[Leica] IMG : Cheap lawnmowers and weed-wackers ... and a Photo

[Douglas Barry]

Philippe, ahhh sheep! Those photos make the memories just flood back. 
Like Yorick, I knew them well.

When I was ten years of age, my Dad bought a small farm (8 hectares) 
with its own beach down in West Cork as a holiday home. Sounds idyllic 
doesn't it, but the only problem was it was over 370 kilometres away 
from Dublin over winding, bumpy, dangerous, pre-EU subsidised roads and, 
with a restoration job needed on the 1850 farmhouse, we were up and down 
like a jockey's bollocks. When the house was restored, he got the bright 
idea that it might as well wash its own face, decided to rent it out 
when we weren't there, and to make any trip more efficient, also decided 
to put six caravans (mobile homes) in the field beside the house, and 
rent them out as holiday lets as well.

He, like you and your mates, discovered pretty rapidly that grass and 
other vegetation grows very quickly, and needs constant maintenance, so 
decided that animals were the solution. He bought a small herd of 
bullocks, and after the first year discovered that many of our tenants 
(mainly from UK cities) were cowering and whimpering in fear in the 
caravans from the size of the huge udderless bovines that roamed outside 
their fragile quarters, freely defecating and decorating the adjoining 
landscape with their runny ordures. Most of the holidaymakers, used to 
only animals the size of a large dog at best, thought that they were 
bulls and were terrified. After an end of season rethink, the bullocks 
were trailered away to market tout suite.

We got 20 sheep instead as they cropped the grass significantly lower, 
had way smaller and more solidly formed ordures, and certainly wouldn't 
scare the punters away. They were hardy looking Blackface and my Dad 
thought that would be that. Well it wasn't. I could write a small book 
on the various diseases that the things got. It didn't help that the 
local small farmer (LSF) that we got to move them from one rotated 
pasture to the other, hadn't a clue about sheep and their diseases. Boy, 
do they have a lot of diseases. I became an expert in the damn things, 
foot rot, fly strike, liver fluke, etc., not to mention the additional 
joys of dipping them, neutering them, docking their tails, and shearing 
them.

Of course, the sheep had the annoying habit of dying at very 
inconvenient times and their bodies being discovered in strange places.  
I remember at one stage when I was fifteen or sixteen, a woman 
holidaymaker rushing up from the beach to my father and me, crying out, 
"Mr. Barry, Mr. Barry, one of your sheep is caught in the quicksand - 
and it's now dead!!"  Having calmed the distressed woman down, but 
bewildered by the description of quicksand, we went down to the beach 
and found a dead decaying sheep with its head buried in the all too 
solid sand. It was one of ours. My Dad sent me back up for a shovel, and 
standing back when I returned, told me to dig its head out. I did so and 
discovered a large rock placed on top of the head.

Apparently the sheep had died a week or so before, and our LSF had 
buried it in the beach sand. He must have though that sheep flesh was 
incorruptible, but hadn't reckoned with the tide, and buried it below 
high water mark. The tide did as it does, coming in and out twice a day, 
the body putrefied, bloated with gas, and pushed its way to the surface. 
Realising what had happened, my father turned to me and said "Douglas, 
drag it up to the foreshore well above high tide and bury it in a hole 
with at least a metre of earth on top of it, and do it this evening, so 
that no one knows it's there."

Well you don't argue with a former boxing champion, so that evening, I 
had to do it. The grave digging wasn't the problem, but dragging a 
disintegrating rotting heavy sheep the 40 metres up to higher ground was 
nauseating, especially as the head separated from the body close to the 
grave and the stench got even worse. It may have been the worse job I 
ever had, but certainly cured me of the urge to murder anyone as I 
couldn't go through with the disposal of another body...:-)

Here's a photo of me with my brothers and father down there in 1965 
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DouglasBray/Videos/a/b/c/Old+Voigtlander+pics/Family+and+JLB+at+gate+Summer+1965.jpg.html 


Douglas



On 06/06/2021 10:32, Philippe via LUG wrote:
> Background of the photos : I live in a village built around a medieval castle and its fortifications. Regularly clearing up its glacis from trees and bramble to preserve the site and sights is time, sweat, and money consuming to say the least.
> So some friends and I have had the project of using sheep as cheap cleaners but this required an initial clean up, and electric fences in the downhill parts.That’s what we’ve been kept busy doing over the last months.
>
> It all started in the late fall
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-6341.jpg.html
>
> The mighty team at the end of the first day.
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-6350.jpg.html
>
>
> Finally, yesterday was «  Inauguration Day », and the first four sheep were released. I might now find more time for photography as a result :-)
>
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-6.jpg.html
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-7.jpg.html
>
>
> The masterminds of Operation Sheep and, in his shorts, the shepherd who selected the sheep for their ability to live in these conditions.
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-22.jpg.html
>
>
> Amities
>
> Philippe, still on jab one only ...
>
>
>
>
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