Sally Urwin - Diary of a Pint-Sized Farmer: A Year of Keeping Sheep, Raising Kids, and Staying Sane

Published in 2020 by
David R. Godine, Publisher
Boston, Massachusetts
www.godine.com

First published in Great Britian in 2019 as A Farmers Diary: A Year at High House Farm by Profile Books Ltd

Copyright 2020 by Sally Urwin

All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information, please visit our website.

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Urwin, Sally, author.
Title: Diary of a pint-sized farmer : a year of keeping sheep, raising kids, and staying sane / Sally Urwin.
Identifiers: lccn 2020019000
isbn 9781567926781 (hardcover)
isbn 9781567926873 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh : Urwin, SallyDiaries. | Sheep ranchersEnglandDiaries. | Sheep farmingEngland. | Family farmsEngland. | Farm lifeEngland. | Country lifeEngland.
Classification: lcc SF375.32.U79 A3 2020 | ddc 636.30942dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019000

: Ben, Sally, and Lucy Ian Wylie
: Ben, Sally, Steve, Lucy, and Candy the enormously fat pony Paul Norris

O n a sunny spring March day, there is no better place to be than flat out in the straw of the lambing shed. The sun was streaming through the big double doors, and I decided that lying on the clean, dry bedding was a lovely place to have a snooze. Especially as I was surrounded by a flock of heavily pregnant ewes, who were calmly chewing their cud or sleeping stretched out in the straw. No one was due to lamb for a few days, so we all lay together, shifting a leg occasionally to get more comfortable, napping in the bright sunshine and storing up some sleep before lambing started...

A party of visitors appeared at the lambing shed door and peered over the top to look at the sheep.

I hauled myself upright and staggered over to say hello.

They asked who the farmer was.

I am, I said.

They looked unconvinced. But... who actually does the farming? they asked.

I do. Me. Thats what I do. By myself. On my own, I replied.

They looked around as if expecting my husband, wearing bib and braces, to pop up from behind a hay bale.

I tried again. My husband Steve, who owns the farm, is at his other work today. So, Im actually in charge.

I realised I was trying to persuade people Id never met, who didnt know me, or even actually care, that Im capable of looking after the sheep by myself.

They continued to look amazed, and after introducing them to a few of my (very fat and lazy) ewes, they walked back to the car park, making the odd Well, I never! sort of noises.

Maybe I dont look like a farmer? Im only 4 foot 10 (on a good day). Perhaps they expect all farmers to be big beefy men with ruddy cheeks and hands like spades.

I refuse to say, Oh, Im the farmers wife, as it makes me sound like Im in a nursery rhyme or I stand in the kitchen making Yorkshire puddings and pots of tea.

Perhaps I should wear a name label, or a boiler suit with tractor logos all over it (if I could find one that didnt need two feet chopped off the ankle).

I never saw myself living on a farm when I was growing up. Myself, Mum, Dad and my older brother lived in a tall Victorian terraced house, right next to the North Sea, so my childhood was spent rock pooling, or on the beach, or going for long blustery walks along the seafront. My brother is a few years older than me, so I passed a lot of time playing on my own in our garden, most of the time pretending that I was in Enid Blytons Faraway Tree or that I was riding my own horse. I was happiest reading a book, or playing with my stable of Sindy horses or trotting and cantering around the garden, stick in hand, deep in an imaginative game of showjumping at Hickstead.

I was good at English and History at school, and after A-Levels I did the expected thing and went straight to university. After my degree, I found myself a nice, safe, immensely boring office job. I was hired to provide marketing services to a group of insolvency specialists at a huge company in the centre of Newcastle. It was as depressing as it sounds.

I wore smart suits and big heels, had 1990s blonde-streaked hair and got my acrylic nails refilled every four weeks. My main role was trying to think up marketing slogans to promote the company to businesses that were about to go bankrupt. The one highlight was Fridays, where everyone in the department used to pop across the road to the local wine bar for a long, boozy lunch before we all staggered back at 6 p.m., for ten minutes coffee-drinking before clocking off for the weekend. Rumour had it that my department also had an account at the lap-dancing bar next door.

Working in an office was a huge slog: the humdrum 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., office gossip and politics, the fact that in the winter Id get up in the dark and spend eight hours under flickering artificial light and then leave in the dark again in the evening.

The trouble was that I wasnt sure what I wanted. I didnt enjoy working in an office, but I couldnt see myself doing anything else. I had very little self-confidence and started to compare myself to my friends, and their burgeoning careers and increasing pay packet. But I was too shy and uncertain and didnt have the ambition to put in the long hours and endless meetings that a corporate career required.

I was also single, after a few relationships that had fizzled out. Everything felt dull and drab and boring and I felt rudderless and full of self-doubt.

Internet dating was in its infancy in the early 2000s, but I decided that I wasnt going to meet anyone on my wavelength in the bars and pubs of Newcastle. Instead, I signed up to a dating site called DatingDirect. I remember being very specific about who I wanted to meet, and searched for men who lived in the countryside, from Northumberland, didnt smoke, and were under 5 foot 8.

Trawling through the results, I spotted a picture of Steve. He was wearing the most hideous woolly roll-neck and smiling out uncertainly at the camera.

Our first date was in the middle of lambing, and I remember trying to pick up two newborn lambs, slippery and steaming, out of a freezing paddock in the teeth of a north-easterly gale. Over the next few weeks, Steve and I spent our time huddling in the lambing shed, mucking out pens, grabbing the odd takeaway and pint before rushing back to the farm to check the stock. I was very happy. I loved it all. Steve was just what I wanted: uncomplicated and straightforward and deeply connected to his farm and to the countryside.

I handed in my notice and gave away my suits; a year later, in 2005, we were married. I moved onto his farm, bringing as a slightly horrifying wedding dowry Cyril the elderly black-and-white cat and a small brown grumpy Shetland pony called Gladys that Id bought off the side of the A1 in a fit of misplaced pity.

We all settled in beautifully. Cyril became a proper farm cat, skulking around on hay bales catching mice, and Gladys sank gratefully into life as a small, round field ornament (as Steve calls our less useful animals).

I loved walking around the farm, exploring the 200 acres of grassland, woods, crop fields and old farm buildings.