Diary: What a farmer's life is really like

8:42am Friday 25th April 2008

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LET me introduce myself. I am Jayne Knowles. I live and work on the farm at High Borrow Bridge, Selside.

We farm 1,100 sheep and 60 suckler cows. Over the next year I hope to give you an insight into what farming for a living is all about.

I think that as farmers we can be quite ignorant. We think that people just know what happens day to day.

I hope you will enjoy my monthly diary.

April is the month that is non-existent in our house - days are long and nights are short.

We start the main lambing and, as far as life goes, it is all lambing from early morning till late at night. On our farm, most of the sheep lamb outside so we start our rounds at about 5am. Brian goes in one direction -I go in the other.

We go round the lambing fields four times a day, looking for newly-born lambs. We need to make sure they are up and suckled. Sometimes the lamb can be born backwards, or head first with their legs back, but they should be in a perfect diving position. These sheep must be caught and lambed.

Hopefully, the lambs will be fine but some have to be taken back to the farm and tube fed with colostrum - a sheep's first milk. They need this in the first 12 hours of life.

Then the cows, which are inside for the winter, have to be cleaned out and fed. Every day there are sheep inside to feed and water, these are the sick ones or they have sick lambs. They need injections and doses and TLC. Not all lambs will make it, but we try with every one.

In the afternoon, if we find time, we try to take fit and well sheep and lambs out of the lambing field and into fresh pastures. The sheep are dosed with fluke and worm drench and the lambs are tagged in their ears and a rubber ring put on their tails and most of the "boys" have a ring put on their bits. They have a mark that identifies them to the owner, which in our case is a red spot on top of their shoulder. Also, this month we have had six calves and thankfully there have been no calving problems.

April is a manic month and we are narky' and exhausted by the end of it. But we are now three-quarters of the way through, whereas some of the higher Lakeland farms are just starting.

A friend came for a day to find out what it was all about. We had several sets of lambs and I had to lamb two sheep. As well as all the day-to-day work, we had three dead lambs in one field - all of them had been killed by crows - and we had to take a sheep to the vets. It was an eye opener for her as she had no idea what we did every day.

This was one of the reasons I thought I would write this diary for The Westmorland Gazette, just to try to let people know that farming is not a 9 to 5 job - it is more like a 5am to 11pm job.

And although it can be enjoyable, it is flipping hard work.

So to finish for this month, let me tell you about a phone call we had last week from one of those: Can I sell you?' companies. The caller wanted to speak to Brian and I said that he was not in, and could I help.

"No", she said. "I have to talk to him. When would be a better time?"

I said: "He is out from 5 in a morning until 11 at night, he is busy lambing."

She replied: "I will call him at the weekend."

I didn't realise that people thought sheep stopped lambing at the weekend. I wish.