Livestock Chaos #2

There are cows on the lane, sheep in the yard and chickens in the barn, I have not slept for 36 hours but chase them all I must!

Hello dear ones, I do hope you are all feeling less windswept than I am this weekend!

It’s all been rather déjà-vu on the hill this week…

Living the smallholders life has many facets, mostly hard work but at the end of each day, usually, I sit down with a sense of achievement, the anticipation of reaping the fruits of my labour enough encouragement to continue, the pain and exhaustion are not weathered in vain.

This country life though…

Would you believe me if I told you there are days when 30 square meters of studio apartment in town with no garden or outbuildings or animals—especially cows— or brambles or trees, creep into my dreams? No? I don’t blame you… No trees? It will never happen, not in this life anyway. Nevertheless, there are few days when I feel quite as utterly defeated as I did this week when faced with the destruction a herd of cows can conjure in just a few short minutes after no sleep for 36 hours and a wind gusting up to 90 mph across the hill. Sometimes stamina is all I have left, sometimes even that is pushed to a limit so extreme I struggle to hang on.

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Just a warning - “Cease, cows, life is short.” ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I hear them, above the howling wind, above the clattering of slates on the barn roof, above the delirium of fatigue after another sleepless night, above the incessant ringing—since September—in my ears, their cloven feet clip-clapping on tarmac, a wait-for-me moo from a straggler trapped behind barbed wire.

I feel actual tears pricking my eyes, my throat tightening as I watch from the kitchen window an entire herd stampede through the chicken field, out of the gate onto the lane. Wolfie, demented with excitement, is leaping at the gate, turning in circles then leaping again and again, a circus dog without the frills, without the applause.

I look at my totally oblivious, hungry husband seated at the table, my eyes beseeching.

‘The cows are out again.’

‘Ignore them’ he says, he doesn’t look up. He doesn’t hear the wobble in my voice.

‘They’re coming from the chicken field…’ I insist, tailing off in the hope of a reaction.

‘For fucks sake!’ his so eloquent retort, ‘its supper time!’ He gets up to look but sits immediately down again. My husband does not like cows, unless they are winked at by fire and lay bloody on his plate.

Resigned to the inevitable next hour, I pull on boots, a coat, grab a stick and a lamp—darkness is much too close, my bed and much needed sleep not so much, now—turn off the oven. I—my exhausted, wilting body—am not ready to fight a bovine battle. I call the owner, hoping… there’s no reply, I leave a message—as polite as I am able, which is not very—step outside, am greeted by four woolly faces delighted by pastures new; aka the courtyard, with them an almost debilitating realisation; the cows have not escaped via the neighbours field, they have come up through the woodland from the sheepfold. Now, ovine opposition too.

Tears gather, begin to slide down my face—I am not able for this, not tonight—but are wiped and dried immediately by the wind, I am grateful.

I peer through the slatted gate, watch the seconds as the last cow, demolishing the neighbours fence, leaves the field to follow the others. They cross the lane, charge up the hill and disappear, kicking dust into the wind as they go. I tare after them but know already the futility of any attempt to round them up, leave another message for the owner as to their whereabouts and turn back to the more pressing problem of my own livestock who, heedless of their dangerous proximity to the unlikely lethal weapon that is Wolfie, are eating the fresh scented leaves of a David Austin climbing rose.

I lock my tiny—killer—dog in a cave. The noise of the wind is deafening now, becoming worse with each gust, take my life in my hands—those loose slates could kill if rusty nails give—dash into the barn, leave seconds later with a bucket of nuts to entice my four grazing sheep, hoping against hope that the proffered treat will be sufficient when they are already eating a five star meal. I breathe a sigh of relief when they follow me back down the courtyard through the alley to the back of the barn but they are spooked by a falling branch of walnut and scatter. It takes me precious, dangerous minutes beneath the cacophony of snapping branches and clattering roof slates to gather them up onto the back lane and down to their field where I find not only two parts of the fence crushed into the ground, destroyed entirely by weighty beasts but the gate too is a pile of smashed, irreparable timbers. I swear—even more eloquently than my husband—clamber over the debris, am relieved when four sheep leap over following me whereupon, completely spooked by the unusual goings on they scatter again. It takes me ten minutes of coaxing to round them up into their cabin. Checking hay and water, I put the bucket down, whisper I am sorry because I know they fret when the door is closed but I have no choice, fence repairs are not on tonights agenda. All that remains is to lock up the hens, though I might need a paramedic or two with a stretcher to carry me there!

The narrow lane back through the woods to the chicken field is now a heartbreaking mess of mud and stone, cow shit splatters have flattened tiny spring flower buds lining the edges, the fence is also damaged in many parts. Low branches of wild plum are strewn across the whole length of a path I have spent five years maintaining. It is no longer a path, it is an endurance test! Exhausted, misery draining the minuscule amount of energy I have left, I navigate my way through, dislodging branches as I go, trudge my way through deep troughs made by heavy feet across the field.

The coop is empty. Here too the fence is a mangled mess of posts and wire. There is not a chicken in sight. Rounding up sheep is easy compared to chasing chickens in half light. And, anyway, where are they?

I howl with the relentless wind into the dark, return to the barn for another bucket, fill it with grain to rattle with the vaguest of hopes in ever finding them, am about to step out of the door again but stop. There is a gentle cluck-clucking sound from above my head. Shining the lamp up I see six feathered heads with twelve bright, terrified eyes roosting on stacked logs. They will not stay motionless if I try to move them, I know too well, I fix my pleading, bloodshot eyes on theirs, pray for kindness, pray that just once during this nightmare of an evening, something will be well behaved. Five are, one—the usual suspect—even with clipped wings, flies off up to the rafters. I look at her, she looks at me. She knows I am beaten. I know I am beaten. I close the door to the barn behind me, she will come to no harm for one night.

Two hours later, in pitch darkness the owner of the cows arrives, I see him leave his car, torch in hand; he wanders—too nonchalantly—up the hill. An hour later he comes back down again. His herd are not following him and I cannot help my smile…

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“I am tired of having hands she said I want wings — But what will you do without your hands to be human? I am tired of human she said I want to live on the sun —” ― Louise Glück

Briefly - All of the passed days in the week are wind battered and tattered. The noise an endless, mostly unwanted companion, has rattled nerves and bones until both feel almost to be melded to one. They leave a wreckage of strings and filaments that have lost sight of original placings, a cobweb no longer bound to its stays, its magic, gossamer threads are broken.

It is too many days since I have followed mist phantoms. The wind has blown them elsewhere, I dream of following if only I had more time to travel that far.

My heart breaks into a thousand pieces and remains that way for the entire week when I receive news that my favourite student—I know, I know, I shouldn’t have a favourite—without any warning has moved to the far side of France, to a new village, another school. Mon petit bout de soleil, tu me manques. Je ne t'oublierai jamais.¹

“Is there anything more important than love?” the question I am asked by my seven year old autistic angel in class on Monday. I am taken aback by the gravity of seriousness in his little voice. I tell him I think that possibly there isn’t, that without love there are countless other emotions we cannot witness and that without it our lives risk becoming terribly sad. He replies almost immediately, looking into my old eyes with his bespectacled, bright and intelligent blues, “I love you very much Susie” he says in English, adding in French, “j’avais envie de te le dire depuis très longtemps’. I had no words to reply, my heart needed no further conversation, I hugged him to hide my tears.

Once I saw an angel in the mist… I miss her…

It is three months since I have had female company in my kitchen. I am nostalgic with longing; I miss soft, I miss being understood, I miss gentle words, I miss my daughter.

‘Soon’ she tells me. I hope soon is soon enough.

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With clouds of nostalgic windswept love

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Something I loved this week;

Ann Collins and Brian Funke joined thoughts and poetic lines in a nostalgic project which will be published in 6 parts, the first is an exquisite exploration in an exchange of words written from memories revived, one from the other.

The mind observes life at the edges, on the borders between what was and what might still be.

Rocket Tree: An Exchange

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For those of you who were not one of my much loved subscribers of today back in March 2023, here is the first Livestock Chaos I wrote of here on Substack - I hope you enjoy…

1. I miss you, my little ray of sunshine. I will never forget you.