My Father & Other Animals by Mike Kirby
My Father & Other Animals
by Mike Kirby
Synopsis
My parents chose the Yorkshire Pennines – a tough place to pursue their dream of having their own farm. Dad, a man of many actions but few words, was as relentless as the farming seasons, and through long hours and lots of mud, sweat and tears, gradually carved out a living, slowly making real the vision that they shared.
My Father and Other Animals tells the story of how this driven man, always hand in hand with Mum, and blessed with a unique understanding of his animals, brought their farming dream to life, building a successful farming business against the backdrop of the South Yorkshire hills. Together they raised a family, blessing all four of their sons with their common sense and restless work ethic and love of being outdoors, working side by side as family
It is about the harsh realities of life and death, ever present on a farm, about getting-on, learning and failing but not giving up. Dad always seemed to find a way around even the most intractable problems with what he called’ application’. It is also about sacrifice, scrimping and saving, in the certainty of better days to come.
Most of all it is about my Mum and Dad. They were lucky enough to spend their lives with the one they loved, doing the things they loved, and who – given the choice – would have lived their lives no other way.
My Review
For those of us who spent our lives growing up on, or around, farms; and I was fortunate enough to be one of them ; this book will trigger many memories and have you revisiting days of your childhood and youth before Health and Safety became dreaded words that denied children so much experience of life.
Fortunately, for me, Mike and his family lived in the same part of God's Own Country as I did and Top O' The Town, Scout Dyke and Hoylandswaine are places I knew well , along with the fact that we both went to Penistone Grammar School, though don't let the name fool you. Coming from West Yorkshire I had to take , and pass the 11 plus, whilst those kids who lived in South Yorkshire all just went regardless of brain power !!!!!! Consequently our good old Yorkshire Traccy school Bus coughed and spluttered its way past Scout Dyke Farm twice a day. However, there were also some disadvantages to being so close to Scout Dyke Farm as I distinctly remember the smell of the slurry that Mike's Dad was lovingly spreading over his , and his neighbours fields, probably with a Yorkshire grin on his face. However, it certainly kept us all alert during lessons, though it did nothing to improve the smell of the burnt scones I took out of the oven during one hot Home Economics lesson !!!!!!
However, this is not just a book for those of us who were lucky enough to live in this beautiful part of Yorkshire. It is a book that takes you into the lives of what it was like on many farms, and in most families, growing up when money was tight and your parents scrimped and saved to achieve their goals and make sure that you were well fed with wholesome, nourishing food; a time when hard work never did anyone any harm and the motto was " Mend and make do " whilst the throw away culture that is rampant nowadays would have been unforgivable.
Mike pens this story of his life with his family, their different roles in supporting their Dad in his dreams and ambitions, with an honesty and forthrightness that allows you an insight into their relationships and their place in achieving those goals.
Brian Kirby was a man who my dad would have said " Had a good dose of Yorkshire grit and determination", whilst my Mum would have probably said he was "Stubborn". What would he think about the book ? I'll let you decide. Should Mike have written it ? Absolutely. What will you get out of it? lots of memories in my case that had lain hidden away in the back of my mind and you will find the same.
Read this memoir and enjoy the memories it stirs and the principles it evokes.
Now sit back and enjoy reading a couple of chapters from the book ;
TOP OF THE TOWN FARM
Top of the Town Farm was located, as the name suggests, at the top of a hill, along a lane, looking over the village of Thurlstone near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. This was Mum and Dad’s first farm, the first place they lived together after they were married, and where John and I were born.
The farm consisted of a foursquare farmhouse, its sandstone building blocks blackened by chimney soot. The house was old and draughty and bitterly cold in the winter, cool in the summer heat. In winter, frost would collect in crazy patterns on the inside of the windows. Thick curtains were hung to stop the cold, and going from a cosy warm bed to fully dressed, required speed. Bedtime meant hot water bottles, curling up on the warm patch in the middle of the bed, before moving the bottle down the bed to warm chilly toes. Thick woollen blankets, piled high for warmth, were comfortingly heavy. In winter, only in the yellowing light of the steamy farmhouse kitchen could you be guaranteed to be warm, the ancient range providing the only source of heat and a place for cooking and to gather round to warm frozen hands, dry wet hats and gloves and take the chill off your wellies.
The house stood in one corner of a rectangle of buildings, and a large stone barn with huge wooden doors was attached directly to the farmhouse. Around the rough yard there were loose boxes for the animals, plus feed and equipment stores. A gate in the corner opposite the house led up a bumpy lane to the stackyard where most of the winter feed was stored and tractors and trailers were parked. The lane led away to the pot-holed single-track road at the top, with a small orchard on the left. In summer the apple trees, heavy with fruit, lolled on the wall and dripped sour windfalls onto the rough stony lane.
From the top of our lane the sky opened out and you could see the higher Pennine hills. When it rained the hills seemed higher; no longer so far distant, they pressed in on the valleys, clouds clinging to the tops. In summer the sky became huge in the sun, the heather coloured the hills pale purple and they looked further away, altogether more friendly, less threatening.
Thurlstone village spilled up the hill from the crowded valley, through which the River Don flowed. The water was a milky brown colour due to the peat from the hills, mixed with the colour of rust from the old, long played-out iron works further up the valley. It would roar down the valley in winter, flush with heavy rain.
The river vied for space with the main road over the Pennines, and the train line from Sheffield to Manchester. Traffic rumbled a few feet away from the front steps of terraced houses, splashing road grime in the rain and blackening painted doors, the muck building up on the window ledges. Front steps were brushed daily and washed as well. On the railway, cut deep into the steep valley sides, trains rumbled by, close behind the houses.
At one time the river had provided power to woollen mills and foundries, but these were long gone by the sixties. The only remaining industry was a maker of carbon products, whose lorries carried black sludge onto the roads. The bottom of the valley seemed narrow, dark and noisy, made damp by the mucky Don and the clatter of the traffic.
The narrowing lane up through the village led to fields hemmed by drystone walls and then open moor beyond. Most of the year this was not an easy place to farm. Heavy, water-logged land was given over to grazing cattle and sheep who turned their backs to the wind, sheltering under the wall sides and churning up the thick black mud in the gateways.
The hillsides were dotted with farmhouses, the walls of thick sandstone, blackened by the smoke from the factories that used to exist in the valley below and the smoke from the coal fires that burned the ample coal from the pits not far away. Low buildings might be huddled around a small open yard offering shelter but little warmth. A crooked Dutch barn, its corrugated metal sheets rusted red-brown and thinning, would stand by the farmyard, bent and flinching from the wind, held up by the bales of straw stacked underneath.
The rain leached much of the goodness from the land and farming these poor thin, acidic soils offered precarious financial reward for all the long hours, the mud, and horizontal rain. Top of the Town was a small farm, but it was a start, a long-held dream for Dad, who –having left school at fourteen – knew little else but farm work. Mum and Dad had saved every penny, cutting corners wherever they could to get the money together to start their own place.
The villages and small towns of South Yorkshire mainly took shelter in the valleys, out of the wind. But at the top of the hill, the air was fresh and the summer light was bright. The wind blew hard at times, bending the few trees to its prevailing will. Bushes were stunted and thin. We were not isolated up there, just separate.
Beyond our farm, the tarmac lanes petered out to stony dirt tracks with even more isolated farms at the end of them. The land was wet all year round and clumps of rushes grew in the bogs.
On the edges, the open moors pressed in on the green of the grass fields. Here the drystone walls had long since tumbled down, the blackened stones now pock-marked with lichen and moss. Rusted iron gates hung from broken hinges. Wind-battered wooden gates came apart where they stood. The sheep often roamed at will, constrained by hastily erected barbed-wire fences on which strands of wool fluttered in the wind. Cattle grids set into the narrow lanes held the animals high on the hill.
Most people from the village worked away in the local towns. There were still some coal pits in driving distance. The village supported a couple of pubs, a church and a chapel and a general store. There was a primary school, and after that ‘big school’ was a couple of miles away.
Like many high places, the weather in the foothills of the Pennines could be capricious, with all four seasons in one day not unusual. Winters seemed longer and colder and summers longer and warmer back then. We experienced the weather first hand every day at work and at play; our lives involved a lot of outside and most days that meant a lot of weather.
In winter, snow collected against the walls and stayed for months at a time, slowly becoming icy, its edges flecked with soot from the coal fires in the valley. But regardless of the weather – even if we were snowed in – animals still needed to be fed, including ones that spent their days outdoors. Heavy weather meant that sheep would shelter in the lee of the nearest wall. Being particularly stupid animals, this often meant they were sheltering where the deepest drifts of snow were bound to accumulate. A cold snap or a light sprinkling of snow would have them pawing at the frozen ground with their front feet, nibbling at the ends of any grass that poked through. This would never be enough to sustain them, and hay and straw bales would need to be transported to the fields by tractor.
Getting tractors out of the yard was also a challenge sometimes, and much painstaking snow shifting would be required to allow the tractors to move successfully up and down the lanes to the fields.
Dad would pull his flat cap hard down over his forehead, both for warmth and to make sure it didn’t blow away. His heavy weather jacket would be secured round the middle with twine from bales of straw, as he set himself to feeding and watering his stock, tasks that would take all day sometimes. The cold would freeze the water pipes to the animals’ drinking troughs.
Later, when we moved to a farm at Scout Dike, we kept beef cattle penned in a barn with a feeding passage down the middle so that most of the stock could be fed by tractor, but at Top of the Town everything was done by hand. Cows would need mucking out and steam would rise from the muck heap on cold days. Fresh, bright days with a hard frost were welcomed, a chance to spread some manure on the hard ground and to get tractors into fields without getting bogged down.
For me and my brother, a snowy day or fresh overnight snow meant that it was time to go sledging. There were many ideal places and we would stay out in the snow quite happily until our hands froze and lips turned blue. Mum would fetch us indoors for as long as it took to thaw out. Wet gloves and hats steamed on the kitchen range and damp coats were slung over chair backs to dry quicker so we could do it all again. Rapidly defrosting fingers caused ‘hot aches’, cheeks tingled and toes throbbed.
Outside again as quickly as we were allowed, sledging meant cracking heads and bruising backsides and ribs. The step bank sides were ideal for rolling huge snowballs, which sat where they stopped at the bottom of the slope, too heavy to move, lasting for days after the rest of the snow had melted.
Dad hated the wind the most. It could roar and roil down from the high tops and push over stacks of straw, tearing heavy tarpaulins from end to end. The hay and straw, gathered in the summer and carefully stacked and sheeted, would be at the mercy of the elements. Rain turned precious hay bales black and made them impossibly heavy, good only for bedding at best, or the muck heap at worst.
The wind might damage the part-finished roof on Dad’s latest building project or even lift sharp-edged galvanised metal sheets clean off the older sheds and send them cartwheeling across the top yard, the cattle sheltering underneath, now getting wet and cold. It would rattle the house windows and lift the tiles on the roof. Farm debris would be scattered, and the chill of the winter wind felt like it might cut you in half.
Rain would come at you on the slant, stinging eyes and uncovered ears. It would quickly fill the deep ruts made by the tractors in the fields , forming pools in hollows and turning the muck and dust in the farmyard to sludge. At Top of the Town, water ran down the track from the top lane, right on through the bottom yard and out through the gate before turning hard left down the road towards the village and the mucky River Don.
The heavy clay soil was ill suited to hold the water in. Walking the fields, you could hear water constantly on the move beneath your feet. Small rills formed, previously dry springs sprung, and the ground squelched under wellies.
In spite of the weather, and sometimes because of it, being outside was where we chose to be. The seasons, marked by changes in the weather, by the early darkness in autumn and the long dark nights of winter, provided an overlay to the rhythms of the farm. Dad said there was no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. Mum would wrap us up warm for the chill outside, with proper vests, thick shirts and woolly jumpers. Gloves would be attached to elastic, the band fed through each sleeve. As we grew, shorts and long socks were worn whatever the weather, and going outside involved wrapping ourselves tightly in duffle coats, fastening the toggles and pulling hoods over bobble-hatted heads. Hands would be plunged deep into duffel-coat pockets. Dad’s idea of a joke was to put a dead mouse he had found in my pocket. My hand would explore this soft furry object before realising what it was. This still gives me shudders. One of his other tricks was to drop something squidgy and revolting into one of my wellies, perhaps even another dead mouse. He thought it hilarious, I less so.
Our close neighbours at Top of the Town were Fred and Doris Smith and their daughter Rita, who lived in the cottage that backed on to the bottom yard. It was an old weaver’s cottage, part of a row, with lots of small windows running across the top floor, letting in light so the home workers could see the warp and the weft. The little houses were squat and solid.
Their dark, cosy front room was often my first port of call in the morning. I never knew what Fred did. I never saw him go to work. I am pretty sure he was retired; maybe he had been a miner. He always wore a big heavy wool suit, black, shiny in places and patched with leather at the elbows, a thick gold watch chain draped from a waistcoat pocket. The suit must have been made for the bigger bloke he had once been. He wore a big flat cap, even indoors. Always. Summer and winter.
He sat in a big rocking chair. If he ever moved from this seat, I never saw it. He had huge black leather boots, hob-nailed and laced to the top, above his ankles and always highly polished. They rested never more than twelve inches from the embers of a glowing coal fire, his feet up on a step just in front of the slatted grate.
Fred smoked a pipe. The room was tinged yellow by the smoke from this and the coal fire, and the nets at the window were stained a grim shade of cream. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of the breakfast fry-up, just cleared away. His chair was angled for least effort when it came to being near the fire. He would lean forward to tap out his pipe on the open grate, making the embers momentarily crackle.
Fred could also reach his mug of tea by simply extending a forearm to where it sat, keeping warm on the range – a strong dark brown brew, three sugars. Every now and then he would hawk up whatever was in his throat and with pinpoint accuracy spit into the fire. I was by turns revolted, fascinated and envious of his accuracy. A satisfying split-second hiss from the fire was accompanied by Fred settling back into his chair.
‘Na then young un, what you on with today?’ Always the same question.
‘Just been doing my jobs, Mr Smith.’ Always the same answer.
He would reach into the recesses of the huge jacket pocket and out would come two ‘spice’.
‘One for now and one for tha pocket,’ he always said.
‘Thank you, Mr Smith,’ I would respectfully reply. Mum had taught us flawless politeness.
Sometimes humbugs, wrapped tight and sticky-warm from his pocket, sometimes bright red and yellow rhubarb and custard from a crumpled paper bag, maybe an acid-sweet lemon drop. The spice was all I went for really.
Fred’s wife, Doris, was small, round and busy. She fussed constantly around Fred, made up his fire, cooked his breakfast, cleared the dishes and fetched his tea. I never remember seeing either of the Smiths outside this one small room and the adjoining kitchen. I am sure they must have ventured out sometimes, as their garden was a riotous tangle of sweet peas, honeysuckle and pink flowering clematis, tumbling over the front garden wall.
Rita, also small and round, but never busy, sat and knitted, drank tea and chatted to her dad, and commented to her mum when she bustled by with ever more tea.
‘How’s your mum? one of them might ask.
‘And your little brother?’
‘What’s your dad busy with?’
From me, a series of ‘don’t knows’ and maybe a ‘fine, thank you, Mrs Smith’. I was not the most talkative uninvited house guest. I brought no news from the outside world. I stayed just long enough to justify the spice. On cold days I might warm my hands.
The back kitchen was Doris’s domain. No cooker in this kitchen, though. Cooking was done on the range, heated by Fred’s glowing embers. A lifted lid revealed a hot plate. A freshly stove-blacked door opened to a small oven. On the hot plate, when the kettle was not on, vegetables might bubble, usually cabbage, boiling to mush. Doris tripped back and forth. She didn’t seem to mind that Fred sat, all day, unmoved and untroubled, directly in her path.
On the face of it, Dad seemed to have no time for the Smiths. He didn’t hold with smoking, spitting or even sitting for that matter. But I think he kept an eye on them. They seemed to have a stability that matched the solid stone walls that they never seemed to venture beyond. A comfortable predictability. He looked out for them, fixed things that broke and passed a few words as he rushed by.
My stays were never long. I had jobs to do and had to be off. ‘Just like thy father,’ Fred would say. If ever I had cause to return later in the day, I would find them in the same seats, still kalin – their word for chatting, Fred smoking and spitting, Doris fussing and tutting, Rita knitting. This was the world for them. No radio or music or TV to intrude, just the safe and the known and the hum and the bustle of this front room.
Because Top of the Town was not a big farm, Dad also had a day job for the Ministry of Agriculture as a way to make ends meet in the beginning. In spite of his endless energy and long days, the farm was just too big for one man to manage, even with a little ‘help’ from two small boys. There was willing and able help at hand from the village in the form of John Lockwood, or Lockud as he was known to everyone.
Lockud liked a beer or three or five and often more. He had turned up at Top of the Town Farm as a young kid, older than me, but still at school, when he could be bothered to get out of bed to go. Like Dad, Lockud stuck it at school only as long as he had to. He was a big lad, thick set and strong. He looked older than he was, which probably made the landlord at his ‘local’ – or any other pub he might be passing – turn a blind eye. He got a taste for the beer at an early age and earned a few bob from Dad to pay for it.
Lockud didn’t have a proper job to go to out of school, or any qualifications. The farm was an escape for him; he was young and had energy and was generally willing to help, for something to do, for a few quid out of Dad’s back pocket every now and then. Nothing formal, but he would turn up, sometimes for days on end, work, get paid, go to the pub and that would be it for a few days. He never turned up the worse for drink, but Dad often said you could smell it on him. Dad said he was a useful man to attach to a shovel or a muck fork and a good worker, when the spirit moved him.
Sometimes he would turn up with a mate, an even bigger lad, his size making him awkward, shy and always a step or two behind Lockud. We never used his name, everyone called him Thud, for the noise his footfall might make as he moved slowly around. Thud was a watcher rather than a worker, and Lockud would be mucking out a shed while Thud looked on, content to lean on a wall or sit on a straw bale. Thud might wheel the barrow up the yard to the muck heap if he could be bothered.
At harvest time, Lockud and Thud made themselves useful, their strength and stamina tested by heavy bales of hay that needed lifting onto trailers and then offloaded onto the stacks in the top yard. When they had the money, they would not stop for tea, preferring to make their way home via the pub.
Perhaps Dad saw two lost boys who still had homes to go to, but with nothing much to keep them there. Perhaps not unlike himself at that age. So, he took them on, paid them a bit, tolerated their no-shows and tried to give them purpose, perhaps hoping that his work ethic might rub off a little.
UNTIL THE COWS COME HOME
When we lived at Top of the Town, some mornings I would step out of the steamy, range-warmed kitchen early, closing the door softly behind me. My feet would feel the chill of the stone-flag floor of the porch as I slipped my wellies on. Proper, black ones, like Dad’s. I would pull my duffle coat around me and push my hands deep into the pockets.
‘Have you wet the bed?’ Dad might call, a broad grin on his face as he saw me, all purpose, heading out over the bottom yard early doors. I would ignore him but still feel that prickle of embarrassment. I had to be getting on with my jobs, now I was big. I would stride, workmanlike, over the uneven cobbles, grass poking miserably between the cold sandstone sets, leading to the lane and the steep slope up to the stack yard.
Lots of doors led off the bottom yard; Dad, busy already with the morning feeding round, would be working quickly in and out of each by turns, checking the animals, his practised eye quickly scanning to make sure all the stock were healthy. A large barn door opened to the dark recesses of the cowsheds, the calf pens and the feed stores. The single bulb, suspended with twine, dusty from the milled feed, gave off a sallow, yellow light. The shadows were deep and long and moved as the lightbulb swung in the draught from the open door.
The barn was a pungent place; the smell of urine stung the nostrils. Once used to it, the multiple smells of the feed store emerged: the sweetness of the sugar beet pulp, the bitter-beer smell of the fermenting brewers’ grains and the heady-fresh fragrance of last summer’s hay. The cattle, shuffling and murmuring softly from their stalls, poked their heads over and watched me pass. Noses snuffled through holes in loose box doors, scenting the morning and wondering where their breakfast was.
I would turn to head up the slope, under the lowering sky. The stack yard was to my left, the high drystone wall between our lane and the Smith’s garden to my right. The twin piles of winter feed and bedding, one of hay bales and the other of straw, seemed so tall. A green tarpaulin on top of the stacks flapped gently in the wind.
Tractors and trailers were parked in the top yard. The massive red Massey-Harris and the smaller Fordson Major, bright blue with orange wheels. Both are ancient and require patience and no small mechanical skill to keep them going. But they were all that could be afforded at the start of Dad’s farming journey. I was both terrified and fascinated by these big machines.
On cold mornings, Dad would bring them to life, spraying ether down the exhaust stacks to encourage them to fire up. Diesel fumes poured out as the engines turned slowly over before roaring to life with a fumy belch, the heady mixture of ether and diesel filling the chill morning air. If the ether didn’t work, a quick run down the slope to the bottom yard, in-gear, clutch down, edge forward, faster, faster, then Dad would drop the clutch, the tyres would bite on the rough lane and the engine fired. Dad, his flat cap on backwards so it didn’t fly off, turned the tractor on a diff-lock sixpence, looking triumphant from the thrill of the jump-start.
He knew that I knew how to start the Massey-Harris. Choke out, gear stick in neutral and turn the key. I did it once. Scared myself witless. Now the key is gone, and a large screwdriver inserted into a secret, hidden place under the bonnet of the big red machine brings it to life. He knew I wouldn’t dare now, such was the fright I gave myself.
I loved a ride on the tractors with him when he let me, clinging on as we bumped over ruts and furrows, bounced around, shaken to the bone. He would let us ride on the trailers, clinging to the hecks, the smell of warm tractor blown back from the engine, into our faces, mixed with the rushing fresh air. Or even better, when I got to lie on top of a full load of straw, pressed flat to the bales, hoping Dad would give the low branches a wide berth and praying the bales had been stacked tight and would not move. On the tarmac lanes, Dad would give the tractor ‘the beans’ and the wind nearly lifted me up as I pressed myself into the top of the stack as hard as I could.
There was a tall stile at the end of the stack yard. Four flagstone steps up and four down the other side, over the high wall and into Long Donald’s garden with its neat rows of green-bean canes supporting only spiral-twisted and tough-as-old-boots beans by now. Next, an out-of-control splurge of rhubarb with huge green leaves and bitter, dark red stalks and Christmas Brussels sprouts in the weedy plot. Long Donald – he was quite tall – is Ian’s Dad, and Ian is my best mate. But I didn’t have time for best mates on work mornings.
I would head further up the slope with the walls high either side of the me, the tractor tracks set deep into the hard-packed lane. I kicked out at loose stones and the sharp ones pressed through the soles of my boots. I paused and our Border collie, Moss, caught up, getting on a bit now, but still with a twinkle in his eye, breathing fast, tongue lolling out of one side of pink and orange flecked chops, his soft black and white under-belly matted with cow muck and straw. I patted his head; he licked my wrist and pressed close to me. I smiled at him and tickled his chin, and he gazed back at me like I was the only one who really paid him any attention at all.
Together, as we passed the orchard entrance, Moss instinctively crouched a little lower, gait slowing, ears flattened to his head, all instinct, detecting movement. The old sows in the orchard were sleepy, tucked into the piles of straw in their corrugated tin arcs, stuffed to bursting with early morning windfalls, gratefully snaffled. The cidery aroma from over-ripe fruit wafted between the scraggy trees. The leaves rattled and rasped in the breeze, alternately green and silver as the wind whipped them around.
Out into the top lane, the high enclosing walls of the yard behind me now, the sky opened up, suddenly big. I went straight on, through the gate. I skirted the single-strand electric fence. Out in the fields together, Dad thought it was hilarious to grab this, holding my hand at the same time and seeing the shock go to earth, right through me. I was much older and much wiser now, and far too grown-up to hold hands with my Dad anyway. Into the open fields, Moss scooted ahead after the birds or rabbits he imagined to be behind every clump of nettles.
I crossed the top field and headed to the gate leading to the next one. The wind caught the flaps of my duffel coat and I pulled the hood up to cover my ears. I felt the gap between my shorts and my wellies for the first time. Goosebump knees. My long socks had disappeared into my wellies, but my toes were as warm as toast.
Moss skirted the field, seeing what he could scare up in the wall bottoms, and joined me to be let through the next gate. I opened the gate and closed it carefully behind me. Moss followed, looking interested. The dairy cows grazed quietly, some looked up, not expecting Moss and me.
‘Come by,’ I said softly, and Moss headed off left in a big half circle, hugging the far wall; in seconds he was at the end of the field and behind the cows. He darted left and right and back again, getting closer. The cows lifted their heads wearily, perplexed, but used to the routine; they started to move towards me. I set off right and looped around to join Moss behind the cows as we moved them gently to the field entrance.
Then the cows stopped. They clustered around the gateway, paddling in the mud that never seemed to dry, right by the stone trough and gate. Confused, they shuffled, uneasily, watching Moss as he watched them, now crouched low. Then the cows stood quiet. Moss looked to me for instruction. One of the cows tried to move away from the others and Moss immediately brought her to heel with a quick dart left and right. They pressed close to the gate, a solid mass of cow.
Dad had always said to make sure to close gates behind me. I had closed the gate. Bringing the cows in for milking was not happening as I had planned. Moss continued to press. I sat down on the damp grass. The cows have nowhere to go. I couldn’t get to the gate; there were too many cows in between and they suddenly seemed very big.
Two cows made a break to the left and others followed in all directions, I jumped to my feet and took some steps back; Moss didn’t know which way to go first. The herd split and spread. The gate appeared and leaning on it, grinning, was Dad.
‘Ey up, what you up to?’ asked Dad.
‘I was getting the cows in for milking for you,’ I replied.
‘A bit late son, the cows were milked two hours ago. Come on.’
I climbed halfway up the gate and two big hands lifted me the rest of the way and let go a little bit too far off the ground. My chilly knees buckled a bit when my wellies reach the grass. He did that on purpose. He smiled. Moss scooted under the lower bar of the gate and fell in behind, and as we headed back to the lane, my hand slipped into his. ‘Let’s get some breakfast,’ he said.
About the Author
Mike Kirby is an entrepreneur, writer and long distance cyclist and lives with his partner in Oxfordshire. Mike grew up on a farm, the son and grandson of farmers. He has spent his career building companies and continues to run his own business whilst also riding his bike and writing about his experiences on two wheels. My Father and Other Animals is his first book and is based on a eulogy he wrote for his fathers funeral.
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