The Flesh House

No matter how many books you might read about a topic, nothing can ever prepare you for hands on experience. I learnt this when I produced my son. I had a refresher course in this lesson with our lambing. The books are all full of neat diagrams of malpresentations and prolapsed uteruses. They show you how to tube a lamb to ensure that initially the colostrum and then the milk reach the lambs’ stomachs and did not go down their air passages. They show pictures of all kind of horrible things that go wrong with lambs – watery mouth, scouring, joint disease and so on. But they gloss over what to me was possibly the most challenging. None of the books tell you what to do with a dead lamb. They all say just dispose of it. Err right, I know I have to dispose of it, but how? And we had seven of these situations.
As ever, our dear neighbours came to the rescue. They showed me where dead lambs need to go and all dead farm animals for that matter. Thus this blog is dedicated to those kind wonderful people at the Hunt who do a job most foul and are still kind, considerate and caring.
You have to put the dead lamb in a black bag and the sooner you get it to the Hunt the better for obvious reasons, especially when we lambed late and the weather had already warmed up considerably. Leave a dead lamb in its bag for a couple of days and you will know all about it. The drive to the Hunt is a classic countryside meander through pretty villages along leafy B-roads. Nothing untoward except just before the left hand turn into the Hunt driveway, I pull over. I apply a finger-full of Vicks Vapour Rub to my top lip and inhale deeply, allowing the pungent smell of camphor to clog my senses. The courtyard is nothing out of the ordinary, until you get out of the car and the smell hits you, even over the camphor sludge just under your nose. I once read an article written by someone who worked for the Red Cross during the Second World War. His job was to clean up and he said: “If the world’s decision makers could experience that smell of death, there would be no more wars.” It is an indescribable smell but so cloying , it gets into your clothes, your hair, so that long after your escape, you can still smell it.
Now, once in the courtyard and having met the smell, you then still have to dispose of your black bag. Invariably there is no one around who might help – they are busy sorting out untold ghastly things so you have to deal with this one your own – which means opening the door of the flesh house. This is the room where everything is brought and you have to be brave to open that door. I watch shoppers in the meat section of Waitrose and its hits home just how these people have no idea about how meat gets onto those fridge shelves and what can go wrong in the process. Yes, they will say, we all know about abattoirs – its all very quick and efficient. I agree but at least the smell there is fresh and the flesh is healthy. But what about that sheep that keels over in the fields and lies there for a few days before the farmer locates it and brings it to the Hunt for disposal? Nothing quick and efficient about that except for the rigor mortis and the maggots. So I brace myself and I open the door. I place my black bag on the floor close to my feet and try not to look around the room, try not to inhale. The scene caught in my peripheral vision defies description. I focus on the black bag, say goodbye to a lamb who didn’t make and then I back the hell out of there, ensuring that the door is properly latched closed.
I drive away more affected than I care to acknowledge, back to the farm and look forward to seeing the healthy lambs bouncing around the fields, confirmation of the circle of life. The smell follows me. Later I cook supper and find I cannot face what I usually eat - a toasted cheese sandwich does just fine.