Sunday, October 12, 2008

Down on the Farm

My paternal grand parents were farmers. I'm quite proud about this as it gives me roots in a bucolic world where TB riddled milk was sold to shoeless urchins in industrial conurbations. They didn't stick to milk, the auld folks; they were mixed farmers which meant there were honking pigs, gormless sheep, and irritating chickens pecking about industriously and completely pointlessly. They also had lots of cats, which were good for kicking if you were at a loose end.

My father had a head fit in his early forties and decided that he would inhale the family vapours and forgo his progress in academe for the delights of shovelling out vast steaming mires of cow shit in the depths of winter. Back to the simple life: lugging about bales of hay to pleasure bovine morons, acquiring an unhealthy obsession with the weather forecast, becoming decidedly masturbatory when presented with a Massey Ferguson tractor.

Happy days. Well, he lasted a year before reverting to type.

Farming is only tolerable if you are Hugh Fearnley Whittginstall (Huge Fairly Windscreen Wiper) and are an Eton and Oxbridge educated toff with a large trust fund, contacts in the meedja, and difficult hair.

12 comments:

Peevish McSnark said...

I love the idea of farming - fresh vegetables, happy hens with clean white eggs, sweet smelling hay... The reality of it is really rank and foul sometimes. I suppose that's why I stick with the suburbs. That and my amazing inability to keep so much as a houseplant alive for longer than a week.

garfer said...

You are much too high maintenance for farming Peevish. You don't get Starbucks down on the farm.

KAZ said...

In spite of its name - you don't see many farms in Fallowfield. Thank God.

"You are a big posh sod with plums in your mouth" - Oh how I'd love to say that to Boris or Dave.

Sniffy said...

I wouldn't last a day as a farmer. Absolutely no fucking way.

Actually though, if there's no Starbucks down on the farm, that's one positive. Buttfucks coffee sucks ass!

Peevish McSnark said...

Oh, my. Buttfuck's coffee. I wonder about the cream in it now...

ewwwwwww...

Garfy - I suppose I should tell you that my father owns a farm. He's a horticulturalist (among other things), and my gardening (dis)ability is one of his biggest woes.

pissoff said...

Ohhhhh Sniffy, just wait til you come to Canada next year and meet our pigs.

Life on the farm is great. Not only do I get to wear gumboots, I get to play the banjo and sleep with my brother.

The Mistress said...

Coincidentally, my paternal grandparents were farmers.

Also coincidentally, I’m reading a book entitled The English Major, about an academic who gave up teaching to become a farmer.

So end the coincidences.

We have nothing else in common.

Unless, like me, you can milk a cow.

The Poet Laura-eate said...

Too much mud for me, though I used to enjoy diving off piles of hay bales into looser hay in a friend's barn.

The animals are fun too.

Sniffy said...

Yeah april, and you let wild dogs murder your animals. Some bloody farmer you are!

FirstNations said...

"Oh god, why am I so massive?"


*quietly closes door of shed and sneaks away*

garfer said...

Mooooooo!

Anonymous said...

Farming is great if you like sticking yer dick up chickens.


Theer, I said it. Fockit.