To School Through the Fields Read online

  As these calves grew older they did not need to return to the farmyard for feeding as they were able to eat sufficient grass for themselves. They were then kept in the fields, known as the inches, along by the river where they grew strong and during the winter cold when grass was scarce hay was carried down to them. However, if the snow came they had to be brought back up to the stalls for shelter. It was strange to see these calves, who but a few months previously had been nervous of open spaces, now terrified of the constraint of the stalls.

  When spring came the large dunghills which had risen outside the cowhouses, stables and piggery during the winter were drawn by horse and butt to the fields, tilted out in heaps, and spread to make the grass grow. This was the only fertiliser used on the land and on the drills of potatoes, mangles, turnips and cabbage. The land which had been ploughed in winter or early spring was now harrowed and drills made ready for setting.

  Setting the spuds was a big job. First my father sorted out the seed potatoes and cut them into sciolláns, a section with an “eye” from which the new growth would sprout. On the day of the setting we would each have a bucket of sciolláns – or a gallon if you were very small – and started setting at one end of the field. The drills stretched the whole length of a three- or four-acre field and if you looked too far ahead you could face that mental wall which long-distance runners meet. We had a cheery character called Mick working with us on the farm, and he shortened many a long drill with his stories. His advice in these or indeed many other circumstances was to “Keep your head down, your arse to the wind, and keep going.”

  If we were after having some wet weather the earth would be damp and clammy, clinging to boots, knees and hands. We went on our knees to set potatoes, wrapping jute bags tied with binder twine around them, and as the day wore on we were often weighed down with mud, which clung in lumps to boots and knees, and to add to the discomfort our hands got colder and colder, while our noses were chilled enough to hang icicles from them.

  If we all got fed up at the same time, which could happen coming on evening, we would all sit down and Mick would sing a song. We learned many songs while setting spuds and many a story was told, imaginary or otherwise. We understood well the story of the Gobán Saor, an old Irish legend.

  The Gobán Saor ruled a large kingdom which he wanted to leave to the cleverest of his three sons. One day, he took his eldest son on a long journey and after some time walking said: “Son, shorten the road for me.”

  The son was totally at a loss as to how to help his father, so they returned home. The following day the Gobán Saor took his second son, and again the same thing happened. On the third day he took his youngest son and after they had travelled some distance he said once more: “Son, shorten the road for me.”

  The youngest son immediately began to tell his father a story that was long and interesting, and they became so engrossed in the tale that they never noticed the length of the journey. In our lives, Mick was the Gobán Saor’s youngest son.

  When all the spuds were set they were covered over with the dark brown earth and, even though we had suffered setting them, we felt a great sense of achievement the day the last drill was filled in. They stretched away into the distance, holding their secret growth within, and we knew every inch of that soft earth with the hidden stones that caused sharp pain when they came in contact with tender kneecaps. It would be difficult to be closer to the earth than we were.

  We also grew our own wheat, barley and oats. After ploughing and harrowing the land, the corn drill was used to sow the grain. The drill was a long timber box with a hinged cover and into this the bag of seed was emptied. Underneath the box were long slender pipes that fed the seeds into the earth in regular rows as the horse drew the corn drill along.

  When everything was planted it was in the hands of nature to provide the growth, and it was wonderful to see the earth returning our trust when the bright green growth burst forth. In spring the land wakes up from its winter rest, the grass emerges, the buds begin to appear on the trees and the whole countryside loses its threadbare coat. The birds start to sing again, telling us all that winter is over.

  The spring also brought the young lambs. If there is anything that puts the “closed” sign on the door of winter it is the sight of frisky lambs playing in the fields. Sometimes, if the ewe decided that she was not designed for motherhood, a baby lamb would find its way into a box by the kitchen fire where it was bottle fed. Once I had such a pet and I called him Sam. He was cared for lovingly and by early summer he had grown to be a big fellow, able to follow me everywhere. One day, while I was stooped forward playing in the garden, he came from behind and butted me with his head. I was very offended by this ingratitude, but it was evidence that Sam was ready to return to the flock; his pet days were over and he was letting me know in no uncertain terms.

  On the poultry side of the farm the production cycle stretched across the summer months. In order to hatch chickens, a hen had to get the hatching urge, which motivated her to sit on a nest of eggs for three weeks. We had an old stone house at the end of the yard where rows of hatching hens sat in state in their boxes. They had to be fed and watered daily in the house because they all but refused to leave the nest. At the end of the three weeks, the chickens chipped their way out of the shells and when they emerged they were soft and beautiful. The mother hen, or clucker as she was called, looked after her chicks with loving care and paraded around the farmyard, leading her brood proudly. Sometimes, too, a hen might lay her eggs in a remote corner of the haggard and hatch them unknown to anybody; then one day she would march her chicks into the yard as if to say, “Look at me; aren’t I clever?”

  The turkeys, ducks and geese also hatched their eggs but took a week longer than the hens to do so. The goose liked to make her own nest and line it inside with soft down. The gander, for his part, was a most responsible father and guarded his goose on the nest; if you came too close he flapped his wings and stretched out his long neck to bite you. The young goslings were fluffy and yellow as butter and the goose and gander led them daily to the water where they all washed and swam around happily. But the males in the turkey and hen families were irresponsible fathers: once they had made their original contribution they disclaimed all responsibility for the consequences.

  Great care had to be taken of the baby turkeys as they were a bit stupid and unlike the chickens and goslings had a tendency to get lost. The goose was a very good mother and she had a strong family unit working for her; the ordinary hen was the head of a one-parent family, but her mothering instinct was fantastic. The turkey, on the other hand, had neither factor going for her: she was on her own and she was not unduly concerned about the well-being of her young. She needed a strong social welfare system to back her up and, of course, we provided that. Minding the turkeys was one of the chores of my young days. When they were set loose in a grassy field, which was supposed to be good for them, I was the social welfare officer who saw that none of them fell by the wayside. They had endless ways of going wrong. If they fell on their backs they could not right themselves; they could ramble off through the long grass and, with no sense of direction, get totally lost, and their mother would never bother to answer their plaintive “peep-peep”. I liked this job because it was leisurely and did not require a great deal of concentration, so I could take a book along with me. Sitting on the warm grass on a sunny day, reading, was a pleasant way to while away the time, though occasionally I would forget what I was actually there for and would have to make a mad scramble to collect lost turkeys from all over the field.

  A common enemy of all the young chicks was the hawk. He would circle around in the sky, observing, and then he would make a sudden dive, swooping down on the chicks, and soar off with one grasped in his taloned feet. He was accurate and deadly. The old hens were wise to his ways and if they saw him circling they cackled and set up a loud noise to alert us to the danger. We always came running to the rescue and clapped our hands at the
hawk, but sometimes it took my father’s shotgun to frighten him away. When I was very young I dreaded the hawk because I had visions of soaring skywards myself, caught in his fearsome talons.

  The farmyard was a symphony of colour and sound. The hens were multi-coloured because they consisted of many breeds: there were Rhode Island Reds, the black Minorca with the golden beak, the white Leghorn and the frilly Sussex with her two white aprons giving her the appearance of a head nurse. Once they had produced their eggs they did not believe in hiding their light under a bushel, so they came out of the door of the hen house emitting a high-pitched cackling noise, telling everybody about their good deed for the day. The black turkeys gave off a continuous yodelling sound, the grey guinea fowl a single highpitched clucking noise. We had the brown ducks, with their ringed necks, and the soft-bosomed, voluptuous white ducks, with their constant quack, quack. The geese seldom stayed around the yard as they preferred the open fields and waterways, but they came back at night to their own house; if they had stayed out the fox would have had a Christmas dinner every night.

  There was seldom a fight between the different families on the farmyard as each one went its own way. If there was a fight, it would be between the sow and the gander. The sow was not averse to thinking that a soft yellow gosling made a tasty mouthful, but before she could put her bad thoughts into action the gander, with outstretched flapping wings and with his sharp beak aimed at the sow’s delicate snout and eyes, drove her, squealing, in the opposite direction.

  Most of the new life on the farm arrived in the spring and early summer and almost all the births fitted into the ordinary farm proceedings. But the pig was not tied to any calendar month and her bonhams’ arrival disrupted the normal routine. She was the one mother who required round-the-clock surveillance because she was quite capable of lying down on her baby bonhams and crushing them to death. This sounds as if the mother pig was a monster, but how many mothers could cope with twenty babies at one go? It was enough to stretch even the strongest maternal instincts. The hen was the only other to come near her in number and she had just about a dozen. As well as that, the hen hatched while sitting in comfort on her eggs for three weeks, while the poor old sow had the ordeal of labour pains and the messy job of physical production, and then finished up with twenty squealing bonhams, which she was expected to breast-feed. It was a tough job and it was no wonder if, sometimes, she felt like sitting on them.

  When the bonhams were due the sow started to make a bed wherever she happened to be. She was put into a little house by herself with plenty of straw or hay and proceeded to chop up the straw with her mouth and tease it out with her crubeens. She kept working on the bed until she had everything arranged and her nesting instinct satisfied. Finally she settled down and got on with the real business of the day. The litter of pretty pink bonhams could vary from twelve to twenty in number, and if there were more than the sow could cater for, they had to be bottle fed. When it was feeding time, the sow grunted with a loud, regular rhythm and all her little ones got the message straight away. Between feeds they lay cuddled up together against the mother. The need for supervision came when the sow got up and had to be let out for a walk or just wanted to stretch her legs, for when she returned to lie down she never checked to see where her bonhams were. She just flopped down, and if they were in the wrong place she lay on them and killed them. In fairness to the sow, with the best intentions in the world it was impossible to keep her big brood out from under her legs. This was where we came in, using a brush to get the bonhams out of the way quickly.

  The bonhams learned fast and after a few days they could look out for themselves, but while they were very small somebody had to stay up at night to mind them. The first time I was ever allowed up with an older sister to mind the bonhams was of a Friday night as we had no school on Saturday. I was delighted because I was curious to know what a night up was like. At that time we had a big open fireplace in the kitchen and we banked it up with turf for the night. The sow only required checking at regular intervals so, apart from that, our time was our own. We played cards and made an apple tart. At about two o’clock I sat on the old sofa by the blazing fire and must have dozed off because the next time I heard the clock strike it was four in the morning.

  It was midsummer and the dawn was breaking when I went out into the garden. It was bathed in a pink translucent light and a soft mist lay along the river valley. I was mesmerised by the absolute beauty of the morning and the dawn chorus in full volume from the trees around the house. It was one of those rare moments of perfection that are imprinted in the memory for ever.

  A Touch of Spring

  Spring came today

  And walked with me

  Up the hill

  Breathing softness in the air

  Opening gates within my head

  The birds felt his presence

  Pouring forth symphonies

  Of unrestrained welcome

  It was mid-January

  And he just came

  To have a peep

  Trailing behind him

  Along the valley

  Wisps of purple veils.

  Forever Young

  AS CHILDREN WE all loved Bill. Though of our father’s generation he had not closed the gate of childhood behind him, and we knew this instinctively. He did not talk down to us but met us at eye level. He lived on the top of the hill beside our home; part of the hill was an ancient fort and at the foot of it was a fairy well. At that time farmers’ houses lacked piped water so all drinking water was drawn by bucket from the local well, and every night, without fail, Bill brought a bucket to our house. So regular was this bucket that when calculating our fresh water requirements we automatically counted in Bill’s contribution.

  When he arrived after supper his first task was to teach us our lessons. His patience was endless. Maths, catechism and Irish were all done diligently but English was his favourite; he read profusely and his reading took precedence over all other activities in his life. I remember one sunny day coming on him sitting on a grassy bank reading Shakespeare when every other farmer in the neighbourhood was busy saving hay.

  My father often despaired of Bill’s farming methods and was constantly urging him to be more efficient. At that time artificial insemination had not come to the bovine world and some farmers kept a bull to provide the necessary service; Bill availed of our facilities for his cows. One summer morning my father met him coming across one of our fields trailing a rope behind him; he was, he told my father, bringing a cow to our bull. When my father enquired as to the whereabouts of the cow, Bill turned to discover that there was nothing at the end of his rope! His thoughts, no doubt, had been on less mundane matters.

  Bill had a stone cowhouse with a thatched roof mellowed to a soft creamy white by years of sun and rain, while the cows had fashioned their own windows by gently butting their heads through the thatch. Milking time presented a pleasant picture with each cow’s head protruding through the low roof, contentedly chewing the cud and looking out over the farmyard. The yard was always spotlessly clean, though some of it, through lack of use, was covered with soft green moss and the timber gates were weather-beaten to an almost grey-white smoothness that had a silken texture beneath your hand. An old grey donkey completed this peaceful scene.

  As a child this was my retreat corner. Being the youngest of a large, noisy household this hilltop haven often provided a welcome escape when older sisters proved too much to handle. Here there was nobody to boss or annoy me or to make me move any faster than I wanted to; Bill and his two old sisters had all the time in the world and were delighted to see me.

  His two sisters were the bane of his life. They ran the house with clockwork efficiency and expected him to run the farm in the same manner. But though they were of the same family Bill was cast in a different mould to his sisters. He never believed in doing today what he could put off until tomorrow, and they pursued him relentlessly in order to make sure that nothing wa
s put off. He devised many ploys to outmanoeuvre them so that he could enjoy his in comfort. At the far end of the haggard was Bill’s rick of hay and into this, on the side facing away from the house, he cut a large hole with the hay knife, and the fact that it faced the sun was an added bonus. In his sunny seat Bill sat, totally oblivious to the world around him and safe from the pursuing sisters. This plan worked for a long time until one day the dog and the gander had a fight and chased each other around the rick of hay. Eventually, the gander got a reeling in his head and collapsed. One of the sisters, who had watched the fight, came running to investigate the condition of the gander. Bill had also watched the fight and, thinking it hilariously funny, roared with laughter, which his sister on hearing traced to his retreat corner, where all his books told their own story. That was the end of that hideout.

  Bill lived close to nature and if the summer was very warm he swam nude in our river, in a pool that was clean and fresh and full of brown trout. This gentle giant of a man – he was a splendid figure standing over six feet – would dive from the cliff into the pool and swim like a giant fish. I found his knees very impressive: male knees were rarely seen in rural Ireland at the time, shorts being an unknown mode of apparel. Other, more intimate details of his form did not provide the same interest as specimens of male reproductive organs were part of the animal survival pattern of everyday life on the farm.