The sun is breaking through the early morning mist and the ground is frozen solid. It’s the sort of morning that sheep farmers dream of, cold and frosty to “kill off bugs”, with sunshine on the sheep’s backs. I stand by the side of the road squinting into the sun, waiting for the funeral cortege. At this time of year, the mountains all around are so steep that we only see sunlight in the very middle of the day.
When we bought our farm, the previous farmer had to leave through ill health, and while he was happy that it had been bought by a family who wanted to farm, he had already had to move out and did not want to meet us. He wanted to remember the farm as it was, having lived and worked there for 50 years.
This morning is the morning of his funeral, and he is being driven through the farm one last time. The cars crawl down the hill and stop at the entrance to the farm lane. For a minute the cars stay there, giving him a final chance to say goodbye. “I’m looking after it for you,” I whisper, and the cars drive on.
I feel suddenly very moved by the passing of the farm from one generation to the next, just as I did four years ago when his brother handed me keys, a shepherd’s guide and some horn-branding irons. I am strangely affected by saying goodbye to someone I have never met but whose legacy is all around me every day. Ownership of land is just a fleeting thing. As a farmer, I don’t feel that the farm belongs to me, I belong to it and am part of it.
Later in the day, as I walk to the post office, there is activity in the church graveyard as the family grave is closed again. The farmer has become part of the land itself. I wonder if he was buried with sheep’s wool between his thumb and first finger, as is the local tradition, so that when he arrives in the next world, he has the excuse that his flock kept him tied to the land and out of church on Sundays.
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