In your field

Well, this is a funny one. We live in very strange times and now we are nearing the end of lambing time there is time to reflect.

We have now almost completed the spring work, with spring barley coming through the ground fairly evenly and its top dressing of fertiliser being applied at the end of last week.

Thomas Carrick is part of a family-run upland beef and sheep farm in the North Pennines, near Alston. With pure-bred Swaledales to produce Mule lambs, they also run Salers cross cattle with Aberdeen-Angus calves which they finish at home.

None of us could anticipate just how altered the world has become in a matter of weeks. We are all affected by Covid-19, in so many ways, and it has never felt more important to reach out and communicate, both in our rural communities and more widely.

The roads are so quiet and the air is only broken by birdsong and young lambs and their mothers calling to each other.

Sadly, the world has certainly changed beyond recognition from a month ago and, with coronavirus restrictions looking set to continue over summer, we seem to be living a very different life.

In theory, it should be fairly easy to farm while staying two metres away from every other human being. Open fields and solitary tractor cabs mean arable farming is fairly self-isolating at the best of times. There are clearly fewer face-to-face meetings than, say, being Prime Minister.

The lockdown of most of the nation’s population will hopefully have the desired effect of slowing down this hellish virus.

We certainly are living in strange and scary times. At the beginning of the month, I had a decent amount of bookings in the diary for the bed and breakfast.

With all of the wild weather, March appeared to enter like a pride of ferocious roaring lions, but as I write it appears to be changing into something that resembles a lamb. Let’s hope it stays that way for a while.