Farming Breeds: Sally – the long-suffering farmer’s wife
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 multitasking farmer’s wife Sally…
Sally fell for Nigel despite, rather than because of, his opening conversational gambit.
They were at a Young Farmers’ dinner when he shot her a sideways glance and asked: “How many acres have you got then?”
Sally (keen not deter the only eligible bachelor she’d talked to in months) embellished her answer by about 200 acres and began a blow-by-blow account of the cutting-edge min-till drill just purchased on the family farm up in Lincolnshire. The rest, as they say, is history.
Fast forward a few years and Sally and Nigel are at the local prep school to watch one of their four strapping sons play rugby. Sally has set up camp: a smiling, serene presence, bastion of the PTA, folding picnic chair and social chit chat at the ready. Nigel perches on his shooting stick beside her, glued to his Blackberry as he follows the grain futures market, only raising his head to shout “Good tackle, Dan” at the home team.
Afterwards, at match tea, weekend-in-the-country fund managers stare bemusedly into their tea cups as Nigel and the one other farmer father loudly discuss the respective merits of various power harrows.
Back home, Nigel settles down at the computer to check on the weather forecast. Meanwhile, Sally is soon busy whipping up dinner and the piles of farm paperwork off the kitchen table.
Good job they didn’t want anyone to join them for dinner. Choice of guests might have been limited. Nigel, you see, has never been backward at coming forward when it comes to expressing his views. If someone shakes a fist at him as he powers through the village in his tractor, he’ll stop, get out and ask them what their problem is. Which just leaves Sally to sigh: “Oh dear, another person we can’t talk to.”
But smoothing ruffled feathers is a small cross to bear for a life she loves. The children may have cooled a little about the joys of living where they do; they used to love riding on the big kit as kids but as they’ve got older the distance they are from their friends has become an issue. But Sally loves it.
As a farmer’s daughter, she learnt young the need for super-human tolerance and is under no illusions about what being a farmer’s wife involves. Who says it’s all cake baking and Agas?
It’s paperwork, quite a lot of manual work, acting like an unpaid taxi service to all and sundry and now she’s even considering getting a part-time job (there are still those school fees to be paid).
Nothing phases her. She a great tractor driver, she can round up cattle in the middle of the night in a gale, can gut a pheasant in her sleep and can magic up a meal at a moment’s notice (she sometimes wonders where they put all that food, hubby and the boys).
She’s particularly adept at processing piles of crumpled farm paperwork. She can’t understand it – why the hell does Nigel never open this stuff?
She might live in her wellies but knows how to cut a dash with a blow-dry and a beautifully tailored tweed coat. Above all, she copes with whatever life throws at her. Life with Nigel is never dull.
As the nights draw in, only too well accustomed to those months as a harvest widow, Sally seeks refuge in holiday brochures.
Nigel’s not big on holidays, she hasn’t managed to get him abroad for years. It’s never the right time. Every year he suggests she comes on his farm discussion group’s study trip. Every year, quietly appalled at the prospect of four days with eight other “Nigels”, she politely declines.
There was a time when Nigel might have considered a seaside break in Dorset in October, after harvest and autumn drilling. This year has proved the ill-advised nature of such a trip (as far as Nigel’s concerned, Dorset’s “foreign”). The slugs would have massacred his crops if he hadn’t been on hand to deal with them.
Besides, the appeal of sandcastles in sou’westers and a steady drizzle has waned for the children. So Sally throws another log on the fire and settles down to a glass of last year’s sloe gin. She’s begins to feel relaxed when Nigel bowls in with a letter in his hand, railing about the RPA. It might not be the last glass of sloe gin she has tonight…