The Question of the Farm by Ian Maleney
The question of the farm was settled some time before my grandfather’s death. There would be no feuds, no bitter clashes, no cries of disbelief as the will was read out in the nondescript office of some solemn, small-town solicitor. No, none of that: my father would get the farm.
It is a small and mostly unprofitable scrap of land, down a narrow road at the edge of a bog in the Irish midlands, a place you would simply never have reason to visit unless you were born there, or knew someone who was. My father keeps a few cattle on the land now, nothing else; no crop could be reliably grown in that ground. In the last few years, he’s taken advantage of some grants to plant trees in a field that was in any case too wet and dangerous for animals. The trees might pay off in 20 years or so, if they and he survive.
He likes farming, and he would do it more if
he could, but it doesn’t pay. So he works a regular job in a small, rural construction business — he’s been there for 30-odd years now — and farms in the evenings and on weekends. It’s like a second job, and he gives it whatever energy he has left when the first is done. He likes to tinker and improve — he builds things, repairs things; he’s very practical — and he pushes the whole endeavour forward a little more each year. He has no ambition to take on more land, or many more cattle. No debt and as little risk as is possible in the work of buying and selling live animals, that’s the plan. He sees himself as a sort of steward, my father. The farm was handed to him, as it was handed to his father, and he is just keeping an eye on it, keeping things ticking over, until it comes time to hand it on again; to me, or to one of my brothers.
If you were to bet on which of us will take it, you would not bet on me. I’m not a nervous person generally, but I have a constant, low-level
anxiety whenever I’m tasked with something practical at home. Though I am the eldest, I am the only one of us who does not drive. When my father proudly showed me the tractor he bought last year, I sat up in the cab for two minutes, like an overgrown child, without knowing even how to start the thing. I climbed down again quickly, red-faced, before making my excuses and leaving.
Machinery is bad enough, but the animals are worse. Though I grew up around them, I am hesitant with cattle; I am not afraid of them, but of my own incompetence. When I’m on the farm, it’s like nothing I’ve done in my life has contributed to making that moment any easier. I’ve spent more time there than anywhere else, and yet nothing has prepared me for it. In short, I am useless.
Sometimes, when I’m home on a Saturday morning, I will find myself standing at the head of a road or in a gateway as my father moves cattle from one field to another. As they come along a road just wide enough for a single car, it is my job to ensure they stay on the desired path and do not stray down another road or into someone’s garden. Though I’ve probably done this hundreds of times, ever since I was a small child, my heart still flutters when they come towards me — 10, 15, 20 cattle — with my father driving them along from behind. Their hooves clatter the road, I begin to sweat. I wave a stick, if I have one, or my hands if I don’t, and shout, “Hup! Come on now!” as if I know what I’m doing. And every time, they move past me just as I want them to, warm and snorting, on their way to fresh grass. It has never gone wrong and yet every time I am sure that it will.
My mother is often away at weekends now, and if I’m home, I will cook. After we eat, if it’s just the two of us, I’ll talk to my father about his plans; we talk about grants, about taxes, about money. We talk about how much can be got out of forestry, or weigh up the option of buying more cattle. We talk about the future. I am on safer ground here, analysing a business decision, than when I’m assessing a living, breathing creature. When I’m really enjoying this chat, when I’m really invested in it, I almost want to take out my laptop, open up a spreadsheet and make a five-year plan. I want this farm to work and I want to help make it work. I can almost convince myself; but these are not my decisions to make, and these are not my plans. I won’t be here every day to see them through. You don’t farm from the kitchen table.
My partner pointed out recently that my brothers and I are the end of the line. I think she meant that after us everything would be different. We might be the last to be raised in that place and in that way, as the sons of farmers. There is a sort of freedom in this. There is no expectation that we will follow in the footsteps, so we have licence to plot our own paths. My adult life has been defined by this absence of structure. What can be handed down no longer fits, and yet nothing else seems quite substantial enough to take its place, or to make up for the loss.
Last summer, I watched the house while my parents were away on a holiday. I watched the house, but I did not watch the farm. When one of the calves fell sick that week, it was my aunt and our neighbour who helped her recover. In the cattle crush at the back of my grandparents’ house, I watched our neighbour, a round and burly man my father’s age, take some dark liquid from a bottle in the shed and pour it into a syringe. He calmed the calf and then jammed the needle like a knife into her side. The calf roared and kicked but he held the syringe there until all the viscous medicine had been administered. He made nothing of it, but my only thought was, “I could never do that.”
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