Farming Breeds: Mark ‘My Words’ Wright – the next-door-farmer
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 Mark ‘My Words’ Wright – the next-door-farmer.
The next-door-farmer is better than you. Always.
He paid a grand less for his tractor. His kids got better grades than yours at college. His yields are a tonne higher. Or so he says.
When you have a breakdown he’s there, leaning on the fence, looking across, making sympathetic remarks. Shouting the occasional offer of help. Stifling, you suspect, a smile.
If there’s a disaster, he materialises. It’s as if he doesn’t have any work to do. Which, if you believe everything he says, is true. His wheat, after all, was harvested a week earlier than anyone else’s. His land was ploughed before most people had gone over theirs in the combine. A window of still weather – a microclimate manifest only over his corner of the country – allowed him to finish spraying way ahead of schedule.
You’d think, for all he says, his land wasn’t identical to yours (an ill-drained clay), but was in fact a Grade 1 silt.
And another thing. He’s always right. Right about the CAP, politics, the best way to tackle rhizomania. Right about silage-making, mole control, the best way to promote British food. You gave up arguing with him a long time ago.
Your pheasants, for some reason, prefer his land to yours. Something draws them like homing pigeons. And they don’t stand a chance over there, of course, for the next-door-farmer is one hell of a shot. His pheasants, conversely, perch a few feet on his side of the fence, getting fat – just like his cattle, which, incidentally, have the best rates of liveweight gain in the country.
Those wretched cattle. They spend more time on your ground than his. It’s usually at three in the morning when another neighbour rings you with the news, “There’s cattle in Church Field again.”
You spend two hours rounding them up, catch five minutes nap, bolt breakfast and get back out to work in time to see your fresh-faced neighbour roll up his newer-than-yours Discovery and say: “Your corn hasn’t stood up too well this year.”
Despite all the rivalry, he’s still a friend. An auntie of yours nearly married a cousins of his, but the wedding was called off before you could work out what relation it would make you to him.
Your family sits next to his church. You have an occasional pint together. You see him at the farm discussion group. You call him Mark to his face but, at other times, you use the nickname that your kids made up, originating from one of his favourite expressions: “Mark my words.”
Not that you’d ever ask him but, if push came to shove, you know he’d even lend you a hand in an emergency.
There’s one thing Mark ‘My Words’ Wright wouldn’t lend you, though – his Discovery.