Person with Care

For those who don't know me, I've not been about on this forum for some time, I'm an ex livestockman. Although not farm bred myself, these past 3 years since I left the life behind me, it's become glaringly obvious that agriculutre chooses you not the other way around and once it has you there is no easy way of letting go. I'm writing this not to complain but to share with people who will more than understand what I'm talking about. In my current ball and chain job, 'person with care' is a term used for those who look after a child or children as a parent would. It's an expression that has been nagging at me for some time.

Several natural care instincts have been badgering me recently. This week I've been looking after Mother's menagerie while she's been away and have sent these instincts into overdrive to the point where, on walking out the front door late the other night I automatically turned around to 'just check that the back door was shut again'. Berating myself because I really didn't need to check and it was late, I needed my bed!!! I found one of the cats sat quietly waiting to come in, what's more, I wasn't suprised. That's an old instinct that was once part of my job description, along with almost unnatural patience and an ability to fit 29 hours into a day, among 3 billion other skills.

This afternoon, I was finishing a new book and read a paragraph that was like a thunderbolt, if not exactly out of the blue. I was an apprenticed and experienced dairy worker, through a number of strange twists sheep became a large part of my working day. 80 pet lambs a year and two small flocks is no joke especially when they don't accept others too well and what I knew about sheep could be written on the back of a stamp. The sheep love you, became cliche, in truth, it was more because I am soft spoken, don't move overly fast unless it's a life or death situation and most importantly, at least if you're a sheep, I was the biped voted most likely to bear food, all the hallmarks of a decent stockman, at least as far as the stock are concerned.

Without the feeling the paragraph (which is very short) is meaningless, but to me it read about being part of the land, to protect those who cannot protect themselves, to guide and to be the one who is always there, prepared to do anything for those who need it, whatever the situation, in other words, to be the shepherd or herdsman and I don't mean it in a religious sense but a literal one. What struck me most was the line 'I have a duty'.

I had a duty and I gave it up because I simply couldn't continue at the time, as far as duty is concerned, it was a failure on my part. Tears rolled unbidden and silent (OK with an occasional sniff) for a good few minutes and I remembered the rotten, hard times when that duty came before anything remotely personal, when the frustration was unbearable and the good times when duty was pleasure. I'd forgotten how strong the pull of that duty was and how much a part of me it still is, despite now being a desk driver.

All livestock workers are 'people with care' whether we are good at it or not. We look after the animals often to the detriment of ourselves and don't begrudge that duty even when everything is an enormous struggle. As the tears stopped I recalled a group of weaned lambs who would call as we were finishing, often the girls or myself would put in some hay, water or staw (I'd often have to tell the girls which one they wanted, it's funny how you get to understand the request made) and it would stop but one evening the girl came to me exasperated, she'd given them hay, water and straw but they were yelling louder and louder each time. I took her to the barn and opened the gate, knelt in the straw and stroked each and every lamb on the head as they clustered around nibbling my clothes and bleating softly. Once they'd received that single stroke, they fell silent and went off to play chase in the adjacent paddock. After all their physical needs were attended to, and in the absence of a woolly mother, they still needed to be shown they were cared for in the fullest sense. It's easy for those who've never experienced it to assume they aren't sentient beings, that a weaned lamb, calf or similar is still very much a baby who needs a structure, reassurance and has a desire to belong to something.

Sometimes, as in the above, they pay us back a thousand times more in love and trust than we could hope to expect and that was always the best payment for being the 'person with care'.