Mners who grew up on a (pastoral) farm...what was it like?

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I just wonder. Bookyand media and whatnot, make it look like an idyllic childhood. Wandering around the cow shed, trying not to trip over the chickens...stray lambs in your massive kitchen next to the huge range cooker etc.

What was it really like?

Smelly and not all that pleasant much of the time!

I lived on one farm which was part of a larger number of farms owned by the farmer. So it wasn’t our farm. It was a fairly businesslike operation with large numbers of workers, vehicles and animals. It wasn’t industrial farming at all but not a Croft.

It was very beautiful scenery-wise but it was a difficult life in some respects. We had water in a well pumped into the house and the house was part of my dad’s wage so there was considerable uncertainty. Him retiring meant being made homeless.

The numbers of people randomly on the farm, expensive and dangerous equipment and our relative isolation put paid to any romantic ideals really.

Having said all that, there were lot of nice things

Oh! And given that it wasn’t our farm and that animals were large in number we didn’t have pet lambs and such - that would have been daft!

I say all this and I know others who lived a much more gentle version - I had cousins who gambolled around hand rearing lambs and the like. I suspect it depends on the job specific situation

As children we wanted to live on a housing estate in the centre of the village so we could go to the park/hang out with friends!

However looking back it was a lovely upbringing and parents never had to leave to work so were always around. However it very hard work (dairy farm) and the animals needs came before us. No family holidays, Christmas day governed by milking and things like BSE/ foot and mouth were tough etc ... But great sense of community and couldn't imagine growing up anywhere else.

Oh yes!!!

Christmas couldn’t start until the cows had been seen to. HFM and BSE were terrifying.

I do remember my dad coming in from work for lunch though. He would have a bowl of cereal and a snooze before heading back out. He was ALWAYS able to come to collect me from nights out as he was never asleep because cows

Farm in rural NI near the border in the 70/80s - army, helicopters bombs & caution were a big part ! Also very hard work, long hours and little money - DDad worked a couple of jobs as well as the farm DMum found the loneliness crushing with no one around and small children. But I remember it fondly, I wasn’t able to have a pony so used to pretend the heifers were ponies.

I had fleas as a child and the dogs were my constant companions.

I didn’t grow up on a farm but I grew up in a farming community and both my grandfathers were farmers.

It was smelly and dull.
How I longed to have another child knock on the door for me like I saw on the tv.

Everything smelt of cowshit, all the time.

As a child the absolute dream, my parents work incredibly hard and as above animals have to be sorted first regardless of Christmas and birthdays! I was late for my wedding as a cow was calving! But the happiest of childhoods. We frequently had pet lambs and calves. It really was the dream.
As a teenager not as great, miles from anywhere, reliant on parents for lifts, but I learnt to drive as soon as possible, moved to a major city at 18 and then back home bringing DH and DC with me at 30 as I wanted my children to have a similar upbringing.

😂 I was jealous of the children on the housing estate who could play out together too.

On a farm but lots of siblings so never short of company. Both parents always present. Spent a lot of time outside with my dad. Old fashioned days so brothers worked hard with physical work and to be honest l did very little. Feel very nostalgic about it all now and have lots of lovely memories which are specially triggered in Summer. But l never wanted to farm and never envied my brother who took on the task after my dad retired.
Think l appreciated it more in hindsight as all excitement seemed to be in town.

I grew up in a very rural area and spent a lot of time on friends farms so I probably had the best of both worlds, our house was very isolated with just two other houses so a garden not a farmyard.

I often helped the nearest farm take their cows down for milking and used to feed the calves and collect eggs. Friends of ours used to enlist everyone for hay making so we spent a lot of time there in the summer holidays, along with more helping with cows and calves and egg collecting. I loved every minute of it.

I just remember feeling lonely. I used to dread the school holidays because I knew I wouldn’t see anyone to play with and longed for friends who lived close by.
When I was little I liked caring for the lambs and calves, but it was often hard, cold wet work, even at a very young age.
I never wanted that life for my children.

Pros:
-Friends saw it as a fun house because of animals, loads of outdoor space for trampoline, swings etc
-Sunny days it was nice to go and sit in the fields with the cows
-Baby animals are cute, let’s be honest
-Parents at home all the time

Cons
-Parents at home all the time (yes that’s both pro and con depending on your age/mood 😂)
-Winter was dull, cold and loads to do outside so animals came first

• so smelly, couldnt so much as walk through the milking parlour without needing a shower as you smelt like milk/poo
• lonely being away from all the other kids in the village
• parents could never have time off so limited holidays

Mixed farm principally horses. Beef calves. Someone else's sheep. Ponies were my transport.

As a kid when all my siblings had gone off to boarding school it was very lonely.

Never allowed to lie in past 7.

I have your dream life now. 12 sheep, chickens, ducks, 2 ponies, cats. I hand raise lambs as necessary (last 3 years). In the winter during lambing I'm up at 5 to do the sheep before leaving for work. Confinement was good for us. It's hard.
And we make a significant loss. But eat our own produce mostly.

Teens no longer want to ride so ponies semi retired. It's fine on a small scale but it's a real tie having animals.

Loving these stories, so interesting. I grew up in a big city and used to have a daydream about living on a farm. I used to love these books about a girl called Mandy, her mum I think is a farm animal vet and she’s always rescuing lambs and hand feeding them and that sort of stuff. I’m a bit devastated to find out it isn’t all frolicking with calves in a meadow!

Animals always the priority, we kids were always second (which we resented at the time though I understand now). Especially hard on Xmas day because we had to wait until the animals were done.
Very rarely able to have any kind of holiday because someone had to take over/ stay behind.
Standards of hygiene pretty poor - everything permanently dusty and covered in animal hair (which I cared less about then, but wiggs me out now)
Endless bloody chores - kids responsible for feeding cats/dogs/chickens/ducks/lambs/calves etc. Plus older kids looked after younger ones/babies because the adults minded the animals.
Pretty remote so very convoluted journeys to school. At secondary it involved a walk, a minibus taxi and then a school bus. Sometimes the school heating broke and the buses were sent straight back - that involved a very long walk home from the bus stop in school shoes through snow.
As a teenager it was hard to join in the peer group due to needing lifts etc.

Pluses were huge areas to roam & just being trusted to mind ourselves.
Lots of exiting nooks and crannies to explore.
We got to drive machinery - i was driving a tractor at hay harvest at age 13 (isn't allowed now though).
Any number of cute baby animals to play with
An understanding of life and death - raw in tooth and claw.
Healthy food - mostly produced on the farm - I didn't try macdonalds until university because there wasn't one nearby.

As a teenager it was hard to join in the peer group due to needing lifts etc.

This. I remember when I was about 9, Mum had picked us up from school for some reason. We stopped at the corner shop, and people from my class were playing there in the street, and I was allowed to play with them for a short while, and it was one of the best evenings ever, because I was normal.

The smells can be bad (silage effluent being the worst,) but then I do get a pang of homesickness these days, if I get a whiff of cowdung...

Spending entire days out playing in fields, just coming home when mum rang the bell for tea.
A peaceful day being interrupted by ominous phone call, followed by 2 hours chasing escaped cows round the village (my poor sister's first period was during 3 hours futilly chasing cows up a massive hill)
All the local farmers helping each other out with pulling silage etc then coming in for massive tea and gossiping non stop.
Coming home from school to find blood everywhere after another one of dad's little accidents
Feeding baby calves with fingers and bucket of milk

Downside, never had any money or holidays. Also living 20 miles from friends, always needing someone to let you stay over to go out. And I was quite different from the other practical farm kids. Now happily living a city but still get to come stay, kids love it here.

Exh grew up in this way & we lived on his family farm for 15 years.

YY to the smell and the animals coming first. But the hardest bit - as pp above - was the social isolation. OK when the kids were small, a nightmare when they got to 12 or so. They started being left out of stuff, badly. And no chance at all of normal teenage spontaneous hanging out, everything had to be preplanned due to lifts etc. They were starting to be really socially isolated.

Moved to a town when we split. Kids loads happier. Still go to the farm & get the good bits without the daily grind/isolation.

Animals always came first - pets and farm animals
No one ate before the animals were fed, no one went to bed before they were all tucked up for the night
If the weather was bad enough for us, it was bad enough to get out and make sure they were all ok

I was very horsey but they were my responsibility from as early as I can remember. Mucking out, turning out, haynets, water buckets
I think I was probably verge strong for my age..! I could carry a bale of hay or 2 full water buckets from the age of about 9

And just the acceptance that there would be farm work to do most days
It was normal to spend a whole day as a family trimming the sheep’s feet, or mending fences

It wasn’t ‘hey kids, would you like to do xxx’
It was ‘get your boots on, we are doing xx’

We didn’t have playgrounds or leisure centres or anything, but it was a very rural village so no one within 30 miles had any of that
We did have a huge garden where we made obstacle course for us, agility courses for the dogs, that sort of thing

Very few holidays, and they were nearly always going to see and stay with family who were also farmers, so it would be more of the same work but with our cousins..!
One of them had a quad bike so that was always a treat

It might have looked like a really dangerous environment to outsiders but safety rules were obsessive around machinery, hay barns, guns, livestock

I don’t miss it but I get really nostalgic when I see programmes about lambing!

There are few people talking about isolation however joining a Young Farmers club as a teen was great. You can join between 10 and 28, it gives you a tight knit social circle with loads of activities and people who are in the same position.

Where I was, YFC wasn't that fun till you were old enough to go to pubs, and we were still reliant on lifts, so I suspect a lot of it depends where you are.

Coming home from school to find blood everywhere after another one of dad's little accidents
Wait... what??

Boring and cold.