Life on the land: a farmer writes of camaraderie and the secret language of cows
Farming is a hard life and our fellow farmers understand the journey. We can share with them our losses and triumphs in a way we would not with others. We are a community here and a good farmer is lost without his neighbours, for, though we perhaps would not always admit it, we need one another. No man, no farm, is an island.
At times our neighbours will be stuck just as we are: a broken-down tractor, a man short on a cattle move, in need of an extra trailer, or just a friendly ear and advice. I know other men's fields and ground as well as our own, for I have helped and worked them when they have been in need.
In the summer, I helped stack the square bales at Murphy's, for their sons are emigrants now and they had not the help. It cost me but an hour out of my day and they were glad to see me come round the corner.
I remember when Uncle Mick died and the neighbours came to make the silage. I do not know who instigated this, but men came with tractors from all over, the meadows were rowed and baled and the feed wrapped and stacked. I have never forgotten this act, nor the men who did it.
The importance of neighbours came to us a few weeks ago in all its glory, for the McVays, whose land mearn, or abuts, ours in Kilnacarrow, had a horse stuck in a bog hole in the moorland that meets both our properties.
Try as Jim might, he could not release the mare on his own, and his tractor had not the power to pull the animal from the embrace of the swampy earth.
It took our tractor and four men to free the animal. She cried and neighed as we worked to free her. The fight had gone from her body and she had not the strength left to help us in any way. Our slings and ropes missed and failed several times and at the last, when all our hopes were faded, Da and I tried the sling one last time and we all pulled her free.
We were all of us united in the joy of our actions for that short moment. She would have died there that day if were not for Jim and us, his neighbours, and for that we were glad.
Every farm and every family have their own unique calls for cattle. These noises are a form of oral culture passed down father to son. The cows know this language and newcomers to the herd quickly learn it, so that they all understand what the words or cadences mean and respond when we want to move them. So often, the words are not words at all, they are not English nor Gaelic, they are of an older sort of sound, perhaps from before, from the long ago.
In Australia, where the farms are vast, I have seen dogs used to herd the cattle. They jump on the back of a quad and travel with the farmer out to the bush. The blue heeler is a powerfully built animal, with great personality and tenacity. It will bite cows on the nose and hush them forwards.
Here, though, things are different. Our cows do not fear the dog and will stand and fight him. Vinny is young and, with that, foolish but he knows enough not to go up against the bigger cows. He is, after all, a sheep dog, and it is not in his nature or instinct to move cattle.
And so with sticks and wire and calling we move the herd. There is a psychology to this act: one must predict what the cows will do when certain calls are made. To gather them to us, we shout "suck, suck, sucky", which grows faster, eventually flowing into a continuous rolling s sound. This calling may take several minutes if the herd is in fresh grass, and sometimes it does not work, for, being sentient creatures, cows have their own free will.
We were all of us united in the joy of our actions for that short moment.
Family calls can sometimes change. I learned a wolf call from old Robin Redbreast years ago and it is now part of our farm's vocabulary. It mimics the sound of a wild dog and it has never failed to move a cow or a sheep forward. For though neither the cows nor I have ever seen or heard a wolf, the noise is buried in their DNA, in their instinct, and they fear it.
When the pack is moving, we yell and keep up our shouts. Hup, hup, hip, ya, ya, ya, heyup. These are the old words, words that were used on the ox and the working horses by Grandad and Great-Grandda. With them, we sing the cows into the crush or holding pens. We picture them in their minds standing in the holding pen, and the song is the vehicle for that vision.
The cows answer us with moos and calls. We try not to run them, for one may break away from the herd and cross ditches and perhaps break into a neighbours field and so, as we move closer to our goal, our calls grow softer and we tell them they are good girls. We cluck and coo and they calm and slow, and in the end we sooth them with gentle shushes. In this they know that the annoyance is nearly over.
It is how we speak, they and I, and yet there have been times when I have spent many days straight with these creatures and have wished we could communicate properly.
This is an edited extract from The Cow Book by John Connell which is published by Granta at $29.99