BY A FARMER’S CHILD

Most of us know a farmer. Some of us may even be blessed to be one or be the child of one. For those who live on farms, or live in town and drive out to work for someone who owns a farming business, I wanted to say this:

• Thank you for the bruises you get on your legs when you’re working in the yards with the sheep.
• Thank you for your tough hands that fix machinery and fences.
• Thank you for fixing pipes in the heat of the day so stock has water every hour of the day.
• Thank you for growing food for your stock, so it grows and then eventually feeds the rest of us Brits.
• Thank you for shearing your sheep, so ladies have wool to knit with for their grandchildren and to keep others warm.
• Thank you for the sleepless nights during seeding season and during harvest.

Some people seem to forget to take the five seconds needed to recognise that there are individuals busting their asses off to feed us.

Day in and day out.

Harvest has to be the most tiring and horrible time of the year:

• It’s the time where you wake up early in the morning and get started before it’s too hot. It’s putting out fires when bearings snap. It’s working with other people, working in chaser bins and trucks transporting grain to silos.
• It’s constantly watching the weather, if it’s too windy it’s safer to not harvest, just in case a fire breaks loose. You can’t harvest when it’s damp, silos won’t accept it.
• It’s going backwards and forwards in a field in a machine that doesn’t go so fast, for hours on end every day.
• It’s where you transport a truck load of grain that will make 42,000 loaves of bread that are worth over £84,000 but we only get £6,000 for it.
• It’s finishing late at night when your wife and children are already asleep, and the dinner that has been cooked for you is in the microwave or oven, so the cat doesn’t eat it.
• It’s falling asleep on the couch after dinner because you’re just trying to relax for a few minutes before you shower to rid of the itchiness.
• It’s that one day off every few weeks to spend time with your family but there’s always that something around the house that needs fixing, or there’s a special event to attend.
• It’s where your family is trying to cope around the house not seeing their dad/husband. That one empty spot on the dinner table that would normally be occupied.
• It’s sitting there thinking of your family and hoping they’re coping okay without you, and that you’re excited for it all to be over.

And once harvest is finished, relief washes through both you and your family. Finally! You’re together again!

And before you know it, seeding season starts again and you’re back into the routine with shearing and lambing and spraying weeds, as well as fixing those fences again.

Life doesn’t revolve solely around grain farming. There are other focuses for farmers: fruit and veg, dairy, cattle, piggery. Everything has its season and farmers are busy all the time.

So please, when you sit down with your spouse and children to eat tea, recognise the farmers who have worked hard so you can have food.

Thank your local farmers for working so hard to provide for so many people – for scraping together the money to help their dependents pay bills, pay for food and keep clothes on their backs.

It means a lot to us farmers and families of farmers – much more than you think.

Farmers don’t have to feed millions of people, they choose to.

Show a little more appreciation, it keeps farmers going.

Farmers rarely protest. Farmers look at Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion and laugh…

If farmers wanted to, they could make the shelves of London’s supermarkets and express stores empty within a day by blockading just one depot.

Farmers are too decent to do so.

Please thank your farmers. Do not do them down. Instead, support Britain’s farmers.

They deserve it.