Farmer Focus: Sheep farmer James Read reflects on the ups and downs of 2013
You may think I rabbit on about sheepdogs, but farming in 2013 has been just like a sheepdog trial, the winning run one week and then on your backside the next through uncontrollable circumstances.
Christmas Eve last year saw me digging water off the fields and then I don’t think I took my leggings off until March. Of course, spring brought some more unpredictable weather. Dad fell really ill and I could not have been more down about life in farming.
Then as if by magic the sun shone, keeping the combine going. Store lambs sold well, Dad made a remarkable recovery and was back to his normal self, moaning that I’d bought too many sheep.
October arrives and out pops baby Tom and then you think to yourself that’s what farming is all about: keeping the job rolling to put food on the table for people.
This is where I must say that people like Prince Charles, Adam Henson and Jimmy Doherty do a great job with their TV appearances promoting the fact we do put food on the table for millions of people.
With November’s coming we drilled up and then back to the trials. My young dog Tom achieves two second places in three nursery trials – “gob smacked”.
I also become a dab hand in putting on a nappy in under 30 seconds while it’s blowing a gale at a trial on top of the North York Moors. I don’t know what all the fuss is about, as I’m sure most farmers will agree it is nowhere near as disgusting as a lambs backside after it’s had double its amount of colostrum.
December is here and I’ve given myself an early Christmas present. With Landrover’s announcement that it is no longer to make the Defender I thought it was time for an upgrade.
There is nothing more wholesome than driving your Landrover around the farm without all those modern-day gadgets – what a great British farming icon. You never know, it might come in handy for Tom’s first car, but if he is anything like me it might need some Armco barriers welding around it.
Merry Christmas to everyone, keep Britain farming, and most of all thanks to our troops in Afghanistan that keep this country safe.
James Read farms in partnership with his father, in Louth, Lincolnshire. They farm 400ha of mainly arable land, run 200 breeding sheep and a pack of working/trialling sheepdogs
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