Farm on the M62: Braving the heat to care for stock - Jill Thorp
I wonder how many times one can utter the words: “Crikey it’s hot” in a single day? Truer words have never been spoken as the entire country has wilted under a baking hot sky. Paul of course was not quite so eloquent in expressing his dismay at the sweltering temperatures we had last week.
If there was a competition at the Olympic Games for moaning about the weather, Paul would be a gold medal winner! Aside from him declaring repeatedly that his demise was imminent due to the intensity of the sun, he expressed his complete disbelief at the idea that people actually pay to go on holiday to places hotter than this. They pay to suffer like this. Over and over he repeated this whilst shaking his head. Thankfully his tirade against the heatwave fizzled out in the evening as our farmhouse is like the North Pole inside even in the depths of a heatwave, meaning we at least got a few hours sleep.
The main positive of the hot, dry spell was that we got a bumper crop of hay and the bale pile in the yard steadily grew as work continued through the night. The tractors kept rolling, the air conditioning groaned under the pressure of maintaining a cool cab and the little guy worked like an absolute trooper. Whilst the boys mowed, baled and carted bale after bale, I saw to the livestock and fended off countless unnecessary remarks about the welfare of our animals, or at least the lack of.
The length and intensity of the heatwave certainly proves challenging, but I’m unsure what certain members of the general public expect us to do. We don’t have giant air-conditioned sheds waiting to be used in the event of extreme weather and transporting them in the heat is out of the question. The ponies coped, they were hosed down throughout the day, had shade and water. The sheep coped, they too had shade and water although they really didn’t enjoy the hosing down. And the cows coped.
I made good use of the large tub of powdered electrolytes I had and whilst the horses are used to drinking them, it was a first for the Leicesters, but they too emptied all the buckets. Whilst refilling one of the water buckets, a lady with two large dogs informed me that the sheep had in fact run out of water earlier that day and I really must make their welfare an absolute priority. As she continued her lecture, her dogs laboured under the savage midday sun, panting desperately, their shiny black coats absorbing the heat leaving them incredibly distressed. She’d marched off dragging her poor dogs behind her, before I had chance to tell her that there was a large, automatic water trough higher up the field and this tub was just for the electrolytes. Contrary to what seemed to be popular belief, we, along with many other farmers, care for our animals.
We work tirelessly, scarcely see the inside of our homes, think nothing of “pulling an all nighter” as the little guy puts it and will always make sure our stock is fed and watered before we are. Perhaps people should thank their lucky stars that their are farmers out there, mad enough to work the hours they do to provide the nation with food. Try not to bite the hand that feeds you....