Mrs Down's Diary

Geoff is coming in to do all the heavy stuff of rolling the barley and making sure the bulls get fed and he is emergency midwife if a young heifer suddenly starts to calve.

Just before he left John called me into the foldyard. "See that heifer," he said. "I was fattening her for market as I didn't need her for the herd. She has had a different idea. One of the young bulls must have served her." Clever thing, I thought. Instead of market she is going to get out in the fields for the summer. Much better alternative.

The dogs and I go round the herd and the sheep twice a day in the Land Rover. I have been agitating for a quad bike for some time, but after doing the check on a rainy day, I can definitely see the advantage of being inside a vehicle, rather than out in the open on top of one. "Just make sure everything gets up," John told me. "That way you know they are all right."

The calves can be very disconcerting. They lie with their heads stretched out almost backwards. To all the world they look dead. Then you see a tail whisk or they scramble to their feet if you pass close to them. The cows and Mr Bull scarcely move at all. In the morning the entire herd is laid up chewing their cud. They look so contented. There they are, three big fields to wander between. Plenty of grass. Water troughs handy. A mineral lick centrally placed in each field for a taste diversion. John was the victim of a fast-talking salesman with one of the licks. "It will keep the flies off the cows," he was told. I don't think so. There's still plenty of head shaking and tail whisking going on.

Unlike the cows, which always stick together, the sheep are scattered everywhere. If it was only the cows that needed observing the job would be done in a flash, but the sheep . . . I have to trawl up and down trying to see if any are upside down in ditches, or upside down anywhere, and have banged my head on the roof of the Land Rover more times than I care to mention, through failing to notice a grip in the field. In the back, the dogs do a wonderful levitation act '“ then come back down again with a wallop.

I had plans of what I was going to do with my spare time with no John to look after, and no visitors either. They have come to naught. On the first day a calf died that John had brought in because it was not well. The vet had been out to it twice. Unhappily, despite our best efforts, it was laid dead several hours after John went. It went to the hunt kennels.

Watching all the drama was the twin calf we have been nurturing for several months, that refused to suckle, will only drink milk from a bucket and who has steadfastly refused to be weaned. Perhaps it had a wake-up call. This morning it has eaten a bucket of coarse mix.

This was first published in the West Sussex Gazette July 23 2008. To read it first buy the WSG every Wednesday.