This is day 4 of our 7-day series on the farm characters. So far we have met the cow that always seems to know when something is happening, the escape artist who has never been entirely convinced that fences are a permanent arrangement, and the boss cow who appears to have quietly appointed herself in charge. Today we meet a different sort of character altogether. She is not necessarily the biggest cow in the herd, the most assertive or even the most noticeable. She simply has an extraordinary talent for becoming involved whenever something is happening that would probably be easier without her. She is the troublemaker.
Somehow, she is always involved
Every farmer knows the feeling. Something has happened and nobody is quite sure how. A gate is open, something has been knocked over, a group of cows has ended up somewhere unexpected or an otherwise straightforward job has suddenly become considerably more complicated. You start working backwards, trying to work out what happened, and eventually your attention turns towards the cows. Somewhere among them is the one who seems to have an established history of being involved in situations like this.
That does not mean she is necessarily responsible. In fact, she may be completely innocent on the particular occasion in question. The troublemaker's reputation often gets ahead of the evidence. She has simply been involved in enough previous incidents that when something unexplained happens, she becomes an obvious suspect. It is less a scientific investigation and more a case of knowing your animals well enough to have a pretty good idea of who might be capable of turning an ordinary morning into a story.
It is rarely deliberate
It is tempting to imagine that the troublemaker is deliberately looking for ways to create chaos, particularly when she has developed a long history of unexpected appearances and minor dramas. Cows, however, are not sitting around thinking about how they might inconvenience the farmer. They respond to their surroundings, investigate things that interest them and behave as individuals within their environment.
That is what makes this particular character so entertaining. She does not have to be deliberately mischievous. She might simply be more inclined to investigate something, move into a space where she should not be or take advantage of an opportunity that happens to present itself. From the farmer's point of view, the intention is largely irrelevant. The result is that she has once again managed to become part of something that was never supposed to involve her.
The little incidents add up
The reputation of a farm troublemaker is rarely built around one enormous event. It is usually the accumulation of dozens of little incidents that makes everyone recognise her character. She may have a habit of pushing her way into places where she does not belong, becoming interested in objects that have been left nearby or turning up in the middle of a job that requires a little peace and quiet.
Individually, these things are hardly worth remembering. Put them together over several seasons, however, and a pattern begins to emerge. People start to recognise her habits, and eventually the stories become part of how she is known. Someone might mention her number and immediately add a comment about something she did years earlier. Another person will remember a different incident. Before long, the cow has acquired a reputation that is considerably larger than any single event that created it.
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She has impeccable timing
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the troublemaker is her timing. There are moments when you can spend hours organising a job, getting everything ready and making sure there is enough time to finish it properly, only for one particular cow to decide that the exact area you are working in is where she would now like to be.
You can be repairing something and find yourself being watched at close range. You can be moving equipment and suddenly have a cow wandering into the middle of the operation. You can be trying to get a group of animals moving in one direction while she decides that another direction looks considerably more interesting. None of it is personal, of course, but when you are trying to get something finished, it can certainly feel that way.
The farmer may have somewhere else to be, another job waiting and a schedule that is already slipping. The cow has no knowledge of any of this. She is simply going about her day, apparently unaware that she has just added another fifteen minutes to someone else's.
Farmers learn their characters
One of the interesting things about spending years with the same herd is that farmers develop a detailed understanding of individual animals without necessarily setting out to do so. You learn their numbers, recognise their faces and become familiar with the small differences that make one cow stand out from another.
Some of that knowledge is practical and important. Some of it is simply familiarity. You know which cow tends to appear at a particular gate, which one is more likely to move away when approached and which one has a history of making an ordinary task more interesting than it needs to be.
The troublemaker becomes part of that mental catalogue. You do not necessarily need to see her number before recognising her. Sometimes you know who she is simply because she is doing exactly what you expected her to do.
The stories follow them
Farm characters also have a habit of becoming part of the conversations that happen around a farm. Someone who has only recently started working there may hear about a particular cow before they have even met her properly. They might be told about the cow who is always getting herself into trouble, only to discover that the description was not exaggerated at all.
As time goes on, new stories get added to the old ones. The troublemaker's reputation becomes something shared rather than belonging to one person. Different people remember different incidents, and occasionally the details become a little more entertaining each time the story is told. That is simply how farm stories work. The facts may remain somewhere underneath, but the telling gets better with age.
What matters is that everyone knows the character.
Not all trouble is bad
There is also something to be said for the fact that the troublemaker can bring a little personality to everyday farm life. Nobody wants genuine problems, particularly when they involve livestock, machinery or time that is already in short supply. But the small incidents that become stories are often part of what makes farming memorable.
The cow that was frustrating at eight in the morning can be the cow everyone laughs about over a cup of tea later in the day. The animal that managed to turn a simple job into an unexpected exercise becomes the one people remember years afterwards. What was irritating in the moment can become part of the farm's history once enough time has passed.
That is the strange thing about farm characters. You do not necessarily appreciate their particular talents while they are demonstrating them, but you often miss the stories they created once they are no longer around.
Every farm has a troublemaker
The troublemaker will be different on every farm. One might be fascinated by gates and openings, another might constantly find herself somewhere inconvenient, while another simply seems to have an uncanny ability to arrive whenever something is already going slightly wrong. There is no standard description, and that is exactly why the character is so recognisable.
Farmers deal with plenty of things that are outside their control. Weather changes, machinery fails, plans get altered and jobs take longer than expected. Then there are the animals, which have their own priorities and their own ways of responding to the world around them. Most of the time, everyone gets on with it. Every now and then, one particular cow manages to add her own contribution.
She may not be trying to cause trouble. She may not even realise that anything has gone wrong. From her perspective, she is simply being a cow. From the farmer's perspective, she has once again managed to become part of the day's entertainment.
The characters make the farm
It is easy to concentrate on the measurable side of dairy farming because there is so much information available to measure. Production, costs, pasture, animal records, machinery use and farm performance all have their place. But there is another side to farming that does not fit neatly into a spreadsheet.
It is the collection of little observations that builds up over time. It is knowing which cow is which, remembering the animals that once belonged to the herd and being able to tell a story about something that happened years ago because a particular cow was involved.
The troublemaker becomes memorable for exactly that reason. She may never have done anything particularly remarkable in the grand scheme of dairy farming, but she has managed to leave her mark on the people who knew her.
And perhaps that is what makes these farm characters worth celebrating. They are part of the everyday personality of a farm, adding the occasional surprise, frustration and, eventually, a good story to a life that already has plenty happening.
Tomorrow we meet the cow nobody can figure out, the individual that seems to ignore every attempt to put her neatly into a category and leaves even the people who know the herd best wondering what she will do next. See you tomorrow for day 5 of the farm characters.