Will’s World: Bales, barbecues and batting collapses
© Lee Boswell Photography I’m back. I’d like to say I’ve been on holiday to the Mediterranean and spent the last few weeks sunning myself by a pool while taking full advantage of an all-inclusive hotel bar, but who needs foreign climes for hot weather these days?
I’ve been basking in the heat here in tropical Wrexham, quite literally making hay while the sun shines.
It was the excellently named American, Willis Haviland Carrier, who invented air conditioning way back in 1902, and never have I been more grateful for that man’s engineering genius and contribution to the world.
See also: How clover leys helped lift profit after loss of rented land
About the author
I thought about this while I was baling for a friend on Minera Mountain, just a mile or so from where my three-times-great grandfather, John Evans, a tenant farmer and lead miner, eked out a meagre existence with his wife Mary in the first half of the 19th century.
Most of their surviving children emigrated to Canada and the US when they grew up, in search of a better life.
Hot air
While I baled away in the 30C heat, cool and comfortable in my cab listening to the soothing tones of Test Match Special, I wondered what they’d make of the technology we have at our disposal and our comparatively comfortable everyday realities.
And, although it briefly crossed my mind that they might think: “Blimey, are we still scratching out a meagre existence at tenant farming?”, on the whole it made me feel tremendously thankful to be living in our present time.
Any significant UK news events happened during the last fortnight while I’ve been ensconced on my tractor?
I hear that the leader of the nation has rather unexpectedly stepped down, causing the usual frenzied media speculation.
What an incredible legacy he leaves behind, though, and I suspect that his uniquely charismatic style and ruthless winning mentality will be missed and debated for decades to come.
Yes, farewell to England captain Ben Stokes, one of the greatest and most enigmatic cricketers I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch grace a wicket.
There’s about as much chance of Andy Burnham winning over the farming community as there is of us regaining the Ashes now, lamentably.
Call of the wild
Closer to home, we celebrated my sainted mother’s birthday with a family party at the farm, which gave me a much-needed deadline to put up a shed that I bought last year for just such an occasion.
I say shed; an estate agent would doubtless describe it as an “outdoor living space”. It’s really just a pimped-up field shelter that we can drape with some nice lights and I can burn a few sausages and burgers in front of it.
I do have notions of building a bar made from pallets in it so I can do my best Peggy Mitchell “Ger outta my pub” impression to my numerous adolescent daughters on a regular basis.
Perhaps I’ll get round to that by 2030.
Whatever we’re going to call the finished product, after much sawing, drilling and sweating, we just about got it done on time.
On the evening before the big day, when the sun was beginning to go down, and daughter number two and I were applying the finishing touches, we suddenly heard the most wonderful sound from the neighbouring barley field, and I leapt up with delight.
It was a curlew. There’s a nesting pair on some land we rent over the river, but this was the first I’ve heard on our home farm in a long time. Perhaps we should call the shed “The Curlew Calls”.
Anyway, happy birthday Mum – 75 not out.
