Working the Farm
Charlotte’s Web by Joseph Robinette, based on the book by EB White
Library Theatre Company, Manchester, 1996
The working day starts early down on the farm. Whether you raise animals or crops, there is always a lot to be done, and by the time the cock crows, perched on the old fence out by the barn, the farmer will already be washed, dressed, and out about his chores.
Once, most people who lived in the country worked on their own farms. They were generally very poor and lived off the crops and livestock they raised. But since then we have learned how to improve the quality of the animals and the food both they and we eat. Also machinery helps make it easier and quicker to do many of the jobs that used to be done by hand.
One of the first tasks for the dairy farmer is to milk his cows. In the old days people had to do this manually, sitting on a stool beside the beast’s hairy flank and squirting its warm rich milk into a bucket. Now milking machines do the job far more cleanly and efficiently. The cows stand in stalls in the shed with their udders plugged into rubberised metal tubes that suck out the milk the way a calf would.
Large animals like cows and sheep need lots of food to make them grow. A group of forty dairy cows, for example, will eat two tons of feed each day (which is as much as s small elephant weighs!), and drink thirty litres of water each. The grass they graze from in the fields gives them plenty of roughage which is good for their digestion. When they are herded back onto the farm for their evening milking session the farmer will also give them extra vitamins and minerals to keep them in tip-top condition.
We keep dairy cows for milk and beef cattle for meat. Other kinds of animals also provide us with food and other things besides. Sheep are very useful, not only for the meat we get from them, but also for their wool. There are lots of varieties of sheep, and their coats are all different – some are soft, some are tough and long-lasting, some are extra thick and keep us warm in the winter. The sheep need their wool themselves over the cold winter months, so they are not sheared until late spring, by which time the weather is usually milder. Springtime is also when their lambs are born, and you have probably seen them out in the fields with their mothers, skipping about in that way they have which is called ‘gambolling’.
On smaller farms, those which don’t have enough room for big animals like cows and sheep, you will find smaller livestock like pigs and chickens. These tend to be raised indoors because they are more easily looked after that way, and most of the asks involved in raising them can be done by machines. This works out cheaper for the farmer as he doesn’t have to pay a lot of other people to help him. From pigs we get ham and bacon (and piglets like Wilbur). Chickens which are raised for food are called broilers and those which just provide eggs are called layers.
Most poultry (that is, chickens and turkeys) living indoors are housed in long low buildings, each in a small pen that automatically supplies them with feed and takes away their waste products. Their eggs roll down onto conveyor belts which ferry them along to collection points where they are packaged up for distribution. Although the system is very efficient, it doesn’t give the birds much freedom of movement and recently many people have become unhappy about the conditions in these so-called factory farms, leading to the renewed popularity of free-range eggs. These are eggs laid by chickens which have been brought up with enough room to move about, perch and feed on their own. Although these eggs still tend to be pricier, they may eventually become more profitable for the farmer if he finds he can sell more of them than those produced by the intensive method.
British farms are usually quite small compared to those in America, where there is a lot more room for vast herds of beef cattle to spread out in. These big farms are called ranches, and a lot of the daily work of rounding up the animals, branding them and driving them to market is still done on horseback by cowboys.
Even with powerful machines such as combine harvesters, farming is a labour-intensive business and requires constant, year-round effort. “There’s never a time when there’s nothing to do,” sings Postman Pat as he contemplates the meadows around Greendale, and he’s right. The bigger the farm, the more there is to think about. Worst of all is the fact that so much farming is at the mercy of the elements – heavy rains at the wrong time can wipe out an entire crop; drought, flood or hail can lay waste fields; cold or storms can decimate livestock out on the range or in unprotected pasture. As well as being wedded to his work, today’s farmer must also be a businessman, always looking ahead to try and guard against these sudden potential disasters.
But at the end of a long day he can go to his bed content in the knowledge that he has done a good day’s work. The proof is all around him in the sturdy livestock and waving fields beyond his windows. It’s a full life and a rewarding one… though not recommended do anyone who doesn’t like getting up before the cock!
EB White
PS
“Large animals like cows and sheep need lots of food to make them grow.” No shit, Sherlock. But remember this was written for a stage adaptation of Charlotte’s Web, a children’s Christmas show, and I knew nothing about farms other than what I’d gleaned at the age of ten from reading Enid Blyton’s Shadow the Sheepdog. (First published in 1942, this book was already so ancient that on the original dustjacket, sheepdog was spelt with a hyphen.) The only time I’d ever spent on a farm was an afternoon school trip in the juniors where we were invited to touch an electric fence with a blade of grass and the jolt nearly knocked me off my feet. I obviously paid more attention to Postman Pat than I did to Countryfile. So pardon me for trying to soften my normally Spartan fact-driven style to suit my prospective audience.
On the other hand, some of it strikes me today as definitely dodgy: “in America… a lot of the daily work of rounding up the animals, branding them and driving them to market is still done on horseback by cowboys.” Is it? Do they? Cowboys? Any American farmer driving to market these days is surely more likely to be doing it from behind the walnut wheel of a 6.4litre Ferox500 V8 luxury 4x4 SUV.
On the other other hand, “We keep dairy cows for milk and beef cattle for meat.” Well, we do don’t we? One of the pictures was captioned, “Pigs are generally kept in small groups in enclosures called sties, as they do not herd well.” Of course they are, because they don’t. Another one revealed, “Free-range chickens have a much better time of it than battery hens raised in cramped conditions.” Go ahead, punk. Prove me wrong.
The defence rests.