I was woken on the Sunday before Christmas by the mountains roaring . . . It came from far across the valley, where the Black Mountains stand gaunt and bleak – an ominous rumbling like gigantic waves breaking on a rocky shore. A South-easterly wind, hurtling through the Gospel Pass sent eddies of gale-force winds to thunder and echo against the surrounding hillside. When ‘Hay Bluff’ roars it is an early warning – Blizzard Approaching!
Local farmers heed that warning, bring livestock down to fields close by their farmhouses.
And sure enough, early afternoon brought soft, thick snow flakes. By tea-time we had a complete white-out. Once the road up from the valley is blocked, a quiet self-contained existence continues on the uplands with none of the immediate chaos which seems to hit urban areas dependent on road and rail transport. You’d imagine it might be an unhurried, unworried time for beef farmers when snow falls before Christmas; after all, barns are well stocked with hay, autumn calving is over, and ewes are still strong – their burden of lambs in utero not yet weakening them.
In practice, it’s a time of ceaseless activity with every daylight hour devoted to the mundane tasks of unfreezing water troughs and feeding animals.
Domestic routine goes AWOL as the farmhouse water outlet pipes freeze; leeks and swedes stay frozen in the ground; the freezer yields Summer’s lamb, beans, peas, blackcurrants and peas. Our pantry is raided for bottled plums and tomatoes. A sack of red-skinned potatoes gets hauled in from the barn and sweet smelling elm logs from the wood-pile. This noble tree succumbed to disease last year, but now its welcome warmth partly compensates us for the loss of its familiar outline on the horizon.
A couple of days after Christmas, the weather closes in further and pressure begins to mount with worries such as ‘Shall we have enough Hay to last a really long winter? Will the ewes start miscarrying and re-absorbing lambs?’ News reaches us of a neighbour who tried to bring his 150 ewes down to lower ground, but they panicked in the deep snow drifts and were all lost – this disaster means not only emotional distress for the farmer losing a home-bred and reared flock, but an uninsurable financial disaster for the family.
But for now, we face a monochrome World – the lowering gloomy sky just one shade darker than the snow-shrouded fields. Out daily routine of ice-breaking troughs is beginning to pall, and the physical stain of fighting the elements from dawn to dusk begins to tell – not only on us but also on our wildlife. The feed shed has become home to a motley collection of birds; blue and great-tits, sparrows, a lone bullfinch, three robins and a stray fieldfare. Less welcome are the rats, but Thorn (senior farm cat) finds sport here. Two hen pheasants settle in the rickyard, their mellow coffee and chocolate coloured plumage beautiful against the snow – such lovely birds when not overshadowed by their gaunt mates. As the road is still blocked, the old ‘Storm Track’ is being used. When drifting snow makes the lane impassable, it’s possible to drive across the middle of the fields where ground rises and the snow lies more thinly. Farmers use these tracks to traverse their own land. In bad Winters, the pathways can be joined to form communal routes down from the hill – for just at the point where the track meets a hedge there is always some removable barricade or hurdle. These ‘gateways’ remain closed for years on end, particularly where a hedge is the boundary between two farms; but when prolonged foul weather strikes and snow lies deeply, then at the natural land contour where snow cover is least , there you find the weak point in the hedge where where a hurdle can be removed. Some are even marked by a tree planted on either side of the natural ‘gateway’ to guide you through