Shropshire Farming Talk: Always reminded of the 'ram lamb'

I'm not really keen as it means weeks of not driving, and physio and nasty exercises, but the alternative is worse.

So some time in the next couple of years I expect to be even more grumpy than I am normally!

However, I was telling my sister-in-law about it, and her daughter was there.

She asked me how I'd got the bad knee in the first place and, as always, the embarrassing answer is 'on the farm'.

It was a knee-to-head collision when a ram lamb who didn't want to go in the footbath turned himself around in the race and ran at me.

I expect he thought I'd get out of his way – not why I was there – so I didn't, and I expected him to stop before he hit me.

However, he didn't and his nasty hard little head collided with my knee.

I shouted 'ouch' or words to that effect, grabbed him, turned him round and made sure he did what he should have done in the first place.

I just rubbed my knee and turned to the next one.

It was a few years later before I began to feel my knee, and eventually thought about that ram lamb.

I've thought about him a lot over the subsequent 40 years and three knee operations but, at the time, I thought I was invincible and was going to live forever.

We all know that's not the case now, don't we!?!

So my niece – when she heard about my operation – said: "What happened to the ram lamb – did you eat it?"

We had long been considered weird by that sophisticated city dwelling side of our family, whom when they came to stay found our funny ways strange and even barbaric.

To raise a lamb, to struggle to keep it alive at birth, to care for it and spend hours keeping it healthy, look after it's feet and treat it if it got ill , and then to eat it?

We always had lamb in the freezer, and, for our children, it was the natural thing to do.

Why would you sell all your lambs and then go to the butcher and buy someone else's?

So that's what we did, and nobody refused to eat our lamb when they came to stay, which they did over and over again, even though they knew they'd probably seen it dancing in the field on their last visit.

I'm trying, and failing to make a joke here. But 'field to fork' is the thing these days, and getting children to realise that their Sunday roast started out as a cuddly fluffy little lamb is often a step too far, and they can suddenly say they're not going to eat it or, for that matter, 'something that comes out of something's bottom', like an egg!

Then vegetarianism or even veganism can rear their ugly heads. It's a serious problem though, which needs managing because it's the truth and normal. The circle of life!

And the ram lamb? No, we didn't eat him. He was a pedigree Charollais, bred to sell, and eventually went off to make someone's ewes very happy.

I don't begrudge him that but just wish he'd left my knee alone!

Rosemary Allen is a retired livestock farmer who lives near Ellesmere