I ADORE cities: the grime, the clamour, the swaths of people swarming anonymously towards whatever transitory pleasure lures them. Civilised, for me, equals civic.
Unlike rural wannabe Madonna, I rarely leave Zone One. I have no garden, no balcony, not even a window box. The windows remain hermetically sealed. A vegetarian, I eat exorbitant organic fare “sourced” at my local supermarket. I have a social engagement most evenings and have not been to bed before 1am since puberty. I cannot drive and go about permanently plugged into my phone. I do no exercise beyond flexing my drinking arm. I am, in short, like the majority of the British population, oblivious to life beyond the urban sprawl; my sole contact with rural living being The Archers and a crush on Otis Ferry.
Curious, then, to find myself at 4.30am with my head rammed under a hotly incontinent cow’s backside, endeavouring to apply a suction cap to its udders. For one day only, I am the hostage of the Town and Country Festival, an annual knees-up in Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, set up 34 years ago to familiarise city types with rustic ways. The nice people at the Town and Country have targeted me as the most ludicrously citified individual they could come up with and are subjecting me to a 24-hour crash course. Its aim: to transform me into a countrywoman.
I realise, of course, that this will be no walk in the park (it is questionable whether I could even carry this off without effort). We are all familiar with the story: dairy farming poleaxed in turn by BSE, foot-and-mouth disease and now TB. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs reports that the average net income per farm for 2004-5 was £17,500. Loneliness and the sheer slog of it all mean that rural advice lines are flourishing. London may feel itself in crisis over terrorism; the countryside has been in crisis for years.
Lawrence, my Town and Country minder, picks me up the night before. “We’re off to the Cotswolds,” he chirps, “to see to the Woldtop Herd at Whalley Farm, near Cheltenham. Wonderful spot. They’ve got a . . .”
“Spa?” I bat back. “B&B”, he concludes, throwing a pitying look in my direction. We arrive in pitch dark. It is uncannily silent. I take to my bed at midnight, feeling as if I must be coming down with something.
Three hours later, it is clear that I am. My alarm goes off at 3.24am. I am due for herd inspection in half an hour. My outfit is Maoist meets Seventies feminist: a borrowed boiler suit over designer jeans, three pairs of borrowed socks and borrowed size 10 boots. I look like the Michelin man, but am grateful for it. I remove my watch and rings lest they wind up in the business end of some heifer. This is the only time I have been up in the small hours and not been inebriated. It may be August, but conditions are bracing. As I cross the courtyard it becomes evident that boiler suit plus thong is not a winning combination.
My mentor is Robert Costello, a witty and energetic 44-year-old with squint marks etched into his tan. Rob’s father was a farmer, and he fed cows while still in nappies. His parlour is spotless, “like having a clean desk”. But, still, the stench to the uninitiated is overwhelming, smacking into my lungs like a fist. The ripe stink of excrement I expected, but not its many vintages, nor the retching awfulness of ammonia-drenched urine. As the animals thrust themselves backward, I catch sight of afterbirth dangling out beneath a tail. The logic of milking on an empty stomach is immediately apparent.
Rob hands me a paper towel. I wipe my hands gratefully. “Er, no, that’s for the teats.” Before the udders can be milked, each teat must be plunged in iodine, then blotted. Even this apparently simple task requires nerves of steel, necessitating, as it does, manoeuvring about the creatures’ hindquarters. Applying the milking unit is still more perilous. I become instantly expert on the differing arrangements of teats: close to the behind, good; distant, very bad indeed.
The Woldtop is an impeccably mannered herd, but these are hulking great beasts, and more than the occasional leg jerks towards my skull. “That’s Granny,” introduces Rob. “Granny” has had 11 calves and acts accordingly. Rob can recognise each and every member of the 180-strong herd, tracing characteristics between grandmothers, mothers and daughters. Well-behaved specimens are his “darlings”, disobedient ones “old tarts”. The heifers obey him, with the exception of a handful of Dutch incomers who “don’t understand English”.
August to mid-March is Whalley Farm’s calving season. Rob will enjoy 16 nights off between now and April;he works a 90-hour week, for which he receives £24,000 and a place to live. Twice divorced, he confesses to being “allergic” to going out. “These are my family. You socialise with your mates in a bar. I socialise with my cows.”
It’s 8am, the time when I would normally get up, and I have been at it for four and a half hours. Caffeine has not yet passed my lips, nor have I read a paper. We join Rob’s girlfriend, Claire, 40, who tends to the calves for an additional £3,500 a year. Claire is a vegetarian, whose serene influence is the cause of the herd being so nicely brought up. Adult cows greet her by planting their necks on her shoulder. I wrestle the appropriately named 666 over to a different pen.
Once the calves have had their breakfast, it is human feeding time. My nails are caked yellow with iodine, there is something dubious in my ponytail, and it feels like mid-afternoon. I substitute my usual three litres of water a day for medicinal quantities of tea with my breakfast.At 10am Rob and I head off on his quad bike to examine the herd. The cows require minute inspection: udders, feet, tails and eyes. A 50-pints-a- day output renders their constitutions as delicate as opera singers’. Milk fever, indicated by a fluttering of lashes, chilly ears and unsteadiness, can strike an animal comatose in 20 minutes. The vet charges £179 for antibiotics for 30 animals, £128 for a nipple treatment for six, with a call-out fee of £22. “Isn’t it stressful?” I demand, frantically eying teats.
“I get stressed when there’s a stillborn,” he concedes. “But I have no one to tell me what hours to keep. I’m my own man. All herdsmen are.”
To calm me down he lets me take control of the bike. I tear around the hilltop grinning like a loon. Kestrels hover over the patchwork of fields below. Never have I encountered people happier in their work.
Back with the calving stock at noon, I am obsessed with udders — “big bags”, as the jargon has it: veined, blancmangey, preposterously engorged. The idea is that I will rummage around, James Herriot-style, in the back end of heifer 441. Nature has other ideas and shoots out a calf before I can roll up my sleeve. Then 441 takes flight, careering around the field with a second pair of hoofed legs protruding from her rear.
Making a mental note to get sterilised, I join Rob in pantomime pursuit, until we are able to pinion the animal against a wall. One of the legs is stuck, so we must free it, tie a rope around each limb and drag the calf out sufficiently deftly not to damage the mother. We manage it, a leg each. I am elated, poking an airway up the blighter’s nose, endorphins coursing through me. Rob too is delighted. Twin heifers mean both can live.
A speedy lunch and it’s time to set up the parlour for afternoon milking. I round up both fields on the bike bellowing “Moooove” (they don’t). This time around, I feel like an old hand, barely flinching when one old tart defecates on my head.
A quick rinse down and it is 6pm. Lawrence and I depart, pausing to take a glance at an animal we don’t like the look of: tail a bit off, eyes sunken, need to get a look at those udders.
Back in the capital, I wake to the squeal of sirens, helicopters droning overhead like wasps. The water tastes ghastly and I am too big for my studio. I feel like a battery hen. I seek solace at my local farmers’ market, also Madonna’s when she’s in town. A woman with an Hermès bag costing Claire’s annual income protests about the price of yoghurt. I make off with a pot for my breakfast. Rob will already have put in an eight-hour day.
- Town and Country Festival, Stoneleigh Park, Aug 27-29. Tickets from £6.50. Call 0870 060 3787, quoting ref TMM, before August 21 to buy 3 tickets for the price of 2.
