We'll miss this

 

The view from our front bedroom windows.....apologies for the poor light quality, it was taken with my phone around 8 am yesterday morning, when the sun was just coming up over the frosty fields.  We have similar views from the back bedroom window, albeit with the big cranes at the Hinkley power station in the distance, not that they're that noticeable really.  Sometimes there are sheep or cows with calves in the front field, the back field never has animals, they grow crops for animal feed in that field.  Moving to a bungalow near to facilities and civilisation means we most likely won't have this sort of view, which we both will miss a lot.  But we can't have everything!

I don't come from a farming background (neither does husband), although my family did live on a farm, with my paternal grandparents, for a few months during my childhood.  My father had just finished his term in the RAF and we lived with his parents whilst my parents were looking for a house.  My grandparents didn't own the farm in Hampshire, they just worked and lived there, in an old cottage.  I think my grandmother was the housekeeper and cook, grandfather helped with the farm work.  I don't have loads of memories of the farm, I was only about 7 at the time, but do have some snippets of memories.  One of my strongest memories is of my brother (1 year younger than me) and I peering nervously out of the door before we went out to play, to see where the geese where - the farm had a flock of around a dozen big white geese.  They weren't for food, they were pets.....well, strictly speaking, sort of guard dogs really - they were extremely noisy and used to chase anyone who appeared, honking loudly and flapping their wings.  They frightened the life out of my brother and me, although I don't suppose they were dangerous really!

I also clearly remember sitting on the back doorstep of the cottage with my grandmother, shelling peas - I think I ate far more than I put in the bowl, not that grandma minded, they grew tons of them, both for themselves and the farm owners.  Another strong memory is the day when part of the old plaster ceiling in the cottage kitchen collapsed - I wasn't in there at the time, only Grandma was and she luckily wasn't standing under where it collapsed.  However, she ran outside into the yard yelling for Grandpa and I was astonished to see her absolutely covered in white plaster dust from head to foot - she had black hair but because her hair and face were covered with the white dust, she looked like a ghost!

I didn't know much about farming until we moved down here to Somerset, having lived most of my life in or on the edge of towns, as did husband, other than those few months on grandparents' farm and a couple of years in RAF married quarters in Gibraltar.  Since we've lived here, both husband and I have become full of admiration for farmers and just how hard they work - they never stop or have weekends off and rarely even take holidays - they're working all the time, every day.  Livestock have to be fed, watered, checked over, cared for and rounded up and taken to market - every day, rain or shine.  Crops have to be sown, once the ground is prepared first, looked after and harvested - during the harvest season in late summer, the tractor drivers are working until the early hours of the morning to get the harvest in, they are governed by the weather, often having just a small margin of dry weather over a couple of days.  It's fascinating watching them get the crops harvested, transferred via a chute from one vehicle to another, the 2nd vehicle taking away the harvest to a storage barn.  It's like a giant production line, with 1 or 2 combines harvesting the crop, and another 2 tractors/trailers for each combine, collecting the crop - the tractors take it in turns to follow the combines around.  The farms around here share the work and vehicles, each farm being done in turn.  It takes hours and hours of constant hard work and they're always short staffed, hence why all the farms here help each other out.  They have a high turnover of young staff, I guess youngsters leave when they realise just how hard the work is and what long hours they have to work, and of course they're on minimum wage.  Unless they're born into a farming family, I think the workload will come as a bit of a shock.

Another thing we've noticed since we've lived here is just how fond the farmers are of their livestock, and what good care they take of them.  I know (without wishing to get all political or offend the eco warriors) it's often said, increasingly so nowadays, that farming harms the planet as well as the animals, but I can only speak as I find, and I'm gratified to see just how well the animals are taken care of.