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dancing james
Colin_the_Bald
@WillMelling
I've never talked about this before but I was raised in a farming family, as my father and grandfather had been, though, curiously, not the same farming family. We had a number of acres, some hectares and a few roods with the rest being square perches. Mostly pseudo-arable with some pig husbandry and a bit of cow wifery. My late brother (taken far too young in a threshing debacle) had been to agricultural college for a week and was able to bring in some more modern ideas but otherwise things were much as they would have been a century before. It was a family farm in the truest sense. Even the chap who came round every night to de-mud our boots and put the goats to bed was known as 'Uncle Bertie'. I also had a real Uncle Bertie who was something in the city, something else in the country and altogether indescribable when abroad.
Looking back now it seems an idyllic way to have been brought up. We weren't rich though we did have a lot of money and beyond that we had something much more precious than our varied portfolio of investments, we had a sense of community. With us at the top, the way nature intended. I clearly remember my Mother, when she would return from a month or two in London saying that the metropolis was all well and good but she couldn't wait to be elbow deep in a cow again. I later discovered that she was having an affair with the vet and the implications haunt me to this day.
Anyway, I hope this provides some context to the recent debates.