A Cold Beauty is it’s own Consolation

When I wake up in the cold mornings, with the howling skies and the winds so sharp and clear they cut your teeth.  The ground is hard as pure hate. The ice lurking dark and deep under the snow. I cannot believe that there will ever again be a morning when I sit getly on the step in the warm morning sun, to drink a big mug of coffee after the chores, dressed in a short skirt and singlet with sand-shoes and no socks.

I wake to a sunrise that makes me think of the sea. A choppy cold Atlantic sea.  I was raised on a beach, you will remember,  and people say to me don’t you miss the sea. Oh no I say- in the winter I am in a panoramic sea, wide open as though gravity is lost and the sea hurls itself above me and the plains laid beneath still as the age of sifting stone. Spitting at each other as they pass.

Foam capped waves mocking  snow capped waves. Especially when the wind blows, whipping the spray of the snow up and launching it across at my windows. Then they both laugh and joke, earth and sky, linking arms blocking out all the sun, then go off to the pub for a drink and we sit and inhale and exhale and wait for the next horizonal bitter icey brawl.

The sun comes up across the plains and creeps in amongst my apple trees. It is hard to believe that in a few months there will be green growth. It is hard to believe that we will ever have green or warm or fruit and food from this garden again. Even harder to believe that nestled in the bellies of my cows and sheep (and hopefully soon my pig) there are little baby animals growing and changing, developing into leggy toddler babies.  Waiting for the spring or at least the late winter.

How does anything survive out here.

Are we there yet I want to whine. Are we half way? How far until spring? Snivvle.  I feel sick. I want to go to the toilet. Whine! Gabrielle put her foot in my face! Whine. Tim is picking his nose. WHINE. WHINE!! Can we stop so we can get down out of this winter for a  wee break, so we can stretch our legs, kick a ball in the road, maybe have a picnic under that tree we just went past. Mum always made the best travelling picnics with tea in flasks with their own tin cups.

Well then, can’t we go any faster?!

But we cannot go any faster, the lowing sun moves at its own pace and there are no picnic stops from the winter. We must Drive On.  With the windows down. Feeling every single particle of cold.

And then we reach the end of the day. The pink heat lamp with no heat at all slides gently back off the sea-sky pulling its own plug as it goes, the earth waves, see ya hon, let’s do it again tomorrow.

And I know  that once again this girl from the beach, with the help of her good husband, has completed another farm day, fed the animals, kept everyone sheltered and warm, pitted her wits against the cold, cold weather, heaved around hay and straw and hauled water and kept the peace. Chatted to the peahens, missed her prize pig and tried a new cow safe knot on the gate,  and we are all safe today. A good day. And I loved every bloody minute of it.  Cold? Well it is winter.

I hope you all have a lovely day.

Your friend on the farm

celi