James Atkinson
A holding never clocks off — but you can
Anyone who has kept a few Herdwicks on a fell allotment or a dozen hens behind the kitchen door knows the feeling. There is always one more gate to shut, one more trough to check, one more bag of feed to shift before the rain comes in off the west. Cumbrian weather rarely gives you a full dry day, and the list of jobs will happily stretch to fill every hour of daylight and a fair few of the dark ones too.
The danger is rarely one dramatic crisis. It is the slow creep: the evening that starts with "just checking the ewes" and ends at half nine with cold hands and a reheated tea. Farming well and being present with your family are not opposites, but the balance does not happen by accident. It has to be planned for, the same way you plan for tupping or silage.
Decide tomorrow's jobs before you go to bed
A vague sense of "plenty to do" is what swallows evenings. A short, written list is what protects them. Keep a whiteboard in the porch or a notebook on the kitchen table, and every night set out three jobs for tomorrow — no more. One involving stock, one on the land, one bit of maintenance. Anything else goes on a separate "someday" list, to be drawn from when there is slack in the day.
- Feeding, watering and checking stock are the non-negotiables. Everything else can move.
- Keep a wet-day list on the same board: dosing, paperwork, mending hurdles in the shed, servicing the quad.
- Apply a single-tractor rule. If two jobs need it, one waits until tomorrow, however much you want both done.
- At the end of the day, note what slipped. If the same job slips three days running, it is either urgent or it should come off the list altogether.
Share the load — properly, not just in theory
On most smallholdings one person quietly becomes the default for everything, and that is usually the person who ends up exhausted. A rota on the back of the kitchen door looks old-fashioned and works better than any app. Split mornings and evenings between adults, or split by enterprise: one takes sheep, the other takes poultry, pigs and the veg patch.
Children can and should carry real responsibility, matched to their age and strength:
- Under eight — collecting eggs, filling small water buckets, carrying straw, shutting in the hens.
- Eight to twelve — mucking out the hen house, feeding bucket calves, helping move a small flock through a gate.
- Teenagers — leading ponies, helping with gathering, hedging, fencing and clipping, once properly shown how.
Show them once, watch them twice, then trust them. And say thank you out loud — a chore that earns a bit of respect gets done again without a row. Neighbours matter too: a reciprocal arrangement with the next farm along, covering lambing or a weekend away, is worth more than any gadget you could buy.
Protect one regular block of time away from the yard
Pick a slot — Sunday afternoon, Saturday morning, Wednesday evening — and defend it like a lambing round. Two hours every week beats a fortnight once a year, because it becomes part of the rhythm rather than a treat you have to earn. It is far easier to switch off if you actually leave the holding, so get in the car and go somewhere the fields are not visible.
Arrange cover in advance. Leave a written routine on the feed shed door: what gets fed, when, how much, and who to ring if something looks wrong. Tell whoever is covering that they should ring twice in a row if it is urgent, then put your phone on silent. If you are the sort who checks the yard camera every ten minutes, turn the notifications off for the afternoon.
Work with the Cumbrian seasons, not against them
A year on a fell farm is not flat, so do not plan as though it is. Write the shape of it into the calendar in January.
- Winter — shorter days, more indoor work: machinery, hedges, drainage, paperwork. Protect family evenings here; this is the season that offers them.
- Spring — lambing takes over, and pretending otherwise causes misery. Accept the disruption for its six weeks, and then deliberately book lighter days afterwards to recover.
- Summer — long light, clipping, hay and shows. Guard two or three evenings a week for the family rather than working until dusk every day.
- Autumn — tupping and gathering off the fell. Plan a genuine pause once the tups are out.
Keep the family inside the farm, not outside it
Some jobs are better done together, and gathering is the best of them — children on the quad, everyone on a gate, a flask in the truck. Where you can, turn work into company rather than something you disappear into. A set tea time, even if it is half past seven, gives the day an edge. Try one meal a week with no farm talk at all, and a Sunday walk round the fields with no tools in your hands.
The yard will never be tidy and the list will never be empty. What your family will remember is not the state of the sheds, but whether you were there at the table. Three jobs, a shared rota, and one protected afternoon a week is not a luxurious ideal — it is simply good stockmanship, applied to the people you farm for.
