Rural Life Has Changed

A Quarter Of A Century, You Say?

Then And Now

Around about 28 years ago, we made a big decision - and I wrote about it, seemingly 18 years ago, if the maths is right, like this:

A Blog Post From The Past

Ten long years ago, we made a decision.

It was a tough decision, made after long hours of sitting either side of our kitchen table, reminding ourselves hilariously of Mel Smith and Gryf Rhys Jones, looking at everything (or so we thought) from every angle (or so we thought)...

… so we saw the advert, in Farmers’ Weekly, that changed our life.

Neil applied for the job on a Wiltshire dairy farm, which came with a bungalow, a big garden, a chance to get back to the farm skills of his boyhood, and a new life, away from all the people who felt rather sorry for us…

.. the job was part time, nearer to full time in winter, nearer to no time in summer, with very cheap rent on a house, so we knew we’d start up some little rural business, to see us through. We thought, we wrangled, we talked into the night. We decided to go.

Cashing in everything we could find, we bought an old, short wheel base Land Rover. We packed a rented truck, the Land Rover, and my little car. Neil’s dad and brothers drove down with us, Neil’s mum came in the car with me and H, who was poorly…

…and then, one September morning, in 1998, we woke up, in a new place. The sun shone, the wind blew across the downs, we looked out of our windows at majestic hills and wild woods (a year later, I was to be told, don’t worry, if you go into labour and it’s all happening too quickly, we’ll Air Ambulance you...!) and everything, everything in the world was different.

Martinsell Hill, Wiltshire by Rebecca A Wills, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Before The Big Move

And oh, how different it was. Neither of us was a ‘townie’. I was born in a city, but moved out at 12. Neil was raised in Cornwall, uprooted at 10 and resettled in a village in Buckinghamshire. However, both my Warwickshire roots and his Buckinghamshire ones were being encroached upon, and had long since lost any true rural character.

Despite that, the life we were living in Bucks was still, by today’s standards, decidedly bucolic.

For one dusty summer, we lived in tied accommodation on the estate where we both worked, that is to say, in a single story thatched gatekeeper’s lodge, and next door to Neil’s best friend and his partner, Claire. Next, we moved into a thinly disguised shed in the back garden of The Old Rectory (every village has one!) in a hamlet of about twenty houses.

We kept chickens, and were introduced to the notion of ‘brown hens’ - in other words commercial hybrids - having once driven about 8 hours round trip in a borrowed vehicle to purchase 4 pure bred Marans. Why we would do that I can no longer recall.

Claire and I picked up 25kg sacks of bread flour from Heygates, a local mill producing ordinary commercial flour. When we moved, I discovered Doves Farm near Hungerford, which in those days had a farm shop attached. Claire came down to visit, and we went shopping! You would go to pick up your bulk sack of bread flour, and leave with all sorts of treats and oddities - rye flour, sunflower seed mix, spelt. It was enormous fun, but in some ways it’s exactly the change I’m lamenting, starting to happen. The commodification of rural life.

Today, we still keep ‘brown hens’, though they are mostly rescued via British Hen Welfare Trust, or Fresh Start For Hens - discarded from the intensive egg industry but happy to free range and produce eggs for a few years yet.

The shop at Doves Farm is long since gone, and now I tend to order from Shipton Mill, or through Matthews Cotswold Flour. They do have some wonderful products, and of course we can’t unlearn all we’ve found out over the years about the destruction of our land, and the poisoning of our food, and so it really does behove us to buy good, locally produced, organic flours - but I miss the days of simply hauling in a big old sack from the local mill.

A School With A Farm

Our first home in Wiltshire was on the dairy farm where our second daughter was born. I still pass it on the vet run, and it still feels quite isolated and ‘out of the way’.

Of course, all our plans and dreams were tiny things then, held close to our hearts, but we already knew that we wanted our children to grow up and go to the local comprehensive school, because it had a farm. A functioning school farm, which sold produce at the local farmers market. We later met the man (who had at that point been made redundant, sadly) who ran it. It was the most brilliant piece of a gloriously rural jigsaw, almost all of which is now gone. Once a month, Neil went out to the Stockman’s Club, I sold bread at the WI Market.

The farm (and the teacher) were discontinued - as it turns out, our children were home educated up until the ages of 13 and 10 respectively, and then went to a tiny Christian school for a while before hitting the mainstream. We had changed, and so had the schools, but you can’t help but wonder, if the school with a farm had still been there…

I don’t know if the Stockman’s Club still exists. I know they do up North, but I suspect we’re now too gentrified and professionalised to support such gatherings. The WI Market rebranded as Country Markets, and our local one was basically subject to a military coup by the organised producers of a village on the outskirts of Swindon, whose elbows were that sharp you were lucky to sell a thing, and I long ago gave up trying.

Renting The Land

When we moved across the Vale to our next home, we rented from the Crown Estate and eventually, we also rented the land from the Crown. At this point, the agent came to visit, and had a cup of tea with you now and then. We always paid our rent monthly by cheque and later direct debit, but some of the farmers did still attend the village pub (‘The Crown’ of course) on quarter days to pay their rent.¹

The Crown have since changed agencies, and they in turn have become much more corporate and distant. I do have to say though that we had the most fabulous two days away in Windsor with the entire rural estate last year, even meeting the King at a drinks reception, so we can’t complain too much!

Stores and Vets

I was excited to find not one but three farm stores in the area - not farm shops, as now, selling lovely food and highly priced baked goods, but farm stores, selling feed, equipment, and practical farm clothing. Two out of those three have now gone, and the remaining one has become a ‘country store’ which does just about supply our needs, but also sells an awful lot of wild bird feeders, dog toys, and garden centre staples.

In any case, all farmers seem to wear the same items of clothing, with price tags that quite frankly scare the horses.

When we first moved our sheep onto the land, we registered with a small veterinary practice in town, the senior partner of which lived in the village, not five minutes walk away. We registered our sheep, our ponies, our dogs, and our cats, and I do believe eventually, two rabbits.

I suppose twenty five years is a long time - though it doesn’t feel like it - but it now feels like another world! Although vets were on call, unless it was urgent, whatever creature we had that ailed, the reply was nearly always ‘Ed will drop in on his way home!’

We now have a small animal vet, a farm vet, and an equine vet, and none of them would dream of treading on each others toes! Insurance companies seem to have redirected the thinking on so many situations (and in small animal practice, helped along by certain TV miracle workers) that the cost of a vet visit is now alarming.

On the upside, our lovely farm vets answer a lot of queries free of charge via WhatsApp, and of course we can now send pictures and videos to get an opinion in no time.

The Fat Of The Land

Well, we’re old. We’re bound to be nostalgic! I think a lifetime of creating and curating our own country life has made us wise to some of the smoke and mirrors, but we do appreciate some of the modern developments that make life easier.

Regulation and restrictions have increased a thousand fold, and one of the biggest negatives is the presence of the Facebook Police. Anyone who has watched half an episode of Clarkson’s Farm feels qualified not only to rip you to shreds at the sign of the big blue F, but also to report you for imagined welfare breaches, and absolutely any sound made by your livestock. Some absolute joker recently reported a farmer to the Police and the RSPCA because his dog was ‘worrying sheep’. I mean he was there with the sheepdog, who was doing his job, keeping the sheep safe as they moved down a road. I suppose technically the sheep might have been slightly worried about whether their new pasture was up to snuff, I don’t know.

I hold my hands up to wanting to keep a lot of the new stuff, but in my heart, I want to be back with John and Sally Seymour, in The Fat of the Land, in a simpler world, where I can buy No Bull jeans for a tenner, and Ed will drop in on his way home.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, consider dropping some change in the Tip Bucket

1. Lady Day: 25th March (The traditional start of the agricultural and legal year)Midsummer: 24th June Michaelmas: 29th September (The traditional harvest end date and time for settling accounts)Christmas Day: 25th December - though the modern quarter days are deemed to be the first day of these months.