Stacked ribbon banners with lettering and heart

Your mother has gone up to bed with the wireless still murmuring, so I'm writing this at the kitchen table where the range keeps the ink from freezing. Snow came off the Cheviot in the night and the lane is gone. The heifers are in the long barn, and the old grey ewe we nursed through November has finally given up. She went quietly, and the dog sat with her until I came back with the spade.

You asked in your last letter whether I ever thought about leaving the place when lamb prices fell through the floor. I did. I kept the train timetable folded in my coat for a week. Then your mother came up the top field in her wellingtons with a flask and a face like thunder. She'd walked three miles through the sleet because the car wouldn't start, and she said she'd brought tea because the men always forget to eat when they're sulking. I went back down that evening and told the lads there's no woman like the one I got. They laughed at me, and I meant every word, the way you mean things you haven't the nerve to say properly.

Write back soon and tell me the Leeds job is going well. Don't let them work you on Sundays for nothing.

She's just come down for her glasses and says I'm to stop writing about her in letters. I told her the whole county already knows, since I painted it on the side of the feed bin. She says it's the first sensible thing I've done all winter.