Gaining The Upper Hand

Smallholders’ hands have to cope with wet, cold, mud and worse 365 days a year. Debbie Kingsley wonders how to keep busy working hands healthy.

- Debbie Kingsley

I still remember the shock in my early 20s when I shook the hand of my new neighbour. He was (and is) a farmer and had the roughest hands I’d ever grasped. It made no difference that he’d been standing over the sink, mitts slathered in Swarfega for five minutes. His palms and fingertips were dark, engrained with tractor oil, blackened from farriering and who knows what else. My urban naivety was astounding. I couldn’t believe that anyone could have hands like that in the 20th century. Thirty years on and I have my own callouses, skin never seemingly spotless, fingernails always a disgrace and my fingers catching on fabric because they are as close to coarse sandpaper as makes no difference.

Livestock chores mean that hands get covered in blue and purple spray — the ubiquitous antiseptic and antibiotic standbys — which doesn’t come off for days if left on too long before a first scrub, so you go to meet pals for a night out in your best togs wishing evening gloves were all the rage at the pub. Then there are the blisters and callouses from using tools and the roughness and peeling that comes from contact with birth fluids at lambing and calving. And for good measure there’s always the possibility of a black fingernail from dropping a gate post on your thumb.

Dr David de Berker, consultant dermatologist and honorary clinical senior lecturer, Bristol Dermatology Centre, says: