It’s January, the sheep are eating hay, and the supply
of bales out in the field shelter is getting low – still a few days
reserve, but I am about to be away for a couple of days and
re-stocking first would be a good idea. This is not a difficult task
– I just have to move ten bales from the main barn, one at a time,
onto the trailer, drive out to the field shelter, stack the bales
there and repeat. Easy. Then make a cup of tea, sit down and
exclaim the magic words, Oh, my back.
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| We will call when we've done with the first course. |
Easy stuff, apart from the mud. We have plenty of mud
at this time of year and the only thing that makes it manageable is
having the temperature drop below freezing and stay there. This
year, we are having a warm winter.
So, there’s a bit of mud at the open end of the barn,
not enough to cause trouble, unless I’m carrying a bale of hay.
Just step carefully. It’s a bit like Dancing on Ice, just a
different style, for different weather, and a totally different
impact if I get it wrong.
Between the barn and the field shelter... the ground
looks like grass. However, appearances are deceiving. It has
rained a lot here recently and just under a thin and fragile layer of
turf is mud, but not just any old mud. This is special, Cornish mud.
All the time the turf is intact, holding it in, the mud behaves like
a giant water bed, rippling softly beneath my feet, often so slowly
that I can barely feel it. Break the surface, and it can move
freely, with a texture akin to grease, a sticky super-lubricant that
can snare even an unwary tractor and suck it down to its doom...
Where was I... right, trailer stacked, ATV warmed up,
just drive out to the field shelter, very slowly, in full four-wheel
drive, because the last thing I want is any wheel-spin to break
through that fragile turf. The ATV, naturally, has other ideas.
Yes, the steering is pointed ahead, but let’s just take a
little excursion over to the left... or maybe the right, and back to
the left. Whilst I had a general forward motion, the ATV slid from
side to side, forever hinting that at any moment it was going to
ignore the whole pointing forwards thing, and really explore
left or right just as far as it goes.
At the last stage of the journey there really is a left
turn, down the slope to the shelter. I took that very, very slowly.
The brakes on the ATV are pretty good, provided the tyres can get a
grip, and provided that trailer of hay bales doesn't get ideas of its
own.
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| Me? No! Eat it all? Hardly had a bite. |
Finally, there is the ground outside the shelter,
thoroughly churned by the sheep. I have a very fine pair of Dunlop
All Terrain Footwear, aka Wellies, but like that ATV I just
successfully parked on a muddy slope, they have limitations.
The wellies have a good grip, but when the whole ground
under my feet moves, the wellies hold on to that and just slide with
it. There’s also the matter of depth. My size twelve
wellies come up to a bit below my knees, whilst in places the mud is
deep and liquid enough to reach all the way to my knees.
Perhaps in the future, wellies will have mud-seals at the top.
According to Newton, what goes up, must come down, but
with the mud, what goes down does not necessarily come back up. With
the wellies, I use this ingenious auto-release safety device called a
sock. The welly plunges down into the mud, twisting and
turning through layers and pockets of varying density and then, as I
pull back, the sock smoothly detaches and protects my foot
from the wind as I balance on one leg to retrieve the lost welly.
Sometimes, the sock acts as an emergency All Terrain
Footwear, but rather less waterproof than the welly.
I moved hay. Just twenty bales. There’s only so much
slide I can handle before oh, my back and
the need to wash my socks put an end to it.
