The Farm has a Memory

In the winter when there are no crops in the fields, Fergus and I go for walks. I take off his radar collar and he bounds like a deer to the farm gate at the edge of the lawn, where the barnyard begins. He sits and looks at me out of the side of his eye.

“Wait…wait…and….go!” A flash of furry red disappears around the side of the shed, toward the big old barn. We do the rounds before we go on our walk, just as I always did, even though we don’t have livestock anymore. I think Fergus knows that many animals lived here before he did. He can sense them.

As we round the old log barn at the end of the lane, a black squirrel scolds us from the top of the tree. Fergus puts his paws on the trunk and wills himself up to no avail. He whimpers, then gives up, distracted by something in the corn field. I worry that his leaping over ragged wooden cornstalks will cut his feet but he has perfect dexterity and returns without a scratch.

I peek into the log barn. We used one half as a chicken coop, covering the windows with chicken wire to keep the birds in and blankets to keep the draft out. That was before the day some animal decided to teach its young how to kill one night. We lost 67 birds that day. Now we keep our chicks in the shed close to the house. There is enough activity there that a predator isn’t likely to strike.

The other half of the log barn, with its tiny pen, was a favourite of our cow Julie. She wedged herself and her calf in there as an escape from the mosquitoes, I think. The logs have a magical cooling effect as well. That was one smart cow – but the logs suffered a bit as a result of her big butt body checks.

We rounded the barn and I remembered the first time I witnessed a calf being born – in April, 2008. 

Betty hadn’t even looked pregnant. She was such a big Hereford – she carried it well. Sure enough, though, she gave birth to a healthy girl: Mocha – who went on to have calves of her own. We were lucky that most of our calving seasons went off without a hitch – but we did learn that there is no use waiting around the barn for something to happen: the cows always waited until we were gone to give birth. If we were lucky, we caught the tail end of the event.

As we rounded the end of the barn I remembered the first winter with our big Belgian horses, when Ashley stepped on my foot with her big dinner-plate hoof. I just sunk down into the mud and snow beneath her, but she froze, holding her hoof up in mid-air as if she had stepped on something rather squishy and distasteful.

Ferg stops to peek between the barn boards at my daughter’s sports car that is over wintering in our barn. The Mustang is the only animal in there right now. I wondered how many ghosts were watching from inside the structure. Death is just another part of Life on the farm. Over the last decade we have lost lambs, calves, barn cats, one beloved horse and two precious dogs. I wonder if they left anything behind that Fergus can smell. Perhaps not. He is ready to move on.

We follow the diagonal path that the cows’ hooves beat across the pasture, to the soy bean field at the top of the tractor lane. The tiniest rabbit prints I have ever seen – smaller than a kitten’s – have Fergus’ full attention now. But then he discovers a spot where someone ate some soy beans and lay down for a nap. And here is a corn cob that someone carried from the other field. Wild turkey tracks. Deer scratchings. Coyote scat. So many stories to tell. Ferg’s nose can read them all.

As we come to the end of the tractor lane, something darts into the bushes beside the creek. Was that a fisher? A coyote? Or was it a deer? The sight of the dog scares many animals away. I don’t want to encounter a coyote – it might try to attack my dog – but I would love to see a deer. I know they are there. And so does Fergus.

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