Will’s World: Tractors, tears and a whole lot of trouble

Never work with children or animals, the American comedian WC Fields once said. As someone who currently works with both on a daily basis, I heartily agree with the man.

Our numerous adolescent daughters are on their summer holidays, and I’ve been attempting to teach the oldest of them to drive a tractor.

It isn’t a barrel of laughs sitting on the passenger seat while she drives round stubble fields that are currently harder than the hobs of hell. The side of my head has the bruises to prove it.

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It doesn’t help that she seems to have inherited the present Mrs Evans’s heavy right foot either, let alone that the tractor seems to have been filled with kangaroo diesel.

Still, she’s determined to be on the road in time for the local Christmas tractor run, so fair warning for all who plan to attend.

Round the bend

As I write this, I can hear the youngest two, who’re supposed to be working together to harvest beans in the polytunnel, furiously arguing about who’s doing it the right way and who isn’t.

We’ve nicknamed them Marge and Beryl for the bickering old ladies that they frequently resemble, and now the youngest is crying because her sister’s soaked her with a hosepipe.

I’m sure they’ll grow up to be perfectly respectable citizens, but there’s a part of me that worries I’ll be spending half my retirement visiting them both in prison.

When does school start again?

My mood isn’t helped by the fact that I’ve just returned from taking a dead young steer to the knacker’s yard. It’s one of those that we’ve been nursing for a while but must have had pneumonia as a calf and it’s finally caught up with it.

Where there’s livestock, there’s deadstock, and all that, but it’s still always a cruel blow.

The cost involved is an annoyance too, as until recently we could dispose of fallen stock at the local hunt kennels for a nominal fee – the ultimate in rural recycling.

But they’ve suddenly decided that because their costs have increased they’re going to feed the hounds bought-in stuff instead, so it’s tough titty to all the local farmers.

We’ll all still be expected to let them blithely gallop across our fields through the winter I’m sure, which I don’t feel very inclined to do now. But that’s perhaps a column for another day.

Flies on us. Unfortunately

We’ve also been spending a great deal of time lately combating New Forest Eye.

If you’re one of the sensible types who don’t own livestock, it’s a painful bacterial eye infection in cattle that spreads quickly via flies, which we’re cursed with having more than our usual fair share of during this long, hot summer.

Fortunately, I’ve been having great sport shooting them in the house with my Bug-A-Salt gun (best thing I’ve ever purchased – five stars, would recommend), but outside is another matter.

The only thing is to fetch the afflicted animal into an isolation shed before running it through the crush, where I attempt to hold its head securely while the old man injects a dose of antibiotic into the eye membrane. What fun.

There’s no vaccine for it yet apparently, but if those nice people at the pharmaceutical giants could get their arses in gear and develop one smartish, it would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway, now I’m off to get rid of a wasp nest that’s under the slates on our porch roof.

Adolescent daughters, sick cattle, or a swarm of angry wasps – I know which is the least stressful to deal with.