[Flyingfemme]

Not really keen on simulators. There’s nothing can replace the fact of actually having skin in the game.

[Bill McCarthy]

There is something very satisfying about ploughing dark soil - you can tell the health of it by the number of birds that turn up to follow. Thousands of Gulls, Shochads are home, Oyster Catchers too, and there is always a “Willie Wagtail” close by. On completion it’s best to get in quick with the seeder as the Schochads want to start nesting. If I see a nest, I lift the machine rather than run over it - I’m soft that way. It’s a wonderful sight, once the seed is in, to see steam rising from the field after a light shower of rain. Once the seed is in, the next machine to visit is the combine.

[Pete L]

The sheep meadows around us are not quite submerged and filled with rubbish-tip gulls. The landfill site near us has become an incinerator so I think pickings are slimmer than they were. We've been egging each other on to see who's brave enough to venture out with a bag of chips.

[rikur_]

The interest in farming is natural: not only do we all eat and have an interest in how food is produced, but most of us are only a few generations removed from farmers.

Even one generation can be a massive difference in how things are done, and I think many people's perceptions of farming is based on something from roughly around the 1950s - perhaps because that's what got passed on from relatives who used to farm? or because they visit tourist farms exhibiting traditional methods?

My granddad farmed until the week he died, and my dad helped him on the farm until that point. My dad's maintained an interest in how things have evolved since, and there's very little left in common with how we left it. No doubt the same would be true of many roles if you compared 1970s to today. I still have an urge to go back to farming, but know enough to know that I don't know enough to do it!

[Charles Hunt]

Bill,

Shochad?? Autocorrect error or a bird even Google hasn’t heard of?

[Bill McCarthy]

In the early ‘50s we mover from one farm to another using a horse and cart. The “new “ farm had 14 Clydesdale horse and 14 farm servants for just over 1000 acres. No tractors appeared for a couple of years and when they did millions of horse faded away. I vividly remember following my father when he ploughed with a pair with the single furrow plough. If the going was good he could plough an acre a day - nowadays, with modern equipment it’s an acre an hour, or even less if using no plough techniques like @Farmer.
Nevertheless, as a boy I saw farming then as a form of slavery and “ran away to sea” in ‘61 at the age of 16.
A Shochad (sorry) is a Lapwing - and becoming very scarce due to the protection of the Buzzard.

[akg1486]

Even one generation can be a massive difference in how things are done, and I think many people's perceptions of farming is based on something from roughly around the 1950s - perhaps because that's what got passed on from relatives who used to farm? or because they visit tourist farms exhibiting traditional methods?

Things have definitely changed! Before becoming a sailor, my grandfather was a farmhand in the 1920s: hearing his stories was like listening to a history teacher talking about medieval times. But I think people feel, or want to feel, a connection to the land: the circle of life and all that. I imagine that interest in gardening (an interest I don't share) partly stems from that.

[LowNSlow1]

Same for my dad in the 1930's, he escaped to the RAF via Morris Motors in Oxford.

When I worked down in Dorset back in the 1990's I saw that both the farms he worked on were still going strong.

[PeteSpencer]

A bit closer to the present day I was , as a medical student with the district midwives looking after pregnant mums in their squalid Lambeth 1930s ghettos squashed amongst the Lambeth Fire Station, the Doulton Factory and Sarsons Vinegar and delivering their babies in the same era as the recent 'Call the Midwife' prog (1960s...... )
Yep, I'm 'kin ancient (and still ain't had my Covid vaccination.)

[johnm]

In my youth I used to labour for pocket money on local farms and the tractors were just appearing in numbers, mostly Fordsons and "Fergies" . I lived on the edge of a middle sized cotton town and boundary between town and country was not blurred, the first farmyard gate was just beside the last house!

Soon after I joined the IT industry working on early mainframes where we had boxes the size of washing machines holding 80 MB discs that took two hands to shift.

The world has moved on in a great many respects and mostly for the better I think.

[Propwash]

The world has moved on in a great many respects and mostly for the better I think.

In terms of material things, innovations and convenience maybe.

In terms of personal responsibility and behaviour not so much.

PW

[Pete L]

Only my stepmother's family were farmers. Most of Viv and I's family haven't seen anything green since the Potato famine, so farming wasn't first on the list of vocations. Probably sensible - efforts in gardens and allotments since suggest a genetic inability to grow decent spuds.

[Charles Hunt]

haven't seen anything green

Strip and paddock?

[Pete L]

haven't seen anything green

Strip and paddock?

Fair point

[TheFarmer]

Right, in the next few weeks things will suddenly get busy, and I’m wondering if you lot are genuinely interested in reading about taking this crop through to harvest.

No worries if not, and it’ll save me some typing, but you might find it interesting, and you can help me sell it too.

We can work out at the end if we made a profit on it or not.