I know I said I would blog about three times a week but this cannot wait! There is no time today to go back to the start of this journey as there is a real tension in the air today which is dominating our thoughts.
It would have been far more logical to tell you a little more about us and our past and what our various hopes and dreams were as we trudged through our working lives a potted chronology to bring you up to date and then go forward together. Perhaps tomorrow instead. Suffice to say that we moved to Tregynon Cottages in the Gwaun Valley on 1 October 2104 and we are about 1.5 miles inland, as the crow flies, from the village of Newport on the North Pembrokeshire coast.
Today the local farmer is expecting the results of the 6-monthly bovine tuberculosis (known as bTB) test on his cattle before he puts them out into the fields for the summer. This is a massively important time for him. The test was undertaken by the vet from Cardigan on Tuesday (he gives each cow an injection under its tail and depending upon the configuration of any resulting lumps – which appear within three days if at all – he will know if they are free of bTB or not). George and his son Eros have worked this land all their lives and they come down our shared track in their tractors every morning at about 09:30 to ‘muck out’ the cattle shed next to our cottages and then take silage (grass cut last year and stored over winter to be used as feed cattle before they are released back into the fields to graze) back to the main farm (called Pentrisil) about a mile away for the remainder of the herd. But it’s 12:30 now and we have not seen either of them yet.
It is really bizarre that we have only been here for 6 months but I have a nervous knot in my stomach and I am desperately hoping that all is ok for them. I suppose it is a sign that we are starting to fit in and perhaps just starting to understand some of the continuous pressures that the farmers are living with each day. I suppose in simple terms this is a bit like having an MOT on your only company vehicle and knowing that if it fails you have no way of continuing the business!
We are routing for him. Tick, tock, tick, tock and still no sign……
The vet checking the results of the bTB
Now Here’s a Twist Which Demonstrates My Ignorance.
While waiting for George I have just read that bTB can spread from one cow to another and from one herd to another through infected air and it can also spread to humans in the same way although transfer to humans is very unlikely (only 1% and more likely to be in people aged 70 or older)! That is a great comfort in theory but as the herd I am talking about here is in a shed about 30m from our kitchen door I am not altogether comforted. I have always liked that very typical farm yard smell – you know the one associated with a cow-shed? But now I am less keen to sniff it all in. Suddenly the importance of today has moved even ‘closer to home’! When our television screens were full of all that fuss about badger culls last year we were still living in Bristol and in truth my interest level in the whole issue was low. I was far more interested in my imminent retirement from the Royal Navy after 36 years and starting the next phase in my life. Now I am sitting here researching the transmission of bTB by particles in the air.
Yesterday I said this transformational journey would be fun – I will amend that to fun and on occasion worrying!
Come on George… where are you?