We made it quite a few years without Toby actually watching any TV, but this pandemic certainly has broken us. Every now and then we turn him loose with the Amazon Prime account on my computer and let him indulge.

But he’s not watching cartoons, or any other popular kids’ shows. No, this kid is addicted to bingeing an old BBC reality show about Scottish farmers. This Farming Life showed up in my suggestions after we watched the new edition of All Creatures Great and Small together (LOVED it!), so we gave it a go. He was instantly hooked, and I have to admit, I am too. It’s a good show. With GORGEOUS scenery of Scotland, tons of animals, and typically gruff personalities featured.

THE SCENERY! To die for.

It’s hilarious, as if Toby watches an episode without me, he’ll gleefully fill me on on the adventures of each farming family (each season follows four or five families through a season). He talks about the elderly couple Sybil and George like they’re old friends.

On rainy weekends, Toby and I will pop some popcorn and hit play on Farming Life, checking in as the lambs are evaluated for the meat market, the farmers navigate all kinds of mechanical and animal disasters, and yes, the sheep and cows breed and give birth. There’s a LOT of breeding and giving birth, which is par for the course with a reality show about farming.

As the series has continued, John and I have been sure various scenes would spark questions from Toby about the facts of life. I mean, in the second episode of season 1, one character grabs the balls of numerous sheep at a sale to evaluate their testicles as she needs a male sheep for her herd.

No questions from Toby.

Thankfully, the farmer’s fiancé joking about how a ram’s job is “a jump and three pumps” was delivered in an accent thick enough that I could make up an alternative.

We see multiple births of a wide variety of species. This is a kid who used to believe that all animals hatched from an egg. And he’s watching calves get forcibly yanked from cows a couple of times an episode. I mean, who doesn’t wonder about the logistics and reasoning of that?

Toby takes assisted calving in stride. No questions about the miracle of birth.

In the “on the next episode” of one we watched together, they previewed the one farmer collecting a bull’s semen and then inseminating his cows with AI. That night, my friends, I hit Amazon and ordered some “educational” books because I was sure, nay certain, that this subject matter would ignite the reproductive questions.

But I was saved by a further progression of subject matter in that next episode. Why was that farmer collecting his bull’s semen, you might ask? It’s because his prized bull BROKE HIS PENIS while servicing a cow. I mean, he was pretty graphic about what happened. It involved a hematoma. Even I was wincing. And he talked about how now the bull can’t “service the cows naturally” but that they collect semen for artificial insemination.

Toby certainly has discussed the broken penis idea in the time since we viewed that episode. We had to talk about if it happens to men, and how it might happen (I kept it general.).

BUT NOT ONE QUESTION about “insemination” or “servicing.” Apparently a broken penis is more fascinating than reproduction.

He watched the first episode of season 2 on his own the other day. As he was giving me the update on each farmer, he brought up testicles again. Apparently, one bull had a problem as one testicle swelled and the other atrophied. The bull “couldn’t go in the field with the cows anymore,” according to Toby. And yet he still hasn’t made the leap to asking about why, or what the bull might do in that field of cows.

Maybe he knows somehow already? Maybe he’s just avoiding asking? Could this warp his future romantic life?

I have no idea. All I know is there are two and a half seasons full of testicles and birth and mating left of Farming Life, and John and I have got the books ready. Wish us luck. I do know that if we use a euphemism, it won’t be the birds and the bees.