Author: fatherandfarmer

I’ve never found New Years’s Eve a time for celebration. For some unknown reason I always harbour a melancholy feeling deep inside. A sadness for the year that’s gone. My Mother is the same; perhaps it’s a celtic thing. A darkness in our souls that rears it’s head in the depth of midwinter and blinds us to the truths that are all around.

But of all years, this is the one that I should be glad to see the back of. Shouldn’t it? You don’t need me to tell you that 2016 has hardly been a vintage year for the World, we all know what’s happened. Whatever your political persuasion, the likes of Brexit, terrorist attacks, Trump’s election, and the ongoing situation in Syria have far-reaching effects for all of us. And sadly, many people seem to have nailed colours so firmly to their own particular mast, that they seem incapable of being mature enough to agree to disagree on things, and respect the fact that others may have another opinion to themselves.

Though despite all this, reflecting on what 2016 means to me personally has been quite surprising. Early in the year we walked around the 700 year old wonder that is York Minster, and even four very young children were moved to awe inspired silence at the gothic beauty and splendour inside. A similar wondrous silence occurring just a month later as they witnessed for the first time lambs being born at a friends farm. I don’t think I’ll ever forget their collective joyful smiles at seeing the new life emerge before them.

I have lost one dog, and gained another. The first being stolen from our farm one night, and not being seen since. A low point for our family not just for this year, but for our lives. But our new Welsh Sheepdog Gus, could just turn out to be one of the high points. He is an unbridled joy to be around, and is already universally adored by the entire family. He has ‘it’. That special talent and instinct that some working dogs have deep within their bones, and it’s exciting to see what he can become with time.

I held in my hand a Roman coin that a man with a metal detector found on our farm from 68bc. 68BC! It was an old coin even before the Romans arrived on this island. As a hopeless history geek I can’t begin to tell you what a thrill this was.

We have harvested excellent crops of grass, maize, and spring barley, but very average crops of winter wheat and particularly winter barley. Though the weather, and therefore soil conditions when doing so were unusually good, making the whole job relatively stress free. And throughout 2016 the best flock of hens we’ve ever had have performed like champions, laying well above average egg numbers for their breed. Cattle prices have held up reasonably well, and we’ve begun to see some of the benefits of expanding numbers over the last few years. Our hard work is beginning to pay off in that department.

I’ve spent a joyous long weekend with old university friends and their families, and watched our children hare around together forming fledgling friendships that will perhaps last for even longer than ours have. The thought of this brings a tear to my eye. I have taught my two oldest Daughters to ride a bike. And in fact, I let go of them both for the first time on the same day. And what a day it was. I suspect that I will remember the feeling of pride and elation as they zoomed away on their own for the rest of my life.

We Christened our youngest Daughter in the Church where we got married, my Parents got married, and my Grandparents are buried, surrounded by our family and friends. And afterwards we drank beer, ate hog roast, and toasted the health of our beautiful baby girl together. A day of laughter and celebration, followed by a day of more than a few sore heads. Memories are made of such things.

I badly tore the ligaments in my right shoulder, which has made farming and parenting a challenge all year, though it’s finally on the mend. We spent a memorable week in North Devon, playing on the beach, splashing in the surf, and eating pizza and drinking wine in the dunes (Us, not the kids. They don’t eat pizza.) And met in person the first of several twitter friends. Shout out to @newlandfarm and family who welcomed us to their farm in deepest, darkest Exmoor and even provided our Girls with a pony to ride. They’re still talking about it now. The kindness of social media friends never fails to astound me.

I have ran two half-marathons, and loved *almost* every second of both. Taking part in such large events surrounded by similarly minded and positive people was an incredible experience, and I’m proud of the money that I raised for Save the Children. I hope I enjoy the marathon that I’m training for in April as much. Though at the moment, after a week of Christmas excess, the thought of it makes me die a little inside. I’ve also been interviewed and appeared on my new favourite podcast (Shark Farmer Podcast, hosted by the one and only Rob Sharkey – check it out on iTunes) and made many new friends from that experience in the good ol’ US of A.

I stood with my one great love in the pouring rain at the Etihad stadium in Manchester, and watched my other great love perform for two and a half hours the songs that are the soundtrack to my life. My Wife, and Bruce Springsteen; I can’t separate the two. We danced together to Dancing in the Dark, just as we did at our wedding, and I’ll never forget that moment if I live to be 100. You can’t start a fire without a spark, folks.

I watched England and Sri Lanka play cricket at Lord’s with my Brother in Law, with Her Majesty The Queen flying overhead in a Chinook helicopter. After the match we met my Sister at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, off Fleet Street. The former watering hole of such luminaries as Christopher Wren and Charles Dickens. I could’ve happily stayed there with two of my favourite people in the World drinking Guinness and wallowing in the history of the place for days.

I’ve attended two good friend’s weddings and celebrated their love and marriage with the best of them on the day. At the first of which, I got to see my beautiful Wife and Daughters as bridesmaids. We’ll be looking at the photos and reminiscing about that day for the rest of our lives together. I’ve also seen our 3rd Daughter, who turned 3 in August, both terrorise us and delight us at the same time throughout the year. We all know that 3 year olds are assholes, but my goodness she’s a character with it. I find I can forgive anyone almost anything, if they have a wicked laugh, twinkly eyes and an invariably grubby face.

I have started this blog! Eventually. I’ve been wanting to do it for a few years, but wary of criticism I haven’t had the nerve. I’ll keep working at improving it, and I’m conscious that I’ve a way to go, but here it is, grammatical errors and all. And you know what? I’ve bloody loved it. And I’ve even been offered some paid writing jobs for next year on the back of it, which is a bit of a head-kicker for me and far more than I ever expected. It’s also partly got me into a new project, which I’m tremendously excited about. You never know what’s around the corner if you’re willing to give new things a go eh?

And lastly, I’ve said Goodbye to a few much-loved family members. Two weeks before Christmas, both my Wife’s Grandmother, and Grandfather (on different sides of her family) went on their merry ways. They both lived the exact lives they wanted to live, worked hard, raised families and had no regrets, but they’ll be very sadly missed by all of us. Yesterday I read the eulogy and carried the coffin at her Grandfather’s funeral, and I can honestly say that he was one of the finest men i’ve ever known. I will miss him immensely. So it’s been a very sorrowful end to 2016 here.

So there you go/ dyna ti. In 2016 I have loved, laughed, lost, and above all, lived. Tomorrow night my Wife and I are staying in together at home on our family farm, and when the animals are all fed, and our Children are tucked up in bed asleep, we plan to drink a bottle of pink champagne that we’ve been saving, and count our numerous blessings. Life is wonderful, and there’s so much to look forward to in 2017.

A very happy new year to each and every one of you.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (1983, Chester Odeon to be precise) my Mum took me to see Return of the Jedi and a life long love affair was born. It captured my imagination in a way that nothing previously had, and paved the way for a childhood spent bombing around our house, garden and farm with my prized toy Millennium Falcon pretending to be Han Solo.

So imagine my delight when my 6 year old Daughter Gwen arrived home from school one memorable day a few months back and asked me the question that every nerdy Dad wants to hear –  ‘Daddy, what’s StarWars?’

Yes, suddenly, completely out of the blue, Frozen is yesterday’s news. StarWars is well and truly where it’s at now.  And despite my long held love for the original trilogy, I haven’t pushed her into it at all, she’s discovered it for herself. According to Gwen, her ‘boyfriends’ (She has 6 of them, and yes you’re bloody right I worry) are crazy about it and talk of little else in the playground, and especially the new film, The Force Awakens.

In the latest incarnation of the movies, the lead role is a teenage girl – Rey, and it’s her who Gwen wants to be. So much so that she excitedly asked for a Rey outfit and a toy blue lightsaber for her birthday. So far, so completely 6 year old normal.

And then, the almost inevitable happened. She was told by someone at school that ‘STARWARS IS FOR BOYS.’ (Coincidently now she only has 5 boyfriends. HA!) But where does this come from? Parents? Grandparents? Retailers? The ridiculously outdated pink for girls/ blue for boys indoctrination that we’ve all been subjected to from birth?

A quick look at major toy store websites shows that they generally no longer separate toys by gender, so attitudes are beginning to change, if painfully slowly. Though on a recent, once in a blue moon visit to a local supermarket, I found myself having to shield my eyes from the wall of garish, bright pink crap at one end of the toy aisle, whilst at the opposite end all the cool action, adventure and building toys abided. The obvious message there being that little girls should be demure and pretty princesses, whilst little boys should be boisterous go-getters.

And it isn’t just toys either. I trawled for hours online in vain to find a t-shirt with Rey on it for Gwen’s birthday. There were thousands of cool ones available with male StarWars characters on, but the only ones I could find of Rey were pink (and cut for Girls; but that’s a whole other blog post). I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t recall seeing Rey wearing pink when she was fighting against Kylo Ren and the galactic empire in The Force Awakens.

What does it matter what a child plays with or wears? Why have we brought gender into children’s play for so long? One of my 5 year old Godson’s favourite things is his toy kitchen, but he’s also an absolute whizz at building technic Lego.  Gwen’s 4 year old Sister Ffion is rarely seen without her tiara in her hair and fairy wand in her hand (even if she’s climbing a tree, or helping to feed a baby calf at the time). As long as their imaginations are fired, and they’re learning that’s ALL that matters.

Gwen and I have a Daddy/ Daughter dinner and movie date planned in December to see the new StarWars movie – Rogue One. Another female lead, and a new hero. And I can’t wait.

In her 6 years on this planet my funny, caring and kickass daughter has wanted at various times to be a doctor, farmer, vet, taxi driver, and firefighter. And now? Now she wants to be a Jedi. And you know what, that’s absolutely fine with me.

Because I’ll tell you what, the force is strong in my baby Girl.

There are many in this heady and excitable post-EU referendum Britain of ours that have it that if you don’t subscribe to the Daily Mail, heartily sing along to God Save the Queen at every chance you get, and have a picture of Boris or Farage as your screen saver, that you’re an elitist unpatriotic liberal un-British Europhile.

Well I don’t do any of those things. I don’t own a barbour jacket either. I’ve never watched Bake Off or Strictly Come Dancing. Neither do I eat a roast dinner every Sunday, and I try to talk about other things than the weather from time to time.

However, I do participate wholeheartedly (through my children) in what I consider to be perhaps the most quintessentially British thing of all. The annual school or playgroup Christmas nativity. And what an unadulterated delight it invariably is. All over the country right now, teachers and parents are giving up their spare time to coax very young, and sometimes reluctant, children into learning the words to Away in a Manger, Little Donkey and We Three Kings so they can perform them in front of an audience of adoring Mums, Dads, Grandparents and extended family.

And it’s the absolute chaotic randomness of it all that makes it so wonderfully special. Yes, there’s the classic nativity story itself, but when you’ve got a lot of children to make up parts for you also have to improvise a few supporting characters too. They can’t all be Mary, Joseph or an Angel. Some of them have to be a space alien, lobster, tree, or in the case of our 3 year old last week – a penguin. But it’s the stereotypes that I appreciate the most. The little characters who grace and light up with their presence every Nativity across the land.

There’s the one who freezes and forgets their line, and the one who rises to the occasion like a pro. There’s the one that falls off the stage (always my favourite part), and the one who’s concentrating so hard that you swear they’ll burst a blood vessel. There’s the one that smiles and waves to their Mum constantly, and the one that has a face like a smacked arse throughout. And all draped in tea towels, paper crowns, tinsel halos and dressing gowns (theres a poem there somewhere), with a plastic dolly in a manger as a centre piece. Or alternatively if anyone has a handy newborn, as we did last year, they’re roped in to play the baby Jesus. I’m not sure that JC shat himself as he was being presented with the gold, frankincense and myrrh like our Branwen did though.

But it’s not just the children. All adult life is represented too. There’s the harassed head teacher, or dotty vicar with hearing aid and glasses introducing the show, and the invariably older lady enthusiastically bashing out the music on the ever so slightly out of tune piano. There’s the Mum who got there two hours before the start to triumphantly bag a seat in the front and centre, and the Dad in a flash suit with one eye on the show and the other checking his emails. There’s the one with the really expensive camera with a 5ft long lens constantly snapping away throughout, and the one who gets summoned by a teacher to comfort their upset child backstage and has to commando roll around the front so as not to block anyone else’s view.

There’s the first-time parents. It’s all new to them. They hold hands and smile at each other whenever their child is involved, and the grizzled veterans with 3 or 4 kids, a thousand-yard stare and a much more laissez faire attitude to the whole thing. There’s the cheerful couple with the matching Christmas jumpers, and the parents that you just know will go home and critically appraise the whole bloody thing like they’d just been watching a performance of Othello by the RSC at The Globe. And in our case, there’s the farmers at the back, they’ve rushed straight there from milking, arriving half way through the performance and smelling mightily of cow shit.

But they’ve all made the effort and got there. And that’s the thing. In an age where Christmas has been thoroughly commercialised and we’re bombarded with adverts trying to sell us plastic crap that we don’t need from late October, the wonderfully shambolic Great British Nativity play remains the one thing that tells us what it’s all about. What Christmas really means, and why we celebrate it. It brings people together in a way that perhaps nothing else can at the moment and unites communities, however fleetingly, with a shared pride and warm glow inside.

So here’s to us all. To the children. To the Parents. To the Teachers. And everyone else who contributes to the glorious, chaotic, wonderful, random, shambolic, Great British Nativity Play. After all, it’s what Christmas is all about..

This is a difficult one for me as I’m going to write about something that I’m not really sure I’m qualified for, and I desperately want to do it justice. I recently noticed a campaign on twitter highlighting mental health in the agricultural industry ( #FarmerMentalHealth ) And yes, I’ve lived my whole life within the farming community, but no I’ve never been affected by mental health issues. Down, stressed, worried, anxious, and occasionally overwhelmed, yes. But depressed, no.  There but by the grace of God go I, to misquote one W. Shakespeare. Because it’s a very real issue affecting many of us in agriculture, and I’ve seen it in family members, friends and neighbours.

In the US, farmer suicides number just under twice that of the general population. In the UK, a farmer a week commits suicide. In China, farmers are killing themselves daily to protest the government taking over prime agricultural land for urbanisation. In France a farmer dies by suicide every two days. Australia reports one farmer suicide every four days. India yearly reports more than 17627 farmer suicides (Newsweek 2014).

These are sobering statistics. But why is this happening? What’s making people so desperate that they’re taking their own lives?. Farming as an industry can be tough. Terribly so at times. We work extremely long hours, and often in isolation. If it wasn’t for my family, I could easily go for days without seeing another human soul. Livestock need feeding every single day of the year, and if you’re ill? Tough, they still need feeding. Got a bad back/ knees/ hips from heavy manual work and years of getting on and off a tractor? Tough, it still needs doing. These things can drag you down. Nothing does like chronic physical pain. Or perhaps it’s the financial pressure. An overdraft stretched to breaking point has an awful habit of giving you sleepless nights, further contributing to physical exhaustion. Prices are low in Agriculture worldwide at the moment, and many of my neighbours are struggling, or have left the industry for good in the last few years. Unable to put themselves, or their families through it anymore.

There’s the constant media criticism of us as an industry too. There are newspaper columnists and ‘environmentalists’ who make a very good living out of it,  and unfortunately, they have a large audience. It can be incredibly frustrating to repeatedly see damaging headlines and articles condemning our practices, and us as a community. Recent stories blaming upland sheep farmers for increased levels of flooding here in the U.K. are a prime example of this. There’s the burden of overzealous officialdom and red tape. Many older farmers can find this simply overwhelming. Think about how much the World’s changed in just the last 5 or 6 years. Everything’s online. If you don’t have a younger family member or friend available to help you, that must be quite terrifying.

There’s the stigma, and associated stereotypes of depression. Farming is a small community where everyone knows each other. No one wants a neighbour saying ‘Did you hear about so & so? Lost his/her marbles..’ The embarrassment at the perceived ‘weakness’ is enough to stop many from reaching out and asking for help. Many just put their heads down and work longer and longer hours to try to get through it, and avoid dealing with people.

But even if none of these things apply, perhaps you just simply have no one else to talk to. Or maybe you do, but you find that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t. It’s a British thing isn’t it? Stiff upper lip and all that. Grin and bear it, old chap. Put on a brave face. Bollocks. For years, until I met my wife, I fell into this category. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the words to express how I was feeling. It became a real issue for me. We don’t in my celtic family y’see? We just bottle up all our worries and every day concerns for months until we explode. But my wife, as anyone who’s met her will testify, is a ‘talker’. She communicates. It’s her thing. Being silent in her presence frankly just isn’t an option. And God bless her for it, because being able to talk with her about my everyday stresses and concerns has helped me to be able to better find perspective, and to become a better man for it.

But not everyone’s as lucky as I am. There’s a side of farming that people really don’t see, where men, women and families are struggling on a daily basis, and are falling through the cracks and need help. And it’s up to us all to look out for the signs of this in our neighbours, friends and family members, because no one’s immune to this illness. The first step is to simply listen to a person’s problems. Talking nearly always helps. There are practical things you can do such as making sure the person is eating well and not drinking too much alcohol. And if these simple things don’t work, try to get them to seek help through their Doctor. There are some wonderful organisations out there such as:

• Papyrus, the national charity for the prevention of young suicide.
• The Farming Community Network, which answers phone calls in person between 7am & 11pm
• Young Minds, the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people.
• The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Fund (R.A.B.I), which helps farmers and farmworkers of any age and has a contact number staffed during office hours.
• The Samaritans, who have a free helpline available round the clock on 116123.
• Farming Comunity Network (FCN) who give practical & pastoral support to the farming community. Available on 03000 111 999 from 7am – 11pm.
• NFYFC are running a national campaign #RuralPlus to highlight the issue in younger members of the farming community. 
• The Addington Fund. A farming charity dedicated to supporting Britain’s viable farming businesses & their families in times of crisis. addingtonfund.org.uk

And there are many more. Social media can also help. It’s an easy way to connect with like-minded people, without having to physically get off the farm. Sometimes talking to a friend, or even a stranger, on one of the various networks or platforms rather than one who knows you and your family in the ‘real world’, can be easier.

Nobody looks after their own like the agricultural community. In times of trouble, we circle the wagons and help each other. Always have, and always will. And these are certainly troubled times that we’re living in. So let’s do that. Let’s look out for the signs and help each other, because none of us really knows the burdens that our fellow farmers are bearing behind closed farmhouse doors.

You can’t be cool as a Dad. You just can’t. You check any coolness that you may once upon a time have had in at the maternity ward when you leave to take your newborn home for the first time. You grin like an idiot as you carry the surprisingly heavy baby in her shiny new car seat that’s built like a small tank through the hospital, smiling at passers by – ‘Yes, she’s mine, I fathered her’ you think, secure and happy in your absurd posturing  masculinity.

But despite technically becoming a Father the moment that your first child is born, which in my case was just over 6 years ago now, when do you actually become a ‘DAD’? Because, and it’s taken me completely by surprise, I am emphatically becoming one right now. My Wife has noticed it, and takes great pleasure in pointing it out, and I am suddenly hyper-aware of it.

I have begun, with comical regularity, to unconsciously repeat myself. Only last week as we drove past a village pub not so far from here, I commented ‘we should go there one night.’ Apparently I have said this the last 4 times we’ve gone past said pub. I have no memory at all of this.

I have a chair. A CHAIR! The most Daddish thing of all time. It’s in our living room and the kids have strict instructions not to jump up and down on it. (The little shitbags do anyway of course, but not when I’m around. I conducted a full interrogation recently when I found biscuit crumbs on it). I never had any kind of chair strategy I should point out; not once when my Wife was pregnant with our first child did I think ‘Yes! Now I’ll get my own chair’, it just somehow inexplicably happened.

Next to DAD’S CHAIR on a given night, might be a pair of well worn and comfortable suede leather moccasin-style slippers that I just happen to own and love these days. (Oh that feeling of kicking off your boots after a long day and putting them on!) I had no slipper game at all until recently. I had nothing against them, they just weren’t my bag. They were for old fellas. DADS. I don’t even know where these slippers came from, they just magically appeared one day. And I love them as much as my Children. Maybe more.

I laugh at my own crap jokes. Manically. Hysterically. Both when I post them on social media, and in real life when i say them out loud. I vividly remember my Dad doing this on a regular basis. Splitting his sides as my sister and I groaned at another weak effort. Now I’m doing it too. WTF is happening to me?

I have a got a ‘Dad voice’. A DAD VOICE! It actually changes on it’s own when I’m telling the kids off for some minor infraction of the house rules. It drops several octaves until I sound like a Welsh version of Barry White. And I address them with both their first and middle names when I do this too. Who does this? DADS, that’s who.

I dance like an absolute Dickhead. Vigorously and often. But to be fair, I’ve always done this. It’s just that becoming a DAD has completely legitimised it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the very best things about being a DAD.

I’ve never been particularly competitive. I’ve always been a bit laid back to get worked up about these things. Until now. At my eldest’s first sports day last Summer I was momentarily tempted to take out the 4 year old who was beating her by a yard in the egg and spoon race. I compromised by shouting encouragement at my Daughter so loudly that I distracted her and she dropped the bloody egg and came in 3rd. I didn’t speak to her for a week. (I’m joking obvs. It was only two days).

But even after all these giveaways, it’s the things I’ve started to regularly say that are the real killer. The DAD phrases and pithy soundbites that my Dad before me used, and his Dad before him too.  Handed down from Father to Son through the generations and mists of time like sacred relics, and now in 2016, it’s my turn. It’s. My. Turn.

‘Because I said so’ was the first of course. It just came out of my mouth one day a few years back to my great shock, when my Daughter had asked why she had to put her toys away. That’ll teach her eh?.  I say ‘Less talking, more eating’ to them all as they jabber away like monkeys at dinner time. On an almost daily basis I rampage around the house turning down radiators, switching off lights, and closing doors whilst yelling ‘Were you Kids born in a barn?’, and I give advice in the form of specialist Dad idioms like ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees’. Jesus wept.

I haven’t used my own Dad’s personal and oft-repeated favourite ‘This isn’t a holiday camp y’know’ yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Because this is the frightening thing of course. I’m not just turning into A DAD, i’m turning into MY DAD. And not only in character either; I’m starting for the first time to look like him. I’ve always been more like my Mum’s side of the family. Fair hair and blue eyes. But now at the age of 38 and rapidly going grey, I’m physically starting to morph into him. I can tell you that it’s quite the shock at 3 in the morning when half asleep and semi-naked you stumble into the bathroom and see your Dad looking at you in the bloody mirror.

But you know what? Despite all these things; the repeating myself, the jokes, the dancing, the voice, the competitiveness, the sayings, all that stuff – It’s all good. I’m at peace with it. I’m fine. Because being a Father (and now a DAD too) is without a shadow of a doubt the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Nothing in my life has ever come close to the unbridled happiness it brings me on a daily basis.

Except for maybe sitting in my own chair after a long day on the farm, with my slippers on.

http://www.farmlandmagazine.com/2016/11/04/the-shed-space-shuffle-by-will-evans/

In 1819, John Keats wrote the poem ‘To Autumn’, where he described it as ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.’ And although I’m certain that this wonderfully evocative description will never be bettered, for myself and most of my fellow farmers, this time of year is anything but mellow. Because the Autumn is sowing season.

And for me, that means ploughing. Lots of ploughing. Turning over the earth to make a seedbed for next year’s crops. Driving up and down large flat fields on your own for days on end until you turn into a slightly less manic version of Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver (‘You talkin’ to me?) might not float a lot of people’s boats, but I’ve always found it evocative, comforting, and yes, kind of romantic. Let me try to explain..

On many days from mid September to the end of October I kiss my Wife and Daughters goodbye and leave the farm in the misty early morning, lunch box and flask of strong coffee in my hand, and I’m in the fields ploughing as the Sun rises in the East, and I’m still there as it sets in the West. In the hours in-between, with mostly only seagulls & the odd hare for company, there’s plenty of time to think. To contemplate.

I often turn up Horseshoes, and sometimes old clay beer bottles. Physical connections to the generations of ploughmen who’ve come before me. The last people to touch these things were the village smithy who shoed the Shire Horse or Clydesdale, or the farmer who carelessly tossed the bottle away after his thirst was quenched. Earlier this year, a man with a metal detector found a Roman silver denarius from 68bc here. I ploughed that field just last week. Has it been worked for over two millennia?

I think about these men as I drive. I think of my 94 year old Grandfather who started ploughing as a 15 year old with a horse before the War. He often tells me that back then he’d do an acre a day – hard physical work tramping through the clay in all weathers, and then marvels when I tell him that now I do 30+ without breaking a sweat from my air-conditioned cab.

As a boy in the early 1930’s he and his best mate knew that his hard of hearing neighbour had trained his horse to stop on his whistle whilst ploughing. They’d hide in the hedge and give the same whistle so that the horse would stop suddenly half way up the field, causing a kink in the previously arrow straight furrow and laugh uproariously between themselves when the confused neighbour turned the air blue. I think about this, and smile.

During my own childhood I’d sit on the tractor with my Dad for hours whilst he ploughed with our Massey Ferguson 290. Eventually I’d fall asleep on his coat behind the seat. If I close my eyes I can still smell it. I can hear the perkins diesel engine. I can feel the vibrations underneath my small body. Happy & content just to be in the presence of my hero.

This year it’s my 3 year old Daughter’s turn to ride on the tractor with me whilst I plough.  As I drive I look at her beside me, resplendent in her shiny wellies and overalls, her beautiful tiny button nose wrinkled in thought as she pauses before asking me her 347th question of the day, and I feel comforted. This has happened before, over countless generations, and it will happen again.

My family have always tilled the earth, since time immemorial. It’s been fertilised with our blood, our sweat, and yes, sometimes our tears too. There’s a connection between us, and a fierce determination to leave this land in better condition for the next generation to work on. If you ever get the chance, get down on your hands and knees and smell freshly ploughed earth. I’m not literate enough to describe it well, but to me it smells of both the past and the future yet to be written.

Technology, is moving rapidly in Agriculture. It has to, we’re going to have to feed a hell of a lot of people over the coming years, and with far less resources too. We’re going to see innovation and advances that our forefathers could only have dreamed of. Driverless Tractors aren’t far away. We’re going to have to look at less tillage to help to preserve the carbon in the soil, and reduce erosion. There’s going to be big changes on our own farm, and across the industry. I know this, and accept that that’s the way it has to be.

But despite all this, I hope that the simple pleasure of turning up lucky horseshoes continues. And I pray with all my overly-emotional celtic heart, that the romance remains..

I’m going to briefly introduce myself here, as it feels rude not to do so. My name’s Will, i’m 38, and i’m a Farmer, Husband, and Father of 4 little Girls currently aged between almost 1 and just 6.

I’ve thought about starting a blog for a while now. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s a particularly boring form of mid-life crisis. Some men buy a Harley, some run off with  their 19 year old Secretary, and some start a blog. Well i don’t have a motorcycle licence, i’m crazy in love with my Wife, and well, i’ve always fancied writing something.

I’ll be honest with you. I’m nervous about this. VERY nervous. It feels like i’m putting myself out there. Leaping outside of my comfort zone. Exposing myself, if you will.

Well anyway, i’m going for it, and here it is.

Mostly i’ll be writing about my life on our Family’s farm, the every day adventures of raising 4 little Girls here, and the life lessons i’m learning along the way. I may also throw in an occasional post on running, history, or my undying love for Bruce Springsteen. I haven’t decided yet. Which in an odd way, is kind of exciting for me.

Throughout my life i’ve generally  been a slow starter, though i like to think i usually get there in the end. So i hope to greatly improve these blog posts as i go along. Please bear with me in the meantime, and maybe, just maybe,  i can make you laugh a little along the way..

Will