Jim Webster's Blog, page 34

The dog does not entirely approve.

At the moment Sal is barking. She doesn’t bark a lot, only at times when she feels she ought to be out there sorting things out in her own inimitable way. As Border Collies go she has two foibles. The first is that she doesn’t like sheep standing close to the hedge. Over the years, …

‘Honest to God’ and her ilk.

One thing you don’t see on farms much now are the various van salesmen. They’d travel from farm to farm selling stuff. The vast majority of it was at least quazi-legally acquired. You’d get the ‘gate salesmen’ who’d turn up with an open pickup loaded with metal gates. Sometimes they’d got a load cheap, perhaps …

Timing

They always say that timing is the secret of good comedy, and frankly it’s the secret of success in agriculture as well. I knew two chaps who retired after a lifetime in dairy farming. For a tenant, selling your dairy herd basically pays for the house you have to buy. The two men were much …

Sometimes it rains a bit

Last week it was our local agricultural show, North Lonsdale. Occasionally we have a glorious day for it, because in an infinite universe, anything is possible. But frankly I reckon we have more damp, or at least gloomy days than we have sunny ones. Still last week you have to admit nobody was going to …

Making a hash of it man!

The problem is that if you are a farmer, it sort of sticks with you. You don’t stop being one just because you’re asleep, on holiday, or reading facebook.  Anyway I saw a post of a friends facebook page saying how much money would be generated in the economy if we legalised marijuana. So of …

Bigger than Brexit? Unesco awards Lake District World Heritage site status.

  Every so often something comes along and initially you wonder whether it’ll make any difference. And then it occurs to you that it might be wise to read the fine print. So you heroically refuse to allow umpteen pages of dense bureaucratic prose to put you off and you start reading. As you read …

The little ones are the real problem

We were moving some heifers, they’d escaped from field A into field B. I fixed the fence and two of us, plus dog and quad when to bring them down field B, along the road and back into field A. This went well enough except for one of them who took umbrage at the presence …

Winter fence posts and a tired dog

In an ideal world you’d knock fence posts into the ground in winter or spring. This is because the ground is still wet and is comparatively soft. Not only that but because the ground is soft you can use a fence post with a larger diameter. I admit it’ll take more knocking in, but it’ll …

The tick-box fairy

I was just reading a piece by Sir John Timpson. Somebody had written in saying that he was losing the will to live because of all the box ticking rubbish that came across his desk from compliance officers and others. The wise answer Sir John gave was hire a box ticking officer who did all …

Shear bolts, Border Collies and Summer

Every so often something happens and it reminds you of something else, and that reminds you of something else, until before you’ve finished you’re fifty years away and wondering where the time went. Last night, just before it got dark, I thought I better water some bedding plants somebody has planted. As I stepped outside, …