Farming for dummies

Various things I have learned from living on a farm that are sort of about farming but not really.

A beautiful view can be so powerful that it renders a lot of what we care about as quite trivial. Things we otherwise deem to be important. This is the thought I had staring out the giant windows at the dramatic landscape in front of me, as a client informed me that it was critical that this particular project be finished before the Easter weekend. It has to be that we see a finished version before Jesus rises and the Easter Bunny appears on the Sunday. There can be no other way, they explain.

I had this thought prior to the knowledge that the following day I would be walking outside to check on a dying sheep that had collapsed on the ground. The sheep was lying on its side and kicking its legs, unable to get up. On closer inspection, we could see it was having trouble breathing and its face was bloated. The owners had told us that some of the sheep had been dying lately and they weren't sure why. Unable to do anything else, KB and I picked the sheep up by its legs and moved it over to the fence line in the shade so that at least in wasn’t in the hot sun. Afterwards we walked back to the house, washed our hands, and then I jumped back online to see if a client had gotten back about some changes. 

'Speaking of deadlines', is the intro to the reply I draft in my head.

Task switching is difficult as it is, but I'm finding this harder than usual.

Maybe it says more about me, but I think it would take a lot of reassurance to leave my home in the care of people I'd only ever spoken to on the phone. Especially when that property is a farm with 250 sheep, two sausage dogs and a solitary chicken.

We'd arrived a day earlier to do a handover as part of the house-sitting gig, and the feeling only became stronger as I told them about my day job. Struggling to explain what a motion designer does exactly, the best I could come up with was 'to make things move on a screen, like text and images and that sort of stuff'. I wondered if this was the moment that they realised they'd made a huge mistake. Why they didn't kick us out then and there I'm guessing had something to do with KB having grown up on a farm, and that this might help to offset my complete lack of transferable skills for this kind of a situation. I made mention that I was also a writer and illustrator, and then worried that the writer part made things worse as my motives for keeping things running smoothly on the farm might appear to be at odds with my desire for good material.

As they’d driven us around the farm earlier, which felt more up and over than across, such was the terrain of the farm, the wife of the couple had repeatedly said 'you'll be fine' and I wondered if that was more for her benefit than anything. A little bit of positive self-talk about the choices they’d made.

It's fair to say we were both slightly overwhelmed at this point, especially as, based on the initial phone call, we had gotten the impression that we'd be looking after nine sheep, as opposed to 250, and that no feeding was required. The type of sheep we would be looking after were Dorpers, considered to be low-maintenance, and it may have been that they had banked on this fact smoothing the deal somewhat. Dorper are a breed of sheep well suited to our modern day desire for convenience in that they are self-shearing. The wool simply falls off, freeing you up - the sheep owner - for other activities such as pickle ball and baking bread. Technology these days is just wonderful.

This might be one of those things though where it only sounds good in theory. The reality is a whole lot of sheep with bits of old, brown wool hanging off them in various half finished states of shearing, and all looking fairly bedraggled. And when the wool isn't falling off naturally, the sheep also remove it by rubbing up against the fencing.

I'm not sure about you but very few of my best haircuts have been as a result of rubbing my head against a fence. Not to mention the fact that I imagine very few of the sheep are getting to experience that wondrous feeling of a fresh haircut. 

I kept my thoughts on self-shearing sheep to myself, and over dinner we were briefed on everything else. The two Miniature Dachshunds who liked to sleep in their bed and 'it was up to us whether we let them in'. Something we would later find to be less of a choice and more of an actual thing that would definitely be happening. There was the poor single chicken that had survived several fox attacks and had chosen to sleep on top of the bin next to the house, rather than return to its previous digs in the cage of death where its companions had recently perished. Fair enough, I would too. We were to keep an eye on her, nicknamed 'Lucky Chicken', a name I hoped wasn't tempting fate. There were also a couple of (thankfully) very brief conversational detours into 'wokeness' and 'kids these days' which I couldn't tell if perhaps we had been lumped into due to the age gap. Mostly though we chatted about lots of other things, our work and backgrounds, interesting stories from our lives. It was one of those nice moments of people from different generations and backgrounds being brought together which wouldn't normally happen if not for unique circumstances such as this.

Then all of a sudden we're settling into our new life on the farm.

I immediately enjoy the novelty of getting to write 'feed the sheep' on my to-do list underneath 'reply to emails' and 'send off invoice'. Part of the morning routine is taking inventory of the chicken, now precariously under our watch. And with the added pressure of being the only chicken; it's hard to gloss over one missing chicken if it's the only one. We begin adjusting to our new sleeping arrangement which includes two sausage dogs that don't sleep on the bed, but in the bed. Two wriggling rye bread loaves that have very poor sleep hygiene and also just hygiene in general; what with them being dogs. On feeding days we drive the ute around the farm and feed the sheep, navigating the steep and rocky terrain and sometimes getting lost and trying to work out where all the gates are. It's a novelty that slowly loses its shine. On one of the days, KB gets headbutted by a ram and in general I find myself swearing more at the sheep than I did on the first feeding. The days start to become a blur as we adjust to our new sleepless life, trying a number of different sleeping arrangements that don't involve dogs being in the bed, but then back in the bed again, and back out again. Waking up so many times it really did feel like wokeness gone mad. Was this what the owners had been foreshadowing?

Perhaps it’s just being on a farm but the past two weeks have also felt unusually laced with death. Our first night down south had been a one night stay at an Airbnb on a farm nearby, and as we sat outside and enjoyed a drink and some food, a dying rat had crawled over to us on the lawn (I suspect because of rat poison). Its eyes saying to us 'how can you eat spicy pumpkin dip while I'm dying, you assholes.' Inside the converted dairy shed, amongst the couch, various soft furnishings and mood lighting, was a water tank filled with recently captured marron from the nearby dam that were available for purchase, and eventually, eating. The sounds of the desperate clawing and scratching on the glass as the animals fought for their freedom somewhat diminishing the cosy atmosphere, despite the plethora of cushions in the room.

There was the dying sheep we moved. Plus more dead sheep. During feeding one day, one of them fell over next to the feed and we couldn't get it back on its feet. KB took the dogs for a walk into the paddock on another occasion and an excited sheep - its stiff legs looking very precarious - stumbled and fell, unable to get up. After that it felt easier to just steer clear of the sheep in case we broke them due to our mere presence. Later, on one particular morning we discovered Lucky Chicken mercilessly pecking a frog to death on the doormat outside. And seriously…what the actual fuck. Bad chicken! Go to your bin!

And as the trip wound down, it felt like our main goal eventually became limiting how much filth got into the bed. Nondescript filth from the dogs. We started taking worming tablets as a preventative measure. How had it got to this point? These are the kinds of things that make you question whether you're a dog person. Perhaps the only comforting thought to come out of all this, what with all the death in the air of late, was that it was nice to balance things out somewhat. Even if that new life just happened to be intestinal worms.

The paddock next to the farm house rises up sharply like a huge dry, dusty wave and looms over the house. A mixture of rocks and boulders half submerged in the terrain like buoys, huge trees sit on the crest of the wave like big wave surfers. An enormous, imposing art installation pointing out the lack of water.

Beyond the ridge are more rolling hills. A bit like Tuscany except beige and a lot more thirsty. We could see it all on walks that we took up the long gravel driveway. A huge set of breakers on the horizon.

The last few weeks have been a fever dream. Stumbling from one day to the next. We eventually figured out an arrangement with the dogs which allowed us to sleep separately that didn’t involve lots of whining and barking. We fulfilled the brief and kept the farm running. The chicken is still with us. The worms, thankfully, are not.

The sausage dogs, despite the whole sleeping thing, were actually incredibly cute and easy to forgive (most days). Having left the farm several days ago, we miss them already. This helped to make up for the lack of sleep, as did the setting we were in.

The ridge outside at times felt like a wave threatening to crash down on the house. Hanging in the air, ready to explode in a flurry of timber and earth.

I've been surfing before and it's hard. You're often just trying to get out the back but waves keep coming in. It can feel relentless. Each time you swim over or under a wave, there's another one. All you want to do is get out back and see the horizon again. To feel calmer waters.

Life has felt like this lately; just trying to get out past the waves. When you're operating in survival mode, life beyond the present gets put to the side. It's tiring but all you can do is tackle one wave at a time. Then hopefully once you get past all of it, you can take a breath and recover.

I did eventually catch a wave by the way, during that one time I went surfing. It sounds impressive but it was a giant foam board that could have supported and safely guided a family of four to the shoreline with not a lot of fuss. I also collided with my brother on the same wave and haven't been surfing since. Weirdly, Red Bull haven't called me about a sponsorship deal.

I think about the moment of staring out at the beautiful view from the farm house windows. In those moments when you're confronted with not just beauty, but also the destructive force of nature, when you're in survival mode, when death is on your doorstep pecking a frog to death, it’s not that everything becomes trivial. Only the things that were trivial to begin with. That actually in the face of all that, it helps to sharpen our focus and guide us back to what truly matters.

Life can feel bleak and unnecessarily harsh sometimes, and I think you can either become blunted by it or even give in to it, or you can go the other way: through small acts that make all the difference. The things that require effort: empathy, kindness, dignity. Well-crafted intestinal worm jokes - these are especially important. Essentially, all the stuff that softens the edges and makes it a smoother ride for all of us. And that you should always swim out onto the wave if you see someone gasping for air, even though it maybe seems like it doesn't matter and also you have a hard deadline because Jesus and the Easter Bunny will be arriving soon.

It’s often hard to figure out everything you've learnt from an experience until enough time has passed. Events can take on a completely different shape looking back a week versus six months after the fact. It's easy too to think there's only one truth that exists and that you'll stumble on it eventually. Or maybe there isn't one truth, that actually the meaning of events in our lives continually change. Perhaps this account is as valid as any, even though it's hard to figure out anything when you're still fighting against the waves. I’m looking forward to getting out the back of it and figuring out more. Maybe catching a wave or two.

I'm back to my life of writing and drawing, moving text and images around on the screen, and less of the moving dead animals around a paddock. I am pleased to have finally added some real life practical skills to my repertoire though.

I’ll always remember my time on the farm. Maybe next time I’ll try something a bit smaller and easier to manage. A worm farm perhaps. That'd be some good material.