Will’s World: The calf, the farm pickup and the tiny dancer
© Richard Stanton Everyone and their dog has a podcast these days. But back in 2017, when no one really knew what they were, I decided on a whim that I’d start one about farming.
At the time I was feeling that we were misunderstood by the rest of the population, and I wanted to delve into the human stories behind food production to showcase some of the amazing people in our community.
See also: Farmers Weekly Podcast Ep 144: Verdict on Clarkson’s Farm 2
About the author
It was primarily just recorded conversations, and we ended up doing more than 180 of them.
But loosely, the idea was it would show listeners that farmers weren’t some sort of alien species from another planet, and we were no different from anyone else, with all the same hopes, dreams and concerns.
A breed apart
Well, I realise now that I was completely wrong; we might not be aliens, but we are very definitely different.
A case in point is last Saturday morning, when I had to take my youngest daughter to her dance class.
The present Mrs Evans had given me my instructions: I was to have her there by a certain time, face washed, hair done nicely, and generally well-presented in pink dress, sparkly tights and clean dancing shoes (daughter, not me).
I was then to bring her home again an hour later. Simple and straightforward, you might think.
Of course, this being a farming family, it turned into a hectic and last-minute rush after doing the morning feeding and bedding routine, with me hastily bundling said daughter into the farm pickup with a dead calf in the back (don’t ask) and speeding out of the yard.
We arrived just about in time, only to realise that I’d forgotten to wash her face, which was about as clean as a Victorian street urchin’s, and I’d neglected to brush her hair too.
To say she looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards would be an understatement.
As I scrambled to scrub her face with a scraggly tissue (much to her mortification) and arrange her hair into some semblance of order (I had no hairbands on me, which is a mortal sin for a father of four girls).
I also noticed she had mud all up the back of her sparkly tights from getting into the pickup.
This wasn’t going well. Still, eventually I got her sorted and off she went with a smile and a wave, as I sighed with relief.
Cool for dads
On the way back to the car park I got talking to a few other dads, who seemed a lot less flustered than me.
“What are you up to now?” one of them asked another, who was wearing pristine white trainers. “Just going to pop to Costa I think. You?” he replied nonchalantly.
“Got to nip to the supermarket and pick up a few bits for the weekend,” the first dad answered.
Fortunately, we were back at the vehicles before any of them could ask me, or I could have said: “Just taking the prematurely dead bovine I have in the back of my filthy farm pickup to the local hunt kennels where he’ll have the skin pulled off him with a winch, be chopped up into small bits, and fed to a pack of hungry fox hounds.”
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that might have killed the conversation.
An hour later I’d picked up my daughter and we were heading for home, singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” together at the top of our lungs.
Like I said, we’re different. But I’d have it no other way.