Coldbrook Farm
11/03/07 02:06
A week in Edinburgh, researching and catching up on
admin-ish things, staying with friends and chilling
in the city.
On Saturday, a mad morning getting those last town things done (running around for a new mac plug, posting things &c &c), before catching a bus to the Border town of Galashiels.
My friend Christopher, is joining me. It's nice. We piled my bags onto the front of the bus and sprawled ourselves out over the back. Somewhere in the outlying expanse of Edinburgh, of leisure centres and anonymous industrial buildings, I fell asleep.
I woke up to gentle rolling hills and a pervading mistiness. At Galashiels, we rang the farm and took it in turns to guard the luggage, go to the toilet and get cash and stash (sweeties, for midnight feasts?) from Somerfield.
Samantha, the daughter of the Wooller family, picked us up; an easy pair to spot camped out amonst rucksacks and wellies.
The Woollers' farm is more like my idea of a farm than any of the other places I've visited so far. Spatially: a central farmhouse, which Chris and I are staying in; outlying buildings used for B&Bs and holiday accommodation; barns, sheds, hen houses, caravans between these and beyond; a good spattering of farm machinery about the place.
On arriving, Chris and I were offered soup and tea hot off the Aga (yum yum), then went exploring :-) We found Malcolm, the father / husband / farmer, feeding calves, and then Doug their son milking the cows. I was mesmerised by the milking machinery. I was (as in my arrival to Ullapool) struck by how alike it was to my image of it in my head, and yet by how utterly different and exciting it was to be there standing in wellies in the pit-like section beneath the cows, being shat on and pissed on as the huge and beautiful beasts munched at their food and were drained of their milk. It all seemed wonderful, and extraordinary: from the softly furred, velveteen udders of the cows, to the way that the mechanical pumps on their teats suddenly popped off and swung away, dripping milky water into the lower area of the dairy.
It's beautiful to me: the writing in chalk on the wall of the dairy, cows numbers (a found poem, a farm poem); in the early evening, light seeping through the corners of the large cowshed illuminating the far end of a pier-like catwalk; the light on the dust from the remains of the hay falling from the claw of a tractor emerging from the shed.
And wierd: a plethora of machinery, farm products and tricks I know nothing about; the iodine-coloured liquid Doug uses on the cows' teats after milking (specially made, produced by people / businesses); a mixture created in the evening from water, eggs and oats (dogs' dinner). It is all new and thrilling, impressive and challenging.
On Saturday, a mad morning getting those last town things done (running around for a new mac plug, posting things &c &c), before catching a bus to the Border town of Galashiels.
My friend Christopher, is joining me. It's nice. We piled my bags onto the front of the bus and sprawled ourselves out over the back. Somewhere in the outlying expanse of Edinburgh, of leisure centres and anonymous industrial buildings, I fell asleep.
I woke up to gentle rolling hills and a pervading mistiness. At Galashiels, we rang the farm and took it in turns to guard the luggage, go to the toilet and get cash and stash (sweeties, for midnight feasts?) from Somerfield.
Samantha, the daughter of the Wooller family, picked us up; an easy pair to spot camped out amonst rucksacks and wellies.
The Woollers' farm is more like my idea of a farm than any of the other places I've visited so far. Spatially: a central farmhouse, which Chris and I are staying in; outlying buildings used for B&Bs and holiday accommodation; barns, sheds, hen houses, caravans between these and beyond; a good spattering of farm machinery about the place.
On arriving, Chris and I were offered soup and tea hot off the Aga (yum yum), then went exploring :-) We found Malcolm, the father / husband / farmer, feeding calves, and then Doug their son milking the cows. I was mesmerised by the milking machinery. I was (as in my arrival to Ullapool) struck by how alike it was to my image of it in my head, and yet by how utterly different and exciting it was to be there standing in wellies in the pit-like section beneath the cows, being shat on and pissed on as the huge and beautiful beasts munched at their food and were drained of their milk. It all seemed wonderful, and extraordinary: from the softly furred, velveteen udders of the cows, to the way that the mechanical pumps on their teats suddenly popped off and swung away, dripping milky water into the lower area of the dairy.
It's beautiful to me: the writing in chalk on the wall of the dairy, cows numbers (a found poem, a farm poem); in the early evening, light seeping through the corners of the large cowshed illuminating the far end of a pier-like catwalk; the light on the dust from the remains of the hay falling from the claw of a tractor emerging from the shed.
And wierd: a plethora of machinery, farm products and tricks I know nothing about; the iodine-coloured liquid Doug uses on the cows' teats after milking (specially made, produced by people / businesses); a mixture created in the evening from water, eggs and oats (dogs' dinner). It is all new and thrilling, impressive and challenging.