Summer Set

At the age of 14 I wanted to be a farmer.

I was convinced about it and no parental logic could sway me. They did have a point as I had, just a few weeks prior, been convinced I wanted to join the army. As only wise parents can they would just gently guide and encourage me to find my true vocation. I hated that at the time. The whole agricultural career thing had really started after a holiday in Somerset staying on the farm of my Fathers' relatives. I suppose, at 14, I was at a delicate stage between being a stupid kid and wanting acceptance as a young adult. I felt that I could not do anything right in the eyes of my parents. It was partly justified as I had blown up the kitchen with volatile home made ginger beer, lost the keys to the house and was convinced that I had killed my Gran's dog. However, my parents did have faith in me. I hated that at the time.

Me and my two sisters were to set off a week ahead of the rest of the family to accept an invitation to stay for a few days with cousins in Taunton. We represented 3/7ths of the family and were put on the train at Scunthorpe with the other 4/7ths to travel later towing the caravan with the master plan that we would all meet up on the farm. In my mind I can visualise the departure on the train as somehow being in black and white and with me carrying a gas mask and string wrapped parcel. I was not however, an evacuee.

The train journey with a change at Birmingham was uneventful. No dodgy characters, no murders or sleuthing, no secret agent baggage drops. I must have been very heavily influenced by all things TV and movies at that age. It was still a big deal for the three of us who had never travelled unaccompanied before.

At Taunton we were welcomed by our Aunt and Uncle and had a busy few days being very well looked after. We went to some stately homes and learnt a lot. It was the summer holidays but there was educational content to be extracted from everything. We hated that at the time. We thoroughly tired out our, only two, cousins and they must have been mightily relieved when we departed for the next stage of our vacation.

The drive into the depths of Somerset was exciting in anticipation of what we could get up to. My fathers relatives had been builders in the immediate post war period  in Croydon and North London so plenty of work was on hand to rebuild the bombed out housing. Their hard graft had made their reward a large detached house, white rendered and red rosemary tiled up a long rhododendron lined driveway and overlooking a deep, beautiful pastured valley with a trout filled river running through it. The house, a mansion in our eyes with an unprecedented two staircases, was part of a working farm with adjacent crew yard, pole barns and livestock pens. Some miles distant was the main dairy operation with about 70 friesian cows and the milking parlour.

The sights, smells and bustle of the place really caught my imagination. I had taken on board the dream of being a farmer without grasping that it actually required a lot of hard work. In the following week we were very enthusiastic young farmers and participated in all the day to day requirements of an industrial scale business. The pigs had to be fed and mucked out. They were quite smelly and the sows would easily roll onto and crush their young.Extracting the tiny dead piglets was quite interesting in a gory sort of way. At the dairy we helped to herd the cows and were amazed that all of the beasts were individually named and could be recognised by their markings. I could not see any difference at all. They were all, to me, identical. The highlight of the week was a sheep-drive from the main farm across to the pasture at the dairy farm. We shouted and hollered at the vague animals, guided and cajoled them with our wooden staffs and took great delight in holding up the traffic through the narrow, high banked lanes. The job seemed to be an epic of mile upon mile when in fact I think it was only quite a short distance.

The not so highlight of the week was cleaning out the sheep dip. This was akin to child labour. Between the metal arrival and departure pens was a concrete lined channel, tapered to a narrow trench and wide enough at the top for a fat sheeps girth. The dipping season had just finished and the residue in the gully was a noxious mix of diluted sheep droppings, wool ringlets and pungent chemicals. The latter, fortunately, largely cancelled out the former. Buckets and brooms were the weapons of choice. In the summer heat the task was quite unbearable but we completed it, much to the surprise of our hosts who had obviously set it as a challenge for the townie kids. Even now, some 34 years later I still get a faint taste of the toxic cocktail if I bite my fingernails.

The stay on the farm flew by and when the rest of the family brought the caravan down we were relegated from the big house to an impromptu camp site in a field in the valley. I was very much taken with the farming life and was in a right stropping mood for the duration with my parents. The holiday did continue in the lovely surroundings of deepest rural Somerset, we picked mushrooms, walked the old railway courses, picked wild flowers, threw stones from bridge parapets at the fish below and dared each other to touch both horizontal strands of the electric fence.

When the time to leave came I cried for what I was leaving behind. I sulked and was unbearable through the long drive home. I stomped up to my room when we reached what now seemed like a very tiny, shed like house with a single staircase. From my pockets I emptied out my collected mementos. Amongst the bits of dry straw in the lining was a twist of chemically soaked wool, a pebble which later degraded into an actual piece of animal dung, a tag from the ear of a cow and my herding staff which, with great difficulty, had made the journey back straddled by the occupants of a very crowded car. Within a few weeks my love affair with farmng was over.I was convinced that I wanted to be someone who did surveying or whatever that was. Just be careful what you wish for because in my case it did come true.