Will’s World: Rugby, banter and hedging: A farmer’s fix

I’ve done a few things that have improved my mental wellbeing lately.

Admittedly, the experts might not prescribe going to a rugby match with old Harper Adams friends, drinking way too many pints of Guinness while comparing age-related aches and pains and generally putting the world to rights. But given how much good it did us all, perhaps they should.

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The fact that it took place in Bath, one of the very best places to watch rugby – and there happened to be a glorious blue sky overhead – only added to our sense of exhilaration.

Given the uproarious vibe in the many watering establishments of the city that night, helped by a convincing home win, I’d say we weren’t the only ones feeling uplifted either.

We didn’t feel quite so uplifted the next morning, but as my great-grandmother used to say: “If you want to dance, you have to pay the piper.”

Mend the gap

The other thing I’ve done is spend a day planting 500 bare root hedging whips, as well as a few baby oak trees, into a gappy blackthorn hedge that borders one of our neighbours.

Gaps in hedges irritate me, and I’ve been steadily trying to fill all of ours over the past several years, not least for biosecurity reasons.

With the curse of TB ever present in this area, I don’t want any of our cattle to be snogging any of the neighbour’s cows over the fence.

But I also just enjoy doing it, and at this time of year, if you catch the weather right, there can’t be many more satisfying jobs.

So off I chugged, with tools, plants, lunch and flask loaded in the back of our ancient Daihatsu Fourtrak, down to the furthest field away from the farm buildings – Cae Issa, or “Lowest Field” in English.

It was a bonus to find conditions drier than expected, and I dared to daydream of turning some youngstock out in the not-too-distant future.

As I began to work away, my thoughts drifted to the horrific images from the Middle East that I’d seen on the news that morning.

This little bit of environmental improvement I was doing seemed so trivial and unimportant in a world apparently intent on setting itself on fire, one way or the other.

But then I remembered that I can only control the controllables.

Pheasant fracas

Suddenly, it was lunchtime and, having worked up a good and honest sweat, I propped myself against the fence and poured some thick tomato soup and a cup of sweet tea.

As I munched on bread and butter, I listened to the calls of wrens, robins, blackbirds and crows mingled with the sound of the River Dee coursing along just a few hundred yards away, and the distant echo of a Manitou’s reversing beeper.

While I was content in my reverie, my mind turned to the laughter and banter I’d experienced the previous weekend, and I wondered how we got here as farmers, with so many of us spending so much time alone.

I read recently that chronic loneliness and social isolation are as detrimental to our physical health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and I can well believe that.

As I contemplated this, out of the corner of my eye I saw three cock pheasants, plumage puffed and absurd, warily circling each other like boxers, ducking and darting in occasionally to peck, before hastily beating a cowardly retreat.

Not you as well, I thought. Anyway, back to work.