On my fourth day on the farm I watched - for the first time - a ewe give birth to a lamb. Right infront of me. It was a bloody mess. Not at all fun for the ewe. The 15 year old kid next to me - from North London, who had been expelled from School for getting in a fist fight with his teacher - stood stunned, eyes and mouth wide open.
Dan the farmer said “It’s good to see the mother take care of her newborn lamb. Watch her licking the blood off the lamb, and biting at the amniotic sac - if she doesn’t bite that off the newborn lamb will suffocate and die. It’s a good sign.”
After some amniotic munching, Dan the farmer told the 15 year old kid - who spoke poor english but was excellent at pretending to understand - that he should walk into the field, grab the newborn lamb’s front legs, lift it up, take it from it’s mother and bring it over so that he could give it an injection that would ensure its survival.
The kid looked up at Dan with a kind of “are you fucking serious?” look, to which Dan retorted with a “you are damn right I’m serious” smile, and the kid strode into that pen, stood bold and tall in front of the ewe, grabbed its newborn child by its front legs, lifted with all his might, carried it and struggled over to Dan. Dan nodded, and handed the kid a syringe and pointed at its back leg. The kid took the syringe in his hand, stabbed the lamb and pressed down so the fluid would rush into it’s blood-stained, newborn body, and then carried its limp, shaking body back to it’s mother.
We walked over to a pen filled with three newborn lambs huddled under a heat lamp. And rather than the customary running away, the lambs came to greet us. Dan said, “do you notice something different about those?”.
“They have no mom” said the kid. “Yes. well done. Their mother fell onto her back a couple days ago, and couldn’t get up, so a crow pecked out her eyes and udder. I had to put her down. So now we are these lambs mother.”
This stunned kid was one of seven residents that week.
Four days before - at the beginning of the week - we had a meeting to discuss the kids who would soon be visiting. They were a group from North London, from ages 14-16. Most of them had been expelled for fighting teachers. Most had horrifying home circumstances. One was a solo-travelling fifteen year old who had escaped from a forced labour camp in Sudan and travelled by himself, through North Africa, central Europe, and France. He spent time in Calais, learning French, before crossing the channel to England.
The stories went on. I wanted to make some excuse, leave the room, get in my car, and drive away, and thus remain sheltered from the horrifying facts of existence.
But this farm had employed me to build some cabins and I felt that abruptly leaving this week (of volunteering and getting to know the organisation) would jeopardise my contract. Perhaps righly so.
So I stayed.
And the kids arrived, at first frantic, harried and angry.
But over the course of the week I witnessed a change.
I witnessed, and participated in facilitating a change.
In which kids, who’s blood stained lives - full of sirens, violence, honour and pain - were put on pause. And for a week, they were just random kids. Kids plodding around god’s green earth, running and laughing and eating home grown food. They slept sound; sufficiently exhausted from days of rolling in the dirt and dashing around fields, trying to herd playful sheep.
They made it clear that they felt at increasingly ease.
They shared conversations with adults who cared, and in response to their actions, and ideas, rather than punishment and discipline, received congratulations, and celebration, at their victories.
At the end of the week, on the final night, I sat around a bonfire and looked at the glowing faces of young people that were just young people. Not the expelled, violent, dangerous, lost, afraid and the stoned. But the children of the farm; children of the chirping birds and the loving staff. A group of new formed friends unified by their experience.
They were asked to shout someone out, and took it in turns to celebrate each other.
They went around, and thanked one another, sincerely and thoughtfully, for their time and their kindness, and their help.
And I felt like I was part of something very special and important and most unlike other carpentry jobs.
The next day the kids got back in the bus and we returned their phones to them (they had been taken away at the start of the week). They took their little black mirrors in their hands and covetously grasped them and pressed them and became silent as they were once again enveloped in the perverse horrors of the vast online.
I waved as the bus drove off and one or two of them waved back.
Thanks for reading.
I have a gig coming up in London on May 31st. https://fixr.co/event/the-sportsman-map-cafe-tickets-187245649
do come!
Also the farm wants me to keep writing these, as a part of my job. So please expect more. The groundworks for the build start in the next couple weeks. And then the rest from there.
I imagine ill finish the cabins shortly before Christmas. A long time!
My love,
Sebastian