Well, if you’ve been following of late, you’ll know, we have a new born in Hearthill, our third little boy, Anthony. This week to our family, we added a kitten named Finn and a lovely French girl, Adelaide, who has come to help us out and learn English for the summer. Heaven sent, the lovely Adelaide that is, although the cat may turn out to be indispensable too.  Our new French friend stands at my shoulder asking me if like in the Kerrygold ad of old ‘if zere’s zomezing I can help?’ What’s more, she has come from a dairy farm in France  and so we have a lot to learn from her too.

There is, however, something that has me slightly embarrassed at the moment (besides the general craziness of the household en ce moment), that is our lack of self sufficiency. Before I begin, let it be known that the answer to all her questions is generally ‘Eh, have you seen the three week old baby in the corner?’ lovingly translated of course. So here’s the ongoing list of questions that leaves me feeling slightly inadequate and likewise feeling a little bit, well lazy, shall we say? Here goes; Why don’t we grow our own strawberries? If we have our milk, why do we buy (or indeed not sell) our own butter, cheese, yoghurt, icecream etc. etc.? Where are the chickens? Whose taking the horse to France (sorry, love that ad!)?

In France, farming households are, as a rule, very much self sufficient. Granted they have the beautiful weather for growing fruit, vegetables, vines et al so it is easy for small farm holdings to be the general order of the day. So as to impress our lovely French friend, we went along to visit the Listowel Farmer’s market yesterday and, my, did the market do us proud. It was good enough to rival any French village market. Reasonably priced, packed with lovely produce, we left richer than on arrival with a basket full of fish, cheese, cherries and chowder. The local sellers, not withstanding the rain that was falling softly on them, were full of cheer and banter for passing tourists and locals and so our trip (my first with all three sons) turned out to be a jolly old jaunt, thus making a good first impression on our Adelaide.

Yes people, I see chicken houses, homemade icecream, an overflowing vegetable patch and apple trees in our future! Indeed, as is apparent, I’ll have no shortage of workers with my army of sons to tend to my menagerie and garden of much abundance. All I’m short now is a shovel and full nights sleep….. Any day now.  

So the day is starting off as a Michael Bubl-esque swoony, swarmy kinda day. All my boys are asleep and the world is so peaceful that I have to write about it now. We’ll talk anon about what it will eventually become. Silage Day 2014; the Day the Whole Thing fell Apart, Silage Day 2014; The Beginning of the End. (Getting a insight into the farmer’s psyche on this day yet? If I was a veteran farmer’s wife or forsooth a farmer’s daughter this would be a walk in the park I’m sure. As a ‘blow-in’ city girl, I’ve been led to be terrorized by this bi-annual event and this year I’m not even cooking!)

So as it stands, the farmer has gone out to milk the cows, this is my first day to face the breakfast alone with three children. A small step you might say. The breakfast bowls are ready, uniform is out, Tractor Ted DVD ready to break open in case of emergency. It is also the hottest day of the year; keeping an infant fed and hydrated today (of all days) should be interesting.

Nana Cork is en route to mind baby number two who obsesses about tractors and would see all his Christmases come together with the arrival of a barrage of silage trucks and harvesters. In four hours time, this farm will be hive of activity; we’ll be bringing in our winter feed for the ‘girls’. To boot, the grass is amazing, it is dry and abundant.  I hear some activity now, Brosnan number one is off, I’m away. Queue energetic rock song and wish me luck!

You see this little foot? Already there’s a pile of mixed up wellies at the front door for him to try. The ones with the yellow diggers or the what once were bright blue ones, the crocodile ones, the red motorcycle ones, the ones you can put on yourself, the ones just like daddy’s, the cross and bone ones, the good ones, the ones for the creamery, the ones that Conor left behind, the ones that Sam chewed, the duck ones. He might need a hand putting on the first pair but after that he’s on his own as he graduates from pair to pair, adventure to mucky adventure, from bigger brother to small and then smallest. His mommy might take a breathe this time to see her littlest move on from welly to welly, keeping an eye on this little one’s growth or then again maybe not. Life has moved so fast and I have tripped over, matched up, searched for, hosed down enough pairs of little boy wellies to know that while we should take the chance to see our little boys growing, this everyday farming life sometimes gets in the way.  It hood winks us into a tunnel vision that means we don’t always slow down enough to just watch them blossom into lovely young boys and in time handsome young men. But what wellies to fill! What adventures to be had. No puddle will escape, every fence will be climbed, he’ll make his own holes, wear down his own soles, scream loudly on falling, laugh wildly on sliding, and with the help of God, follow safely in the footsteps of the one who goes before. Yes, these little feet have work to do, so let us get our rest my darling son, readying ourselves for the adventure ahead. These are the little feet of Anthony Brosnan, he has been named after another favourite Anthony of mine, my lovely Dad. These are the feet of the newest love of my life and I am one lucky girl in wellies.

In fairness to the man, over three pregnancies, he has managed not to compare me too often to a cow. Calm down, not size wise, although…. No, seriously, big mammal, carrying, labouring, delivery wise. He could have. I see the obvious analogies myself. Now that I’m six days overdue, I’m skirting around the topic. Well now, if I were a cow, for example, would I be restless, a bit skittish. Would I, as a cow forsooth, be feeling a bit cranky around the bull for example? Would I be listening to the other cows telling me that although they are not yet due, they’ve had their babies, I mean calves, in their sleep and would I be feeling a little bit jealous? Would every cow in the parlour be telling me that ‘baby will come in it’s own time?’ and would this be leaving me feeling a little bit irritable, If I were a cow that is?

Really, I feel like the last cow of the year to calf, every other cow has gone before me, a fuss has been made and now because the weather has improved, I can be left alone in a grassy corner of a field to birth away whenever nature dictates. Has mother nature forgotten me? Ah, Mother Nature, I’m a gemini, I need a bit of fuss, and a bit more movement in the childbirth department, and Mother Nature, just so you know, no-one puts Girl in Wellies in a grassy corner…

Now it’s here. The drawing of silage grass has halted for one evening. Tractors parked and as the sun is going down, the countryside is aglow. The Kerry mountains, our constant companions, have a purple glow; our Brandon, Slieve Mish, Stacks and Macgillicuddy reeks stand proud before us, a backdrop to what is the most beautiful evening of the year.

And for what at times can be such a cruel stage, our home here in Hearthill, is radiant tonight. Suspended is the memory of storm, the bitter showers of March, the turbulence of October. Our cows are out at night now and their calves have just tasted the delight of the first prance in green grass. And how the grass is green, and how it smells when it is bursting out of the ground, in answer to the fruitful sunshine and showers of April and May.

A mommy is typing wistfully as her little boys sleep keeping an eye to the clock on contractions that come to nothing while a Daddy paces a garden with the lawnmower waiting for news of anything that might be stirring. No news tonight. We enjoy the same calm that Hearthill bestows on us at the end of the day as at the end of a season. Toys that have been fought over in the day are tossed aside, echos of roars to the table have quietened, cows bellowing for milking are muted for one evening and I wish I could live for longer in the calm that reigns at just this moment.  But our baby will have to arrive soon, another voice, if God is good to us, again.  One that will compete for attention in the chaotic family life of this farm in North Kerry, learning, we hope, to love it as we do.

…I’ve been following you around the village and I need to tell you how miserable farming is at the moment.” It’s lucky that it it a beautiful Summer’s day because I tell you, this farming can be a miserable business. They have the worst PR machine in the country. Purpose of Public Relations; to reinforce a brand’s identity. Hence, farmers not great on the old PR front.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have heard farmers narrate the changing of the weather like no poet can, philosophize on any aspect of the countryside with eloquence but when it comes to discussing possible outcomes, farm wise, they can be a miserable bunch. It’s as if they have a radar. If there is the slightest chance that you might be struggling on the farm, if the weather has turned against you, an animal is sick or it’s just a ‘bad year for farming’, ‘they’re’ immediately onto you.

Now, I’m not a girl immune to the odd bout of negativity myself but if pushed into a corner, I can produce an optimistic outlook for you. You see, I’m the sensitive type, I take what you say to heart, especially in the days before I had children when I had time on my hands for thinking. So when, for example, a farmer told me on a trip to the village that this was the worst year he had ever encountered in farming and that ‘there wouldn’t be a farmer left in the country come Autumn,’ I was ready to pull the suitcases down from the attic.

Hobby farmers are the worst, those who have come off the land, left agriculture, kept a patch of land for a couple a cows and a horse for the children and therefore know everything about the lay of the land. There is one particular gentleman locally, who I am convinced chases me around the village just to enquire as to how difficult a position we find ourselves in on a given day. So far this year, he has advised me(!) not to dream of putting a slurry tank in a wet field, not to send any whitehead bullocks to the mart and to take heed that the milk prices will be turning for the worse come August. Dear God, deliver me from all evil, It’s like listening to a Nancy Griffith song on a loop.

I have my own farmer trained now, although in fairness, he is quite a jovial soul. He knows the look by now, the ‘don’t-tell-me-it’s-the-end-of-farming-life-as-we-know-it’ look. It does force him, for better or for worse,  to put a positive spin on this farming life and so he saves the misery for the trip to the creamery where I’m sure even the bags of ration complain.

Yet somehow, somewhere mid rant, I might hear some hope amidst the sighing and tutting that tells me that all is not lost. A twinkle in the eye of the complainant that tells me that as Mrs Doyle suggests that maybe they just like the misery and that we will live to milk another cow.

“And all this trouble in our fields
If this rain can fall, these wounds can heal
They’ll never take our native soil
But if we sell that new John Deere
And then we’ll work these crops with sweat and tears
You’ll be the mule I’ll be the plow
Come harvest time we’ll work it out
There’s still a lotta love, here in these troubled fields.”

 (Nancy Griffith’s ‘Trouble in our Fields’)

You see, I can hold my tongue. I hold it when my city friends say something along the lines of ‘Can you believe it, Dave couldn’t put the children to bed tonight because he was playing indoor soccer. Can you believe him?’ At the risk of alienating half my readership and my dear friends, I just have to say; for the love of Jay, when Dave is finished putting the kids to bed tomorrow night, could you send him up to give me a hand?

Don’t get me wrong, love the farmer, love the life but hate the timetable. Picture the scene. Stage right; Enter almost 37 week pregnant mother (I know, I do go on) with two cups of hot chocolate. Five year old complains that his chocolate is too hot while the two and a half year spills the contents of his cup, albeit accidentally, over the plug socket. I try to remain calm but it gets harder as child number one who is looking for the longest book in history for me to read spills his milk all over his sheets. And exhale into the downward dog, if only a). I could breathe effectively b). kneel.

So while the plan was not to have to go downstairs again, I now have to change the sheets and find replacement sheets for a single bed in an overcrowded hot press. Back upstairs, change sheets and now time for reading books. I love reading, I love that my children love reading but I’m getting too near to the labour ward for imitating Tomas the Tank’s irritating friend Percy and for fielding questions on Fionn Mac Cumhaill; our latest obsession. To boot, I have to explain why replugging the bedside lamp into the wet plug socket is not such a great idea. Meanwhile, number three (in situ) is enjoying the antics and decides to kick me in the ribs, apparently loving my Percy impersonation.

Outside, I hear the milk machine work away while the farmer dials me up to remind me to tape Match of the Day. And back downstairs. So if you’re reading Dave, and herself is driving you mad, I do a lovely cup of tea, have match of the day taped and the kids are just lovely. Just saying…