Over the Farmer's Gate Read Online Free PDF

mid-afternoon I had ploughed, to use a technical term with which a few of you will be familiar, bugger all. A piece on the plough broke (it’s surprising how long it takes to go six miles to fetch a spare part), but then all fell into place and away we went.
    So I started to relax and look about me, wondering where all the wildlife was – there was none to be seen. Not even the compulsory flock of seagulls.
    We’re a long way from the sea here but there are local seagulls that live on a pool. Local legend has it that they have never been to the seaside and therefore are not to be trusted.
    To get back somewhere nearer to the schedule I had in my mind, I ploughed on into the evening. There was nothing to be seen and then suddenly, at about eight o’clock, standing on the ploughed ground just ten yards away, was a solitary lapwing.
    He, she, whatever, didn’t move and as I passed and re-passed,I started to agonise over the possibility that I’d ploughed a nest. I’d been ploughing 20 acres in a 40-acre field. The other 20 acres will be left with last year’s stubble for wild birds to nest in. It would be ironic if this lapwing chose the wrong 20 acres to nest on. Then its mate turned up and the pair spent their time on the unploughed area. As far as I could make out, I’d disturbed the pair of lapwings and a pair of skylarks.
    The lapwings are more of a concern. They are the first pair I’ve seen lately, and we’ve plenty of skylarks.
    I drove home late in the evening hoping that there would be time for them to make a fresh start.
    With time to make up to get back to my schedule, it was a very early start the next morning. I set off to plough just as it got light. First on my list was a lovely white owl, still busy working the hedgerows, I could easily have stopped to watch it if I’d had the time.
    The pairs of lapwings and skylarks were still there but before long a heron arrived and was soon gorging itself on worms.
    Then down the valley, effortlessly gliding like stealth bombers came a pair of red kites. They circled me a couple of times, not looking for food but to check on the quality of the ploughing. The ploughing isn’t bad if you don’t look too closely at what I did at the start, and off they went down the valley. They exuded aloofness and superiority as they went on their way.

    EVERY year we try to get away for a few days’ holiday in May. The holidays seem to get shorter and shorter as we try to sandwich them between our B&B guests departing and the next ones arriving.
    We always seem to have guests leaving the day we go and new ones arriving the day we get home. It becomes quite criticalwithin our own travel arrangements about what sort of risers the departing ones are, and, if they are a bit slow in the mornings; will it affect our own travel arrangements?
    You sometimes sit there, bags packed and in the car, listening to them taking a leisurely breakfast, to which they are perfectly entitled, and you feel like going in and asking: ‘Well are you going to eat that sausage or not?’
    I sometimes think we’ve got our priorities all wrong, but we seem to manage.
    This year we went to Ireland, somewhere we’ve been lots of times before, but decided this time to go to the north.
    We’ve never been to the north before and very beautiful it is, too, I recommend it. There’s a lovely ride that follows the coast north of Larne, I think it’s the Antrim coast, and, late afternoon one day, we stopped in a small village for a cup of tea.
    Well, you can have tea at home, can’t you, so we decided to have some Guinness. We were on our second, or was it our third, when a big man in a black suit comes in and starts drinking at the bar.
    There’s me, busy at my people-watching, and I see that he is vigorously chewing at something he keeps pulling out of his pocket. He’s a bit of a people-watcher as well and before long he’s watching me watching him.
    At first I think he’s not best pleased, but he