Country Living with Francis Farragher

THERE are many serious sides to farming but the business does have its lighter moments, although at the time the humour may be lost on the victim. During a little chore last week, I found myself having a rather heated argument with a wellington which needless to say declined to make any reply.

Picture the scene. A bag of nuts on my back to feed the heifers in an outdoor pen which had taken a bombardment of rain that day.

Half-way across the pen, suction from the muck makes the sly move of holding onto the welling while foot and leg continue on their destination.

The result of course as might be guessed was one saturated foot and stocking covered in muck as the heifers closed in for their evening meal.

A sensible approach might be to accept one’s fate, take your beating and accept the fact that a saturated foot really isn’t the worst thing in the world, and especially so given that the much and water wasn’t at all cold.

There are times though when the reflex reaction creeps in and the victim decides to address the wellington in quite uncomplimentary fashion with a string of expletives flying out like bullets from a Tommy gun.

As if the mortification couldn’t get much worse . . . well then it did. The pen, being adjacent to a popular roadside pathway, is never a lonely place as there’s always someone passing by.

So, on that wet and mucky evening, the penny dropped that two respectable women who had been passing by at the time, were witnesses to my outburst on the wellington.