At this time of year, the farmer must learn patience, as we wait for our belted galloway cows to calve. I’m impatient to see the colours and markings of the calves, and to know how many will be heifers and how many will be bulls. But I must wait.
Three or four times a day, I make the short journey along to the Heart Wood pasture, underneath the distinctive heart-shaped wood visible from the M6 motorway, and stare at cows’ tails and bottoms to see if there is any sign of calving.
The hot weather has gone. I am wearing a woolly hat again and the fire is back on in the living room as well as the kitchen. Days are generally wet but not too wild; the grass is growing and the river is full. While I’m waiting, I have time to notice everything: what is flowering, the oystercatcher chicks in the grass and the swallows swooping over the river.
It is too wet to sit in the grass, so I find a rock to sit on and watch the cows. People rush by on the motorway in their cars, and on the west coast mainline in their trains, unaware of the watching and waiting going on in the valley.
We farm on both sides of the transport corridor here. The land on one side is in the Yorkshire Dales national park, the other in the Lake District national park. The strip in the middle with the motorway and railway is in neither. In about two years’ time, eight bridges in our valley will be replaced.
The bridge we go under multiple times a day to access bits of land will be lifted off and replaced. The motorway junction, and possibly our only shop and petrol station within six miles, will be closed for the duration of the works. The bridge that we go over into Tebay itself will be closed. Local people won’t be able to get here to buy meat.
My son’s girlfriend will have an 18-mile diversion each way to milk her goats. Everyone in the valley will be inconvenienced. At the moment this feels as if it will make everyday life impossible for those who live and work here. Our MP, Tim Farron, has asked an urgent question about this in parliament.
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