To just ask you all to either wear some proper wellies and walk on the footpath, or stick to the sodding pavements

[flamingflamingos]

This is my field. It's winter wheat - it's been ploughed and pressed and drilled and rolled and just as it's starting to grow into what will be harvested for flour to produce bread, the general public have trampled it into the ground.

I understand the need to get outside, absolutely I support this country's network of footpaths - we have 6km of footpaths on this farm which are maintained so that everyone can enjoy the countryside.

But this is taking the piss. If you don't want to walk in the mud, don't walk in the countryside in January. Please, stop this. We are all accountable for how we behave.

i live in the country and bloody hate this!!

We have a really good farmer who maintains the foot paths really well and has even made a wonderful bridal path as well. The foot paths are good and wide and solid yet idiots just roam across the fields turning it into a bog, let their dogs crap all over the crops - walk into them to take selfies in the summer smashing all the crops down, they steal the crops.... it's bloody awful!! One farmer has taken to sitting in a hedge with a shot gun and fires into the air to scare the sh*ts out of the idiots.

People dont give a damn anymore. Maybe put the relevant part of the country code up?

You are bring entirely fair in your request and it is perfectly reasonable to expect.
We live in a semi rural area and have ensured our children know and understand and most importantly respect the countryside around us.

@CrotchBurn

Well I hope all these outraged country folk remember their haughtiness when we get back to normal and they come lumbering down for a "day out in the big city". Maybe they can start reading up on things like not standing gormlessly two abreast on the escalators and spending 20 min staring slack mouthed at ticket machines while the rest of us wait politely so we can get about making OUR living

You do know that without the farmers growing your food in the countryside, you wouldn’t fucking eat, right?

I went out to my long grass verge on our private road (which is not fenced off but signed as private) and picked up 3 more big piles of dog turds. 5 dog walkers went by in the 5 minutes I was out there. I am not saying those ones were responsible but it must have been someone.

We must have about 20x the number of walkers who come up here currently. There is no easy answer as a small part of it is rights of way on Ordnance survey maps (this is outer London) although 1 of those is a very very narrow path no one would ever use between the houses of 2 suburban houses and if we blocked off all the roads it would have to work around the public footpath small section and would not work as golfers using the golf course here when it is open have to have access too. I will just have to keep grinning and bearing it

You shouldn't have to because it's not your responsibility, but would it help to chuck some straw down and maybe an old plank or two in the worst spots? I don't know if there are rules against this type of temporary makeshift solutions on public footpaths, but it's what we did on various farms I've lived on (hippy youth) to keep pathways accessible during long wet winters.

Although from the picture, the actual path doesn't look too bad - nowhere near lost welly territory - the trampled field looks a lot more squelchy.

@Plussizejumpsuit

I'm actually laughing at the pp's getting all protective over their special knowledge of the countryside. The countryside is shit you're welcome to it.

I am massively anti private land ownership. This isn't the same as thinking we shouldn't grow food. Most farmers despite what they claim are just rich land owners. So stop pretending its about food loss wjen it's clear from pp's about our countryside you just don't want peasants on your land. Ffs

Wow, you are something special, aren’t you? 🙄😂😂

Agree with those suggesting an explanatory sign - it shouldn't be necessary, of course, but it would probably make people stop and think. It might even educate some, so you would in turn be doing other farm owners a favour! Good luck 🤞

Agree with those suggesting an explanatory sign - it shouldn't be necessary, of course, but it would probably make people stop and think. It might even educate some

People wouldn't take any notice. There's another thread running abut people who ignore signs asking them not to feed the horses, sometimes causing the horse serious damage by feeding the wrong things.

I was trying to remember how I learned how to behave in the countryside. I don't think anyone ever told me, I think I learned it from the books I read as a child - Arthur Ransome, for example, even Enid Blyton, showed how to be respectful of the countryside and the people who live and work there.

FlamingFlamingoes, you are absolutely NOT BU, I don't blame you for being fuming. The Countryside Code sadly doesn't seem to be a thing anymore; although it's actually bloody common sense! It's your workplace! I'd like to see what would happen if someone walked into a food production factory and cause damage to crucial machinery

Well, I put the electric fencing up yesterday PM (NOT connected to a battery, mostly because I didn't want someone trashing a battery) and this afternoon the posts had all been upended and tossed in a tangled mess one end of the field.

Pissed off is a bit tame really. I've put it back up, with a couple of CCTV signs and stuck a wildlife trail camera high up in a sycamore. It will drive me potty sending me a text every time someone walks past and triggers it but if it does pick someone up trashing my fence, it will be posted to the local Facebook page - don't hate the player, hate the game.

Suppose if that doesn't work it will get plugged in to the battery!!

I thought this was going to be a precious post - it’s not- how appalling for you. I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I want to volunteer to help you out, that's beyond ridiculous

God I'm so sorry @flamingflamingos - that's indefensible

Definitely connect the battery next time @flamingflamingos, then at least you know they got a belt or two out of it if they do manage to pull it down. I’d also suggest a few real fence posts in and among the plastic posts - makes it stronger and harder to pull down. Wrap the electric wire/rope/tape in and out of several slots/insulator attachments and make sure the fence is higher than the average person’s groin (so can’t be stepped over). The more of a faff it is to take down the more shocks they’d get and the more off putting it would be.

They should repeat those old Joe and Petunia country code cartoons.

yes. put the electric on, and at full voltage.

Sorry OP and yes that is awful. From the photo it is quite obvious where the path is and I am a seasoned walker but am not walking over fields at the moment because they are mostly very muddy. I just stick to the country lanes or pavements or parks/nature reserves where you are not trampling over someone's land and making the quagmire even worse.

Never mind plugging the battery in, are there any high voltage pylons in the vicinity? 500kV AC ought to be a reasonable deterrent. No need for the camera either, just wait until you smell burning.

Gutted to hear your fence has been trashed OP. It’s high time this country treated farmers with respect. As you say, you are growing food. Have we learned nothing from the empty shelves of lockdown 1? Trashing crops and pulling up fencing, letting dogs loose to s**t in crops and on grazing land is criminal, but it’s hardly surprising that when the culture we inhabit is generally dismissive of agriculture; milk prices, the open ended supermarket contracts, the entitled way occasional walker tramps through a farmer’s crop & livelihood.
I hope you catch idiot who vandalised your fence.

@MynephewR

OP that's awful!

Forgive me if I'm being dense, I've always lived in cities and know next to nothing about walking in rural areas, but why on earth do people choose to walk on a field rather than stick to footpaths? Surely the footpaths are there for a reason and you wouldn't want to be trespassing or walking through people's crops? I can't get my head around this. I love walking but it would never occur to me to walk on a field, especially when it's wet and muddy.

Another townie here - why? And wouldn’t they be fenced off?

Gee - I probably would have walked on what I perceived to be the ‘edge’ of the path. It is a bit confusing to townies. Why not get a cheap fence?

Oh my goodness, sorry - just seen that update re ripping up fences. That is defo NOT an innocent misunderstanding.
It REALLY WOULD be a good idea to run a country code workshop in city schools and a little awareness ad on TV for daft townies, but this is wilful destruction. So sorry y to o hear of it op.

I sympathise, OP.
One of the bridleways on our farm is becoming like yours, ever wider, muddier and the crops are getting damaged.
We work hard to maintain all the ROW across our land especially straight after cultivating but still get walkers deviating from the route into the field, or worst going completely off piste and claiming to be lost.
To the pp who suggested putting signs up, we've found they get damaged or removed.
I'm really not sure what the answer is.

Some people are just... I was riding one day with a friend in an area that's popular with walkers/cyclists/dog walkers
This small dog runs up (I'm talking tiny), runs around my horses back legs, under her belly and then sits in front of her back hoof. It was summer and I was petrified she would kick at a fly and injure it
Shouted the owners. And again. And again. They ambled across the field shouting fluffy to come, and it was the longest 5 minutes ever. They didn't seem to get one move and the dog would have been dead
My amazing horse stood absolutely still the whole time. Didn't even get a sorry or thank you off the owners

Wow @QueenPawPaws - kudos to your horse for behaving so impeccably! I used to ride in a park with a riding school, one that also has deer, so dogs weren't really supposed to be off lead if they couldn't be recalled. We were riding in and out of a line of trees when a dog came bounding up barking and getting in our way - some of the ponies were really freaked out but luckily for EVERYone concerned no one was hurt. The boss got really angry with the dog owner who was at least apologetic - I do not understand how some dog owners think they, above all others, have the rights for their animals to behave exactly as they want! Most don't, to be fair, but the few who do really give dog owners a bad name.