Farming Breeds: Magnus – the practical-year student
Join us for a funny, irreverent look at some of the characters that make the British countryside what it is. Our tongue-in-cheek guide puts characters such as the retired Major, the “perfect” next-door farmer and the young tearaway under the microscope. Here we meet Magnus – the practical-year student, with enthusiasm by the bucket load
Oliver got the nickname Magnus on account of the number of questions he asks.
He wants to know why the sugar beet is drilled when it is, why cattle need trace elements and whether the office software could be updated.
“I’ve started so I’ll finish,” the farm staff chuckle when he comes into the workshop at breakfast time.
The staff were a bit suspicious of Magnus at first, but they got to like him. He’s 18 and harmless. Harmless to everything except inanimate objects, that is, which he soon showed a talent for ramming, snapping or squashing.
Dung forks, trailers, hydraulic cables, tractor seats and fences have all fallen foul of Magnus. He even misjudged the field boundary and spring tined the boss’s wife’s flowerbed.
What he lacks in experience, however, he makes up for in enthusiasm. He’ll do all the jobs that everyone else avoids. Dispatched into grain pits, barn corners and silage pits, Magnus is more than happy to put his hands in unsavoury places. The prospect of getting covered in dung is not one that fazes him.
“He’ll get over this enthusiasm,” they say in the workshop.
But Magnus reckons he’ll have the last laugh. He knows he’ll only be doing the jobs no one else wants to do for a year after all. Then it’ll be college and, after that, who knows – travel a bit or go into farm management maybe. The world’s his oyster.
This is the first time Magnus has lived away from home and he’s missing his family. He goes back at weekends if there’s no work to be done and returns on Sunday night, his 10-year-old Vauxhall Corsa down on the springs, piled high with the food his mother’s supplied.
He’ll do all the jobs that everyone else avoids. Dispatched into grain pits, barn corners and silage pits, Magnus is more than happy to put his hands in unsavoury places
Magnus unpacks it in the kitchen of the cottage in which he’s living rent free. The cottage which the boss described as “adequate”. The cottage that the rats have long since moved out of.
“Have you heard about the ghost,” the fitter, Jim, asks Magnus, “It’s the ghost of a student who died one night in the bed in which you’re now sleeping.”
That joke and the one about crossing the Hereford bull with the Suffolk ewe are ones which Jim’s used on every pre-college year student for the past 20 years. He’s yet to find one who falls for it.
Not that Magnus would notice the ghost if there was one. The minute his head hits the pillow, he’s asleep. He works such long hours. “Sunday’s no problem guv’nor,” he tells the boss, himself an old boy of the agricultural college for which Magnus is destined.
He needs the cash, he needs a reference and he needs to write a report for college about his practical year – it would be the icing on the cake if the boss gave him access to the accounts.
“What do you think about fixed costs,” Magnus asks the manager. “And what about considering a machinery ring?”
Then he goes back to the workshop for lunch. “And your specialised subject is,” says Jim, “breaking things.”