have helped to make. Worked to grow, laboured to harvest. Well raised. Carefully. Food now for others. Something good, shared, from the honest work of tired hands.
