It’s amazing the vocabulary you acquire on a farm each season, or maybe it’s the vocabulary I put down each season in order to remember the new words. With this month, there’s springing, the filling of the udders or dugs as cows become heavy with calf. Apparently, the pin bones are softening, indeed. They hear tell, that things are shaping up, coming along nicely, they’ll be sick to calf soon.
If only. The farmer is skirting around the cows and like the Dad pacing up and down the aisle outside the maternity ward, he’s waiting for news. Anything stirring? We’re late, overdue, pin bones not so soft. Indoors, whilst, I’m enjoying the extended break, I know that it will intensify the really busy period when the bovine maternity ward starts filling up. For when it’s busy, it is really busy. Picture not actually seeing your husband awake for weeks on end. Now that I’m an auld pro, I know it really can’t last forever, just a few weeks. A few weeks of nudging him awake at the breakfast table, dinners going cold, answering ‘where’s Daddy?’ pleas.
Springing. Sleepy farmers. Cows delivering lovely new calves. A Daddy less dinner table. Busy farmer’s wife. Days getting longer, weather improving. Fun outdoors, birds hatching, hedgerows growing.
Springing, any day now.
Girl in Wellies 
I can hear the lilt of your voice as you write, tripping lightly over the words like skipping through grass in bare feet. That’s what you sound like to me. My Mum, who is from Ireland, would love this.
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That’s beautiful, thank you so much! I’m Corkonian so the lilt is more like a fast song that you can just about hear the lyrics of, especially when I’m ranting about something, a bit cross, excited or dare I say it, a little bit tipsy. Thanks very much for reading! Anne
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