Things you will only ever have experienced if you have lived with a farmer

[Scrowy]

These pesky beggars are everywhere at this time of year. In the washing machine. In every pocket and vehicle footwell and today in the sink

That and the ever pervading smell of particularly pungent silage.

Sheep farmer, I take it?

Not that I live with a farmer - just next door to one. I have been contemplating a "100 novel uses for baler twine" article but I am sure it's already been done.

Baler twine holds the world together (or at least the farming portions of it). Jolly handy when I took the dog out for a walk and realised I had forgotten his lead and collar and needed to come home via the shop on the main road!

Ah yes... baler twine. A farmers answer to pretty much everything. Broken gate... No problem hold it together with baler twine. Trousers falling down, fetch some baler twine and just tie it round your waist. Got a trailer frame you haven't got space for? Hang it from the girders in the cowshed with baler twine. Sorted!

DH lodged with farmers when he was a university student. One time he found the farm cat toying with a baby rabbit. DH got the bunny wunny off the cat, took bunny to the farmer. Farmer used the nearest heavy object to whack the bunny on the head & tossed the corpse into nearest compost heap.

I have more like that...

That countryfile is a 'must watch'every Sunday just so they can A) complain about it being 'townyfile' the next time that are in the presence of any other farmer and B) see the 'proper' weather for the week ahead.

@llijk, I'd like to hear more stories, please!
Having lived in the sticks all my life I did chuckle at your post..

....(another story)

Farmers also raised turkeys. (Baby turkeys are very cute). When they were almost grown, there was an unexpected female among the all boy turkeys; hen was an obvious bird to cull for family's own consumption. I went out to shed with the far-flung farmer's daughter (she marketed agricultural goods other side of England) to see the unwanted hen turkey.

Catch the girl turkey, string her up up by the feet, hold head up, stamp on the neck and commence plucking. Immediately While heart still beating, I'm sure. Chatting away the whole time about something completely unrelated.

I'm not even vegetarian after that.

Also the word 'sponging' has an entirely different meaning!'

Lljkk do you have any non-murderous farming stories?

Baby lambs/calfs/pheasants on, in, or in front of the Aga keeping warm!

can safely say the only pheasant that has been warming in my aga ladders has been in a casserole dish .

We've warmed lambs but never calves.

lol.
The smell of the turkey sheds, . I wasn't sensitive to it before I lived on the farm for a summer...

Farmer had a somewhat mature cockerel he had that was ailing. Farmer took a punt by measuring out a daily suitable for weight dose of some calf painkiller to give it to the cockerel. Who perked up amazingly well for 4 weeks then suddenly dropped dead. Farmer reckoned he gave that cockerel the best 4 weeks of its life.

I haven't experienced it but around here I see kids popping out of combines, at a pause during harvest. Nighttime harvesting looks really exciting because of the way the combines surge and lurch over the fields with blinding bright lights in front but darkness all around elsewhere, the cascading grain into the hopper, the roaring engines. I don't think there are many seatbelts inside, either

I explained to a fellow foreigner that sometimes manure heaps burst into flames in a hot summer. Manure heaps still don't stink half as bad as chicken or turkey sheds.

Scrowy those little fuckers are EVERYWHERE at the moment.

I can't wait for the bloody lambing to be over. I'm 19 weeks pregnant and with the earlys and now these ones I'm fed up of living on edge terrified of catching everything going. We vax against toxo but had 2 abort this week so no idea what's going on and I can't escape from the bloody mess!

When my brother got married, I asked him what he wanted our father dressed in (as dad only shopped for clothes at the feed merchant I was organising him). His request was that it should not include baler twine.

I remember well the days of the ever present castration rings, and dad only helped out lambing as a labour for orphan/triplet lambs exchange scheme to raise on our surplus milk.

WellErr I've been there (had a MC in the end anyway but it wasn't related) we have a stock of latex gloves now which come in handy when I am out and about on the farm. We have confirmed toxo from some sheep bought in this year... Which is shit in its own right but we are TTC again so it is a worry but equally I can't put my life on hold when it may take months and months anyway.

...I bet the majority of MN don't know what the little orange fuckers do.

Yep the calves never last long Scrowy, sharply ordered out into the shed with a heat lamp! 'but it's sooo tiiiiiny!' nope - out!

Sorry for your loss Scrowy

This is baby 3 so I should be a bit more laid back by now but I'm not. DH seems to be though, the number of times I've had to screech 'get OUT of here with those boots on!' has trebled in recent days

We've only got 100 or so left though thank goodness!

Have to add the last lot of pheasant chicks granddad brought in didn't last long either - he put them in a quite shallow box on top of the Aga and all but 2 jumped out and well, killed themselves (stone floor)

Think we have about 60 left. Got a pedigree out in the barn that's having a bit of a disaster which is putting a dampner on what has otherwise been a very straightforward lambing time. Perhaps I should have started a thread called 'surviving lambing time, instead! tried that last year and was ignored

Bailer twine uses made me laugh although in the festival / search & rescue worlds (no, not related to one another its just in involved in both! ), it's cable ties or gaffa tape the answer to every problem going

'I'm just involved' even!

As a lifelong city girl, this thread is so interesting! I know nothing about farms and had to google baler twine! What are your farms like? I imagine a life of early wake ups but amazibg fresh food cooked in a big terracotta kitchen :P i shouldn't be so naive though, my mum was born on a farm!

Not a farming girl. Guess for tails (and or balls) of newborns?
Baler twine seems to be the farming solution to y Engineering "Duck tape"

This is baler twine. Always to be found in a tangled heap. The knot from where it was tied round the bale always seems to be in the wrong place for which ever job you are trying to reuse it for.

Yes Dessert they are castration rings for tails and balls.

Fauche... Yes to early wake ups,

hmm fresh food. Interestingly a lot of farmers, particularly gents who haven't married and and are getting on in years have quite bad diets. Otherwise most families generally eat just like any other families in the country with possibly a few exceptions e.g fresh eggs or perhaps a joint of meat from an animal that 'went in the freezer' rather than off to the supermarket. The age of 'farmers wives' is dying out really, either a woman is just as likely to be involved in farming as her partner or she needs to work elsewhere off the farm to bring in additional income (and in a lot of cases can actually be the main wage earner)

This farming life on the BBC over the last few weeks (still on I player) has been a pretty accurate representation of modern farming. We've really enjoyed watching it.

Please write the baler twine article. It is a viral article waiting to happen.