How to spot a farmer on holiday
You can always tell a farmer on holiday, says Noreen Wainwright, who’s married to a dairy farmer and lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands
I used to work as a teacher and I can tell you honestly that the teacher’s idea of a nightmare holiday is any trip that goes within a mile of an educational establishment. They do not want to hear of, or see youngsters, from the minute they have shaken the chalk dust from their clothes. They are burned out.
I think you would find the same is true for many other workers, from most walks of life. So, what is it about farmers?
To borrow the phrase, “You can take the farmer from the countryside, but you cannot take the countryside from the farmer”. That is why it is so interesting to study them on a day out, or even better, on holiday.
Here are my observations:
1. They find each other with the accuracy of heat-seeking missiles. Sighing with relief they sink back into farming talk, the weather, the harvest and prices. I have heard it said that some farmers go away for a few days’ break, at a bed and breakfast …on a farm.
2. The farmer likes nothing better than a break away from the farm, particularly if it is a day immersed in all things agricultural – an agricultural show, for instance. They dress in a very slightly newer version of the usual at-home clothes, and walk around all day, looking at stock, machinery and talking to other farmers. Yes, about the job, of course.
3. In another bonding exercise, they sometimes go an annual outing. The NFU organises these trips, and it is quite easy to detect the farmers on a coach. They spend almost all their time glued to the coach window assessing the grass, frowning at the weeds and providing a running commentary on it all, to the person unlucky enough to be in the aisle seat.
4. You can sometimes spot the farmer at the seaside. He is not unappreciative of the sun and the sand. But if you look closely you can see the slight unease of a person just out of his natural element. After a while the salt, sand and sea lose their charm and he begins to comment about the difficulties of growing anything in an area like this.
5. The farmer is usually fascinated by the lives of the non-farmers encountered on holiday. This is particularly true of the farmers who have never done anything else for a living (in other words, most of them). They are especially intrigued by talk of life in the workplace, though they struggle to really get to grips with some of the details, such as starting times and commuting.
6. The price of everything comes as a truly shocking revelation to the farmer on holiday. But, the problem is, he doesn’t leave it there. Every comment is accompanied by a comparison with the pittance he gets paid for his produce. You can really see this in full flow in a café where he is being asked to pay about 50p for a small glass of milk.
7. There may be some exceptions, but on the whole, the farmer is not a great fan of the action-filled holiday. There tends to lurk a deep-grained antipathy in expending a load of energy on something that doesn’t produce anything.
8. The farmer on holiday often struggles with the idea of a lie-in. It may be a deeply-ingrained work ethic that still gets him up before 7am, or it may be the novelty of having breakfast without having to do a couple of hours work first.
9. Farmers having time out divide into two distinct sub-species, when they are away. There are those who are constantly on the phone averting crises at home, or those lucky few who can mentally leave the farm behind.
10. The same farmer who thinks nothing of working from early morning until evening, will be absolutely shattered after walking around a show or a ploughing match all day. The driving, the crowds and all that talking will have him asleep in the armchair a good hour earlier than normal.
These days, most farmers, and particularly their families see the necessity of a break. But, secretly most enjoy that walk around at home to check that everything is all right on their return. The wisest give a small thank-you, too, for living in the best place possible.
From the Forums
Here are some of TeslaCoils throughts on the subect from FW’s website:
“Farmers should never order a cooked breakfast. It will never be as good as the one made by granny/mother/the wife. S/he will regard each item with scepticism – the bacon will not be crisp enough; the sausage of dubious promenance etc. Note of advice, if you do find a wonderful cooked breakfast, make sure you lie and tell the wife it is not as good as the one she makes.
You can always spot the farmer as the seaside as they always take their own spade. They often throw themselves into overly complex sand structures for the kids, or social messages visible to anyone walking the promenade.
Farmers should always head north for holidays if they get a weekend rained off in summer. Or head to the Lake District… if going in harvest, it’s always nice to see somewhere wetter and with less wheat cut that home.
If you are the child of a farmer, prepare yourself for many trips to the seaside -i n the rain. Wet day = family day out = seaside.
Farmers enjoy the amusement games where large amounts of money are shoved in, for random chance to probably make you poorer, or sometimes richer until you put it back in. It has the same fatalistic ethos as farming.”
• What do you think are the tell-tale signs of a farmer on holiday? Let us know on our forums