Chapter Two
Will
I didn’t know why I bothered setting an alarm these days since I was always up before it. But at least today I wasn’t waking up to the sound of rain hammering on the bedroom window.
This winter had been wet and miserable beyond belief, and there were still a couple of months to go until we’d see any visible improvements in the weather.
I really didn’t want to do another lambing season in torrential, freezing rain, not after the one we’d had four years ago.
It had been the closest I’d ever come to wanting to give up.
Heaving myself out of bed, I quickly threw some clothes on and headed downstairs. It was still dark outside with only the faintest line of grey starting to appear on the horizon as I filled the kettle and went to chuck some logs on the burner.
The farmhouse I called home was several hundred years old, and despite attempts to modernise it over the years, I still found the best way to keep the place warm was the large, cast-iron wood burner that sat in the small sitting room connected to my kitchen.
“Out of the way, Mog,” I said, carefully stepping over the ancient grey cat sprawled out in front of the fire.
Mog opened one eye and looked at me disdainfully before stretching out her old bones as far as she could.
Nobody really knew who she belonged to, but she’d turned up when I was fifteen and had made herself at home.
It had been more of a case of her adopting the house than anything else since she’d refused to move down the road with my parents when they’d decided to hand over the reins of the farm to me.
I’d been convinced she’d be more comfortable with them, but Mog had staunchly dismissed any attempts to leave, and eventually, I’d given up.
I didn’t mind having her around. She didn’t require much other than two meals a day, a fire to snooze in front of in the winter, and a patch of sun in the summer.
And she was happy to listen to me grumble.
“I’ll leave your breakfast out,” I added as I carefully added some logs to the burner and coaxed the dying embers back to life. “Mum’s popping in about ten-ish too. She wants to refresh the cottage welcome packs.”
Mog let out a meow, and I chuckled to myself. I didn’t know why I was talking to the bloody cat, but at that point, it was habit. I knew she didn’t really understand me, but it was nice to get some acknowledgment.
With the fire roaring merrily and Mog happily toasting herself, I walked back through to the kitchen to make myself some tea and check the weather.
The rain may have let up, but it looked like we were in for freezing temperatures and snow instead.
And the long-term forecast suggested the whole of February was going to be a mess of freezing rain, snow, subzero temperatures, and gales.
Great, that was all I bloody needed. Just once I’d like a cold, dry winter with the odd smattering of rain, not torrential downpours that turned everything into a quagmire.
“Looks like we might need the lambing barns,” I muttered as I sipped my tea. Usually, we let the ewes lamb out in the fields and on the hills where they spent most of their lives.
It was where they felt safe and comfortable, but when the weather was really shit, we made sure we had the option to bring some of them into the barns.
There they’d be protected from the worst of the elements, and the lambs would be warm and dry.
It was a pain in the ass to set up, but it meant we lost fewer ewes and fewer lambs.
None of the ewes were due to lamb until the end of March at the very earliest, which was two months away, but I liked to be prepared.
And the sooner we started on the prep, the easier it would be.
I made a mental note to tell Higgs when he came in so we could make a plan. Higgs didn’t really have a job title, but like Mog he’d arrived one day when I was about twelve or thirteen and stayed.
These days, I didn’t know what I’d do without him.
He could do anything from calming a worried ewe in labour to remembering a litany of dates and details at the drop of a hat to fixing the quad bike, or perfectly levelling the outdoor riding school to keep the livery clients happy, or fixing fence posts, or a million other things.
He was a quiet, serious man who always seemed to know what the farm needed at any given time.
I’d asked him once if he’d ever considered taking over a farm of his own—because I was convinced he was a better farmer than me—but he’d just given me a small smile and said that it “weren’t right for him,” and he was happier without the responsibility over his head.
I knew what he meant. This was my family’s farm and had been for five generations.
And with every one, it seemed harder to sustain.
I loved this farm with my heart and soul, but every week it found new ways to keep me up at night, wondering how I was going to keep it going.
No wonder my hair was already starting to thin on top.
And I was sure at least some of my pubes were going grey from stress.
“Come on,” I said to myself. “Let’s be having you. You’ve got work to do.”
Draining the last of the tea, I headed towards the door and pulled on my waterproof overalls, heavy boots, and a thick hat and gloves.
I knew I’d probably end up taking the gloves off again when I got moving, but my skin was already starting to redden and crack from the cold, and it was only January.
I’d rather not lose all feeling in my fingers before I was thirty-five.
The air was crisp and cold as I stepped out into the early morning, my breath fogging in front of me. Closing the door behind me, I ran through my mental checklist for the day as I headed towards the pair of old stables where my two sheepdogs, Nell and Moss, slept.
Predictably, as soon as she heard my footsteps on the icy stone outside, Moss’s head appeared over the door. She was the younger of the two, at four years old, and was full of boundless energy that seemed to go on for days.
“Yes, yes, I’m coming. Hang on,” I said with a smile, knowing that what Moss wanted more than anything was feeding.
I ducked into the second stable, where I kept their food and other odds and sods, to make up their breakfasts and returned two minutes later to see Moss bouncing up and down with glee.
Opening the stable door, I saw Nell emerge from the nest of blankets she’d made herself.
She stretched and wagged her tail before giving a full body shake and trotting over to me.
I put their bowls on the floor, watching for a minute to make sure Moss didn’t try to steal Nell’s considering she pretty much inhaled every meal as soon as it appeared.
By the time they’d finished, the moon was starting to hang lower in the sky, and the line of grey on the horizon had stretched into a thick band edged with gold.
That was the only perk to winter—I was up so early that I got to see the sun rise over the moors every morning.
And it was stunning each and every time.
I was just loading Nell and Moss onto the back of the quad bike when Higgs appeared, materialising beside me like some sort of ghost. Luckily, I was used to it by now, but the first few times he’d done it, he hadn’t half made me jump.
“Morning, Higgs,” I said.
“Morning. You need a hand?” he asked, his voice soft and gruff. Nell wagged her tail, and he put his hand out for her to nuzzle. Neither of my collies were pets, and they weren’t the friendliest or cuddliest pair, but Nell adored Higgs.
“No, should be fine. I’m going to do the rounds and put some hay out. We’ll need to look at getting some silage out there too.”
Higgs nodded and looked up at the sky. “Aye, best be doing it soon. We’ll have snow by Monday.”
“We can do it this afternoon, then,” I said. If Higgs said there’d be snow by Monday, there’d be snow by Monday. I’d never known him to be wrong about the weather in the nearly twenty years I’d known him. “Get it up there before the roads get blocked.”
“Aye. I’ll get it ready and finish those fence posts while you’re out.”
“Cheers,” I said. “Think we’re going to need the lambing barns again this year. Long-term forecast is proper shit, and I’d rather we have options if push comes to shove.”
“Can start on that next week, then,” Higgs said. “Allus best to be prepared.” He gave Nell a final pat on the head and stepped back. “All reight, in a bit then.”
I knew I was being dismissed and pulled the keys out of my pocket before climbing onto the bike and starting it up.
The cold nipped at my exposed skin as I headed out the farm gate and onto the narrow road, carefully avoiding the oncoming Land Rover, which belonged to Dylan, who managed the livery yard for me.
The yard had been one of my more recent investments after I’d realised we needed to diversify if we were going to stand any chance of keeping the farm running.
After a lot of thought and research, I’d decided that if we were going to have a yard, we needed to do it properly if we were going to stand any chance of making money.
So that had meant fixing up two of the old barns and building large, airy stables to go inside them, where any horses would have plenty of space to walk around and lie down.
We’d added a secure tack room that was more like a vault, a washing off area so horse’s legs could be hosed and scrubbed to get rid of any mud when they came in from the fields, lots of outside space to tie up, and made sure there were plenty of electrical sockets available for kettles and clippers and anything else people might need.
I’d refenced some of the low-land fields closest to the farm to create plenty of turnout and doubled our hay production so we produced enough for the sheep, Dad’s cows, and the horses, although we occasionally still needed to buy some in along with straw.
The biggest and most expensive project, though, had been the enormous outdoor arena we’d built two years ago.
Although Higgs, Dad, and I had managed to do a lot of it ourselves, there were some things we just couldn’t do, and we’d needed to get a specialist arena builder in to finish the project, including providing the top-of-the-line sand and rubber surface.
But now the arena rivalled anything you’d find anywhere and came complete with floodlights and a selection of colourful poles and show jumps, some of which Higgs had made himself in the workshop.
From start to finish, the yard’s construction had cost a hell of a lot of time and money, but it had been worth it. The place was thriving, and we had a permanent waiting list.
I’d known from the start I wasn’t going to be able to manage it, not with the farm as well, which was where Dylan came in.
He’d been there from the beginning and took absolutely no shit from anyone.
He dealt with all the day-to-day details while I did the billing and the maintenance.
It meant one less thing for me to worry about, and I trusted Dylan to let me know what he needed.
I pulled the bike up alongside the window of his car and Dylan’s smiling face appeared. He had reddish-blond hair sticking out from under a beanie, and he was wrapped in a puffy, dark coat that had a wisp of hay sticking to the collar.
“Morning, Will,” he said cheerfully as a wave of warm air from the car washed over me. It smelt distinctly of horse. “I know you’re on your way out, but I just wanted to let you know the hay barn is getting low. We could do with some more straw too.”
“No worries. Higgs is around if you want to ask him to top it up.”
“Perfect, I’ll do that.”
“We’re going to get snow by Monday too,” I added. “Might want to limit turnout. There’s salt in the bin as well if you need it for the yard.”
Dylan frowned. “The forecast I saw said it wouldn’t be until next week if we get it at all.”
“Higgs said by Monday.”
“Monday it is then,” Dylan said with a knowing smile. “I’ll get it sorted.”
“Cheers. Any problems, just let me know. We’re going to be taking silage out later, and I’ve got some fencing to repair, but I’ll have my phone if you need me.”
“It’ll be fine. It hasn’t snowed yet. Besides, it can’t be worse than last year.”
“Don’t bloody jinx it,” I said with a chuckle. “I don’t want another winter like that.”
Dylan grinned and pretended to zip his mouth shut. “I won’t say a word. At least not about that. Also, don’t you have football this afternoon?”
“Tomorrow,” I said, mentally adding that back in to my rapidly growing mental list. “Although, if the weather gets bad, they’ll probably cancel it.”
“Do you really think that, or do you just want them to cancel it so you can do more work instead?” Dylan asked pointedly.
I shrugged. While I did enjoy playing in the rec league my friend Spencer had dragged me into, it did take up a lot of my limited daylight hours over the weekend during the winter.
And while part of me knew it was good to get away from the farm and do something other than work, the rest of me worried that I should be using those hours to get stuff done instead.
“I’m not answering that,” I said, and Dylan grinned.
“Exactly.”
“All right, you’ve made your point. Go sort your horses.”
“I’m going,” he said. He went to roll up the window, then stopped. “Seriously, though, Will, you need to take breaks. The farm won’t stop if you take a day off once in a while.”
He drove away before I could respond. I watched him go before continuing up the road towards the narrow track that would take me onto the moors.
Dylan wasn’t the first person to tell me to take time off. All my other friends constantly said the same thing. Even my parents had started muttering that I worked too much.
The problem was, none of them could see what I saw.
They saw a family farm that worked like a well-oiled machine, one that required care and attention but wasn’t likely to break that easily.
I saw a crumbling legacy teetering on the edge of a precipice, where one wrong move would send it hurtling into the abyss.