Bully for You

The happy couple

If you happen to be reincarnated as a baby animal on a farm, should such a thing be possible, then I hope you are born female. This gives you a better chance that you will be allowed to live for a few years assuming that you have no problems with your reproductive organs or milk glands. It’s only the very very luckiest of the males who are plucked from the slaughter-cycle to become, not to put too fine a point on it, a sex machine.

Spot the ram?

At Pilsdon for instance, all our animals are either female adults or adolescents. Five ewes, four Jersey cows (though we need to sell the eldest, Angelica, as we can only need three milking cows really). The cow’s offspring live about two years before going to the abattoir - at the moment we have three big ones born last year and three smaller calves from this year. The sow Chuckles sadly died after giving birth but we’ll select one of her many piglets to become our next sow. Our thirty chickens are female for their egg-laying ability. Only amongst the ducks do we make an exception, with one drake amongst the six Indian Runners, and last week we accepted two new “Jemima Puddleduck” Aylesbury white ducks, one male and one female. Although the incomers share the same duck pond and coop with the Indian Runners, they are definitely not making friends.

There he is

Pilsdon has currently on hire one ram and one bull. Bringing a ram in amongst the sheep is the accepted way of getting them pregnant and this ugly pitbull of a ram is mostly doing his duty although he seems to have neglected one of the five. We can tell which sheep he’s “tupped” because he wears a blue necklace which leaves a mark on the back of the ewe. The females only let him do so when they’re ready for it which is on a strict 17 day fertility cycle, so we make sure to leave him in there long enough for two cycles in case he doesn’t get round to all of them the first time around.

But having a bull on site to serve the cows is unprecedented. Normally we pay a vet to put a glove on and insert some semen into the cow at the proper time. This should be pretty failsafe but the last few tries have been unsuccessful with all three cows for some reason, leading Pilsdon to resort to hiring this mighty Hereford bull. If this doesn’t work it is a big problem for us because the cows’ milk will dry up eventually if they’re not having calves.

On top of Pilsdon Pen, our nearby hill

Daffodil, Snowdrop and Angelica have all been out in the field with the bull and we believe he’s had sex with them all. No blue necklace for him but we look for telltale muddy marks on the sides of the cow. The poor dears have never seen a bull before. The bull seemed surprised when the cows tried to mount him from behind, as they do to each other when they’re “bulling” at the point in their 3 week cycle that they want sex. We’ve brought the bull inside now as he was churning the field into a mudbath, and his quarters are right next to the cows so they can at least make small talk across the wall. The idea is to keep him long enough to have another crack at all of them, just to make sure. I’m sure they’ll be sorry to see him go.

A short video of Pilsdon's new sewage processing unit! Just what you've all been clamouring for

Hibernating for the Winter

Pilsdon's espaliered fruit trees next to the rebuilt but much lower wall. The trees will need training against wires.

I picked the wettest day of the year to drive 200 miles south to Pilsdon through rainstorm “Barney”, towing a tarp-wrapped trailer containing my luggage for the winter. My mud-splattered jeans were also quite wet by the time I'd finished taking the awning down and preparing the caravan for its lonely freezing nights ahead but as my other clothes were all deeply packed away under the tarp I just set off and turned the Jimny's heating up. It was a tired damp Swan that pitched up at Pilsdon's doors five rainy hours later but the welcome of a Common Room filled with friendly and familiar faces, not forgetting the tea, cake and roaring open fire, made up for it in spades.

I'll be spending the next fifteen weeks here, my fourth winter at Pilsdon Community. What will I be doing? I have an idea but Pilsdon is one of those places where the unexpected crops up regularly with the everyday. On Wednesday I found myself going into a hairdresser's in Bridport and asking for a bag of hair. I could see them looking at me thinking that I surely have enough of my own. There are plans for a “bug hotel” in one of the polytunnels for which human hair is apparently an essential ingredient.

My land as I left it, veg removed and dolomite lime added

Yesterday I was wobbling precariously across the roof of the cow shed which actually had no roof. In its place was a criss-cross of wooden battens nailed to the rafters covering a membrane not strong enough to support the weight of a clumsy foot. Matt was laying large rectangular slate tiles at the far end and my job was to haul them up from the ground, six at a time, totter across to where he was without falling through and stack them so they wouldn't slip off, ready for him to use. The blustery squalls only added to the challenge.

I have also helped to shake and pick seventeen pounds of tiny crab apples off the laden tree by the church, which shall be turned to jelly by the weekend. I have accompanied the local choir rehearsal on the piano, exquisite harmonies for the Christmas carol concerts. I have sown broad beans in long rows in the big glasshouse slightly too close together due to misunderstanding of what distance a mark on a stick signified. I have driven the new minibus, both longer and wider than the previous one, into town twice, squeezing it past huge tractors on narrow lanes (luckily the wing mirrors fold in!)

The new bull

A few things have changed since February, apart from the natural comings and goings of residents. There are now six Indian Runner ducks in our pond replacing those which were savaged by some wild animal last year. The sow Chuckles has died, just a few days after giving birth to eleven piglets which then had to be hand-weaned by the community, being bottle-fed every few hours including throughout the night. Solar panels now adorn the office roof providing up to 4KW of energy. The dangerously-leaning Victorian brick wall in the garden has been rebuilt with a much lower wall, which the espaliered fruit trees now tower over. The badly over-stressed reed bed sewage system has been replaced with an underground processing unit with revolving discs whose output is apparently clean enough to drink (no one has actually been brave enough to try it!) 

But the most exciting development is the Hereford bull which arrived on Wednesday. His sole purpose is to get our Jersey cows pregnant, recent artificial insemination attempts having all failed. This is the first time any of our cows have ever met a bull, even ageing Angelica. Whatever happens I'll keep you updated right here.

The bull gets acquainted with Daffodil