About Me

Living and working on the land of our wonderful Somerset countryside has been my passion for as long as I can remember; my motto being, 'As long as the animals are happy, I am happy! ' I started my farming life as soon as I could walk, coming on at a steady pace behind Dad. School was a nuisance, it interfered with my farm work. I learned to milk at about 10 years of age (well just a few old quiet ones!) I went onto milk our herd of dairy cows for about 16 years after leaving school. In 1995 Dad gave me six bulling beef heifers and told me to go on and do my best. Having faced everything that life has thrown at me during these past years in my farming life, I thought maybe I should share some of these experiences. Being able to write stories about the cows started in the infant’s class of my first school, where I was able to keep my teacher amused with life at home on the farm. The stories I now tell come from the cows themselves, I find it very easy to see things from their point of view. Having spent so much of my time with them; I have quite a good understanding of what they are thinking. Life on the land is ruled by the seasons and the weather. Certain memories are more easily brought to mind if you got wet through and blown off your feet or the sun was beating down and the sunburn was bordering on third degree burns! This is pretty much how we live our life at Lilac Farm. We calve in the spring, make our feed in the summer, sell our calves in the autumn, rest the cows in the winter. Then we do all it again, but you are never quite sure if it will all be the same again!

How I Learned that Cows Can Talk

Cows can talk! Now that’s something I decided upon many years ago, when at a very young age I can remember lying in bed listening to a cow bawl continually. She seemed to be saying, “You’ve taken my baby! I’ve lost my baby!” in a very harsh, loud repetitive bawl. When I asked Dad the next morning, he explained that he had taken that cow’s calf into another shed to be weaned for herd replacement so that in a couple of years’ time, that calf would become a young cow in the milking herd too. This was my very first understanding that cows can talk. We then had the drama of the escaped yearlings - my next lesson in cow talk. Whilst myself and the family sat eating our lunch one day, I could hear yearlings (which are our young cows) that were living in the home field, continually bawling a very squeaky, “I’m over here!” There were a couple that kept saying, “Can we come too?” “You shouldn’t be over there. That’s not our field!” Well upon my investigation, I found seven yearlings over in our neighbour’s field gathered around a hole in the hedge saying, “I’m over here.” The other four were still in our own field discussing the situation and whether to join in or not. Well too late now! With help from the old dog, they were soon all returned to the correct field and the hole was fixed. Once again peace was resumed, and I had learned my second lesson in cow talk: Upon hearing a squeaky excited bawling, check to see if all yearlings are present and correct. When I left school in 1977 I joined Dad at home on the farm. My excitement and pleasure could only be measured by the large and happy smile that I permanently wore on my face. Jobs on the farm are done on quite a repetitive basis: milking in the morning, home to breakfast, checking the young stock, followed by a job or two, and it was soon lunchtime. After lunch, a quick job before milking, and home to tea, followed by a shower and off to the young farmers’ social event of that evening, which was most times just to drink at our local pub and meeting place or at the weekends we would travel further a field to other young farmers’ events. Well I recall so well one occasion. Probably shouldn’t have had that last drink! Milking next morning had seemed to take forever and then breakfast? Well, I couldn’t face that, so off I went to check the young stock. When I arrived at the field, it was as if the cattle knew my head was thumping, because they started bawling as I got off the tractor. On and on and on! Well every time I tried to count them, they all gathered closer to me. The noise was more than I could stand. They seemed to be saying, “We want more grass! We’re hungry!” So having made a quick exit from the field, for the sake of my very poorly head, I returned to report my thoughts to Dad. “I think those heifers want moving. They were very noisy - started bawling the minute I pulled up at the gate; telling me they were hungry, I think.” “Yes you’re right,” he said. “I meant to tell you to open the gate into the next field for them. Better go back and do it.” Well not feeling the ticket (not well), but not wanting to admit anything, off I went back to move the young stock; another lesson had been learned - albeit with a hangover! The amount of cow talk I’d learned got me through many a year, until the time we had a young cow calve early one morning. We called the cow Geno Genellie; for what reason, I don’t recall. She had a lovely brown and white Simmental bull calf - a real beauty indeed. I checked on her about lunch time. The calf was up and sucking well. Now that’s a picture you can’t better, to my mind anyway. But during the evening the cow started bawling, so I went out to see what her problem was. I couldn’t see one, so back inside I went. Later on I was off to bed, but no! That cow was still bawling so out I go again. Geno Genellie is stood looking at the calf, giving a very worried bawl indeed, but the calf looked fine, so I could still see no problem. Now that cow bawled all night. She didn’t sleeping a wink and neither did I. It’s very hard to turn off to a bawling cow when you don’t know what her problem is. Well it didn’t take me long to see what her problem was the next morning. When I walked into the shed, it was right in front of me. Her calf was dead as a door nail. What a disaster! All night that poor old cow had been trying to tell me that her calf hadn’t sucked any more and was very poorly - then it had died. Now that’s some cow talk I will never forget: “My baby’s poorly. It’s going to die because it’s not sucking.” A lesson learned the very hard way indeed. So you see, “Cows Can Talk”.