Brushes with Farming

I was the son of a sport-loving farmer. I inherited his love of sport, but was farming in my blood?

After agricultural college my father went to Egypt (then a British Protectorate) to, I believe but not know, to teach how to irrigate the desert with Nile water.

The evidence he left indicated that he spoke and wrote Arabic.

When the 1914-1918 war was about to break out, he returned to England, joined his territorial regiment, became an officer on Salisbury Plain and was sent to India. From there he fought in the very nasty Mesopotamia Campaign, was badly wounded, and returned to England to recover.

He started a chicken farm.

I was born in 1925 and spent, I suppose, an ideal childhood of countrypersuits on that farm.

The great depression descended upon us. Cheap eggs from Poland destroyed the chicken and eggs business. So he abandoned chickens for mushrooms - without success. He was unaware of successful business practice, so times were hard for us. He died through being given the cure-all of the time - radium.

The 1939-1945 war came. I went to America and returned when old enough to join the RAF as a potential pilot. Having been enrolled I had to wait for flying training. So, with the views I could help with food production in that time of rationing and that I wanted experience in farming, I took a job as a farm labourer. The constant worries of weather, dealing with cart-horses, rather primitive machinery, cattle and all the rest, convinced me that a post-war future in farming was not enticing.

I obtained a job as a prop-swinger and gained enough piloting experience to know that I would make a good pilot and a poor farmer.

The war over and, seeing the kind of person applying for permanency in the RAF and some of the bloodiness of returning aircrew from raids over Germany, I chose medicine. But two bouts of TB put an end to that.

Living now in the country, I was befriended by a farmer well known for his skill in making a fortune from hard-nosed farming combined with journalism. We would meet almost weekly to drink red wine and swap ideas. Through his auspices I wrote for a national newspaper and conducted a Gardeners' World programme on my garden and vineyard for the BBC.

The thought of farming never entered my head again, despite watching television programmes of lovely people with lovely farms and friendly animals making a farming life seem so pleasant.

I had not found it to be such, and glad that I never chose it as a career.