I often hear people talking about farmers having “road cows”.

After making a few inquiries, it all became clear. Seemingly it’s when a farmer puts their best cows in the field beside the road so that everyone thinks the entire herd is superb.

I haven’t got much ground close to the road, so I have never really felt the need to do this. I just bunch my cattle into manageable batches (good and bad all are kept together).

It’s the same when I have farm visits. You see everything. I have never tried to hide cattle that aren’t as good as the rest. If you start doing that you really are just fooling yourself.

However, I have one rather large field beside the road, and I have been trying to make some improvements to it over the last year.

In July 2019, I got a digger in to try and fix some drainage problems. My father had drained the field about 40 years ago but over time some of the drains had started to fail and there were some very wet parts. Last year, the digger was in for four or five weeks and it seemed to rain every day.

It became a bit of a mess and everyone around here was talking about it

I had intended to get the repairs done and the field ploughed and reseeded before the end of August 2019, but the weather did not allow that. It became a bit of a mess and everyone around here was talking about it. Some of it was said to my face and some behind my back. Some people seemed to be taking pleasure at my struggles.

Intention

I let the field sit over the winter with the intention of doing a reseed early in 2020. With other work going on, things slipped a little, but in June this year we sprayed the field with Roundup and put a good coating of farmyard manure on it. Then we got it ploughed in early July.

I hoped to get the seed in by early August, but the weather had other ideas. Here in Fermanagh it has been another really bad summer, and there were only some very short spells of good weather.

Every time that I was talking to a neighbour, they all wanted to know if I had the seed in yet, and when I said that I hadn’t they wondered why

Any good days that did come, we had to concentrate on silage work, and seemed to miss every small opportunity. With the field being at the roadside everyone was keeping a tight eye on what I was doing, or not.

Every time that I was talking to a neighbour, they all wanted to know if I had the seed in yet, and when I said that I hadn’t they wondered why.

We did eventually get it started, only for the rain to put a stop to it.

Stressed

I try to not get too stressed about things to do with farming, but it wasn’t easy when everyone seemed to be watching my every move.

There eventually came another few dry days at the end of August and, with a struggle, we got it done. It was not that dry and we didn’t make as good a job as I would have liked, but it was a relief to have it complete.

A few virtually stopped to make sure that they would get a good look

While we were at it I couldn’t help but notice the way some people were driving along the road. A few virtually stopped to make sure that they would get a good look.

The next day was very wet, so it was very much a feeling of relief.

But since I got the seed in, nobody has mentioned the field to me. It’s as if no one wants to know anymore.

History repeat

I would have to say this field has caused me more sleepless nights than all the other fields that I have reseeded put together.

When my father reseeded it about 40 years ago, he had three tractors ploughing in the field (only with two score ploughs). He told me that they were the talk of the country at that time.

I now fully appreciate what he meant. History has repeated itself to some extent.

To give those in the slow moving cars something to do, I will have to pull out some nice “road cows” to graze it next year.

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