Townie born and bred, townie on both sides right back as far as we've done the family history.
But from before I could even speak I have always wanted to be with animals, always wanted to be outside - and in the woods and fields, not the streets
, always been the person people bring problem animals and animal problems to, always knew where the badger sett was and could find wildlife and sign of wildlife in the woods.
On holidays on farms as a youngster, I'd be up and out at 6am, helping the farmer in the byres for hours before the rest of the family rose. Always wanting to stay and work on the farm, not join the family on a trip to the beach or whatever.
We all assumed I'd be a vet, and I trained for it, which included doing farm practise in my late teens.
Loved that
Book larnin' turned out not to be me - not good at remembering facts - so me and the vet course gave each other notice to quit.
Got a summer job on one of the farms I'd done farm practise on.
Loved that
Good at it, too.
But, failed to get a permanent job in farming, needed to be earning a living, got a job in computing.
20 years on, divorced and redundant, decided to go back to that crossroads and take the other turn.
I often wonder how things would have turned out if I had got the job on the pig farm in the first place. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I should always have been a stockperson. Growing up, a townie child of townie parents in a townie school, I didn't know you could be, thought you had to be born a farmer to do that, I guess. (And maybe you do.) And I seemed to be clever academically, so being a vet seemed the logical path. Not right for me though.
Doing what I do now feels like coming home
BH is the son of a farmer, and the grandson of a farmer. Luckily for him, neither of his siblings wanted to farm, and even more luckily for him, neither of them thought they ought to get a share of the farm since BH had always worked on it and they hadn't.
We see a fair few farms locally being sold by the offspring of the deceased farmer, all parties wanting as much money as possible, hence going along with the agent's advice to sell it in lots to incoming horse-owners etc
. The son-who-farms is sometimes near suicidal at this, seeing the entity his father and he have nurtured over the decades disintegrated for mammon, but sometimes even the farming sibling goes along with the sell-for-the-most-money approach, as his/her share will only make a contribution to buying a farm for him and his family. Such a shame.