Chapter 13
After confirming what I suspected, during a depressing couple of hours with the farm accounts, my stomach rumbles.
I stand up, leaving paperwork strewn over the kitchen table.
The day is darkening. I need to make something for Dad to eat.
He can’t live on Welsh cakes and toast. I did a quick spin by the new supermarket on the outskirts of town on my way back from Beti’s.
The car park was chock-a-block. No wonder there’s no one left in town.
I bought essentials, tea, coffee, toilet rolls, but couldn’t wait to get out of there.
I’m not even sure I have the makings of a meal.
It was so busy, light, bright and artificial, that I suddenly craved the quiet of the farm, a place of calm and sanctuary.
I go to the back door, shoving on a hat and my splitting boots, pulling my jumper up around my ears, the dogs at my feet, and stride to the shed behind the farmhouse where the chest freezer lives.
The vegetable plot, despite the cold and wet, looks as tidy as ever and ready for a new year after its winter rest.
I open the door and breathe in the earthy smell: bags of potatoes, carrots, leeks and strings of onions, boxes of apples wrapped in newspaper.
I open the chest freezer and my suspicions are confirmed.
There may not have been much in the cupboards in the kitchen, but there’s plenty out here and in the freezer.
No one seems to be buying hogget or mutton right now.
I take out a bag of chopped meat, grab some potatoes, onions, carrots and leeks and take them back to the warmth of the kitchen, where I put them all on the table.
For a moment, I’m not sure where to start, but then I remember.
I sit down and start to prepare the vegetables.
If there’s one thing that can make us feel better it’s a home-cooked meal, I realize, thinking of the jacket potato I had earlier. So simple, but so tasty and pleasing.
The comfort I feel when the chopped onions hit the pan, sizzle, soften and begin to caramelize is overwhelming.
I’m right back to when I was younger, when Nan would be in the kitchen making cawl or shepherd’s pie.
In later years, Dad would do the same; those were his two go-to meals, ready and warm on the range for when we got in from the yard at whatever time of day or night it might have been.
The cawl or shepherd’s pie would have been in the bottom oven, staying warm.
Sometimes there would be a weekend curry, with rice, and on special occasions, a roast.
I put the radio on. The kitchen is warm and I pour a glass of red wine from the bottle I brought, hoping it will give me some ideas to help the farm. I can’t let Llew Griffiths’s idea be the only offer on the table. There has to be another way.
With the cawl in the oven, I put on my coat, add a hat and the head torch and walk up to the feed shed with the dogs, where I settle into the corner by the window, on the straw bales, covered with sheepskins, and ring Matthew.
‘Hey,’ he says.
Suddenly I have an overwhelming urge to tell him everything I feel about the farm. How I’m scared for its future. For Dad’s future. And if he can’t make the farm pay for itself … What are other farmers doing? Where will our food come from?
‘Everything okay?’ he asks. And I falter, not knowing where to start.
‘Yes, fine … Well, not really, no.’
There’s a ping on his phone and I can hear him checking the message. ‘Ah, that’s HR, confirming our flights for the new year.’ I can hear the smile in his voice. ‘So, your dad’s home. On the mend? You on your way back?’
I pause, again not knowing where to start. ‘Not yet,’ I reply. ‘Just need a little longer. Dad’s not on his feet yet and I need to see off some chancer who’s trying to buy some of Dad’s land to put solar panels on. But I won’t be long. Is everything okay there? Managing without me?’
‘Yes. All under control. You’re so organized, everything’s running fine. You make things look easy!’ He laughs.
‘That’s because a lot of work went into it.’ I’m feeling a bit scratchy. The Christmas schedules, bookings and events aren’t just thrown together.
Matthew senses the irritation in my voice. ‘I was just giving you a compliment.’
‘Sorry.’ I sigh. ‘I’m just wound up by this guy trying to buy a piece of the farm without my knowing about it. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’
‘It’s fine. You’ve got a lot on your plate. But solar panels? That sounds good,’ he says. ‘Could be the answer.’
And now I’m really irritated. ‘It’s not, Matthew,’ I say. ‘For starters it would look terrible.’
‘Yes, but if it brings in money for your dad, it could be more profitable than sheep and it is helping to save the environment.’
The comment hits me like a flick in the face with a wet tea-towel. ‘But this is a sheep farm. Always has been.’
‘But, Jem, people have to change, adapt. Like you in work. You sort things when they happen, go with the flow to make sure things get done.’
‘Well …’ I try to gather my thoughts ‘… the supermarkets could pay farmers what the product is worth. They’re selling the lamb for less than it costs to produce it sometimes.’
‘Which is why,’ he says slowly, as if he needs to spell it out for me, ‘many people are moving to plant-based diets.’
I’m exasperated now.
‘And solar power has got to be good for the planet,’ he carries on.
‘Not for the people round here, though,’ I say, thinking about Mae in the café and Owen. ‘It’s not helping the people who actually live here.’
‘But you don’t live there,’ he says.
‘No, I don’t.’ And then a voice in my head says, loud and clear, surprising me, But I wish I still did! I wish I’d never left! I wonder how my mother and I could have brought ourselves to do it.
There’s a pause.
‘It’s not really your problem as long as your dad has some money in his pocket.’
I don’t say anything. Right now, that couldn’t feel further from the truth. I’m thinking about Evie, the nurse, knitting to help herself relax after a stressful morning at work. ‘It just keeps me in the here and now. It centres me.’
But wool is expensive. And Mae is using a food bank to feed her children. And Owen hasn’t enough work to support himself or his family. It shouldn’t be like this, I think. ‘There has to be a different way.’
‘See, you can’t help yourself, trying to find answers,’ he says.
‘It’s what you do. You solve problems. You’re getting too close to it all.
You’ll be back here soon, once your dad is sorted.
Maybe ask the neighbour to drop in. Then we can start getting ready for the big trip.
I really want to enjoy every minute of this with you,’ he says, finally making me smile and, for a moment, whisking me away from the worries that seem to have settled in my mind.
‘We’ll be meeting the owners of the hotel and deciding if we want to make it our new home. ’
My timer goes off on my phone. ‘I have to go. I’m cooking,’ I say, standing up from my cosy corner by the window in the shed on the straw bales.
‘Cooking?’ He sounds surprised. ‘You never cook.’
‘I can though. It’s what happens when you don’t work in hospitality and have all your meals cooked by the hotel kitchen.’ I add a little lightness to my voice, but he’s right: when did we last shop or cook a meal together, instead of relying on the kitchen staff or smashed avocados on toast?
‘Well’ – I hear the smile in his voice – ‘I look forward to tasting it when you’re back.’
‘My new-year resolution is to cook more! I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it.’ I’m thinking about Evie again: knitting centres her, and I felt the same as I stirred the carrots and onions and browned the meat.
‘In Seattle!’ he says. ‘Sounds good to me!’
‘Goodbye, Matthew,’ I say, and something inside me shifts. Like I’m at a crossroads and Matthew is there, his bags packed ready for the Seattle adventure, and I’m having to choose a path, but nothing is pointing me towards Seattle.
‘Come home soon,’ he says, and the voice inside me says, But I already am.
I press the red button, hang up and hold the phone to my chin, thinking about what he’s just said. Maybe I am too close to it all. Maybe the answer is to sell Gramps’s field for solar panels. What’s the alternative? Selling the farm altogether?
I look out of the feed shed, towards the lights of the town. The temperature has dropped again. I take a picture of the stars as they start to pop out one by one over Gramps’s field and post it on my Instagram account. #ThinkingofGramps #Home #Onthefarm.
Back in the farmhouse, I take Dad a bowl of cawl on a tray, prop him up on his pillows and lay it on his lap. He smiles a watery smile. ‘Diolch, cariad,’ he says, his shaking hand holding the spoon.
‘Here, let me help,’ I say, taking his hand and guiding it to his mouth. He slurps. ‘Just like you used to make?’
‘Just like it! In the good old days.’
‘Yes.’ The word catches in my throat.
His eyes fill with tears. He leans back against his pillows and I know he’s exhausted. ‘It’s gone, though. Those days …’
My eyes fill too. ‘Not yet they haven’t, Dad, not yet.’
‘This place, it’s not a family home any more. It’s time to take what’s on offer.’
I clear my throat and raise the spoon with more cawl. ‘We still have plenty more cawl.’ I smile at him. ‘And hope.’ But, in my heart of hearts, I know he’s right … I can’t for the life of me think of another solution.
Early the following morning, I put on my coat and wellies.
The wind is flinging the rain into my face as soon as I step outside the front door, as if it’s punishing me for staying away so long.
I spend the next couple of hours feeding the ewes with hay and ewe nuts, and breaking up the ice that’s formed overnight in the water butts.