sad times

The end of my arable farming career passed yesterday without celebration. As the combine completed the last strip of wheat that signalled the end of harvest on my land, I was not sure how to react. normally I am very pleased to finish harvest and have all the crops in the barn, but not so this year. The combine will be cleaned and serviced and delivered to its new owner, the rest of my kit has been sold and will leave the farm shortly.

Next week someone else will till the soil and plant the seed, next year someone else will anxiously watch the weather forecast, and next year someone else's combine will harvest the corn. Obviously as a big tough farmer I do not show emotion, but somewhere inside of me, a little tear was shed. Sad times.

As a child I used to love playing in the crops, or sitting on my grandads lap in a tractor and helping the men feed the pigs. My favorite photograph I have is of me as a toddler with a little red cap on feeding the pigs with my grandad, he used to scold me if I gave one pig all the food so i could watch the other pigs squeal trying to get to it, but nonetheless he still bought me a little child sized feed scoop so that I could help him. Good times.

These things and slowly the people too, are just memories now, a haze in my past. Golden rose tinted images flash frozen in my mind, which sadly grow fainter with age and all too soon the reality will be blurred with the fog of time.

I wonder what if any farming memories I will leave for my children? are they are too busy with ipods and computer games, and too young to realise that the world is irrevocably changing around them, or is it just my world that is changing and I should just accept it?

Are they forming there own memories that they will look on when they grow old? what are they? I hope they are good ones, Its always the little things, like the Winnie the Pooh wallpaper that I had as a child or my grandmas fry-ups, at the time they where not important but there significance grows with teh passing of time.

On Tuesday night I completed my first public speaking engagement, giving the after dinner speech to the Agricultural Valuers Association's agm. I came away hungry as unfortunately the speech was actually after dinner and I was to nervous to eat much beforehand! I thought though that asking for a doggy bag to eat afterwards would give the wrong impression.

My talk seem to be well received, in fact one person commented to me afterwards that most people give talks about how brilliant there businesses do and how clever they are, he though it most refreshing to hear about how somebody has cocked everything up and is actually a really rubbish farmer. My audience left cheered up hopefully that however bad there businesses may be coping during the recession at least they are better farmers/businessmen/consultants/advisers than I am.

I am available for speaking engagements, I just ask that my fee be paid in the form of double helpings of pudding, payment due immediately on completion.