Farmer Bea

Visitor: "Your sheep are all stood along the wall. Every one of them, facing the same way." Farmer: "Rain's coming from the west. They've put their backs to it. Half an hour, I'd say." Visitor: "The forecast says dry till tonight." Farmer: "The forecast's in Exeter. The sheep are here." Visitor: "You trust them over the Met Office?" Farmer: "I trust them over my own knees. They came down off the top about two o'clock yesterday. The weather warning came through on my phone at five. Same storm. Three hours of notice, free, and nobody had to update the app." Visitor: "How do they know?" Farmer: "Pressure drops before the weather does. They feel it. The wind shifts a quarter and the whole flock turns like a weathervane that eats. A cow'll do the same. Backs to the weather, heads down, bunched into the hedge before you've felt a drop." Visitor: "I thought cows lying down meant rain." Farmer: "Cows lying down means cows are lying down. They do it fourteen hours a day. If that meant rain we'd have drowned. The tell's the wall, and the bunching, and the one old ewe who starts walking home when nothing's happened yet." Visitor: "Do they ever get it wrong?" Farmer: "They got the storm in October 1987 right. The Met Office famously didn't. My dad had the cattle in the low field by dinnertime. He never explained how, because he didn't need to. He'd watched them." Visitor: "Could you not just look at the sky?" Farmer: "I do. Then I look at what the sky's looking at. The sheep have been standing on this hill since before there were satellites, and every one that read the weather wrong got eaten or blown away. What's left is the ones that didn't. Natural selection's a decent forecaster." [The first drops arrived on the visitor's glasses. The sheep had not moved. They'd already finished.]