Archived News

30th June 2008

The name of a book which our boys have read comes to mind just now, ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’.    We had a mixture of unfortunate and fortunate events this morning. 

To set the scene:  Laurence and I had a conversation about possibly changing his haircut next Monday, having already changed it from today, he then went off to London for an NFU Regional Board Meeting.

Warwick is working for us over the summer, a fairly laid back young man who seems to  sleep whenever he gets a moment and enjoys a laugh when things  go wrong, which is slightly disconcerting and not quite how everyone else approaches their work! 

After bedding up a pen of calves this morning Warwick went off to do another job and left the gate completely untied.

Later, there was call at our door and Claire the hairdresser (who had thankfully forgotten to erase Laurence’s haircut from her diary) was looking a little flustered because she has just come across twenty calves wandering out of the farm yard and down the A25.  

Whilst every other driver had manoeuvred around the calves and had gone on their way,  Claire, wearing a lovely floral skirt, Birkenstock sandals and red painted toenails with sunglasses perched on top of her head !!,  stood out in the road and directed the calves into a field of maize before coming to get me.  What a picture!

I went out into the yard and found four more calves wandering about, with the gate of the calf pen pushed wide open.  I ran up the top of the yard and out onto the road to check for any more stray calves and was horrified to see a car taking the blind bend at what must have been 90MPH and well over the central lines.  I had visions of him tearing round the next bend straight into a calf. 

Thankfully the stray calves remained within the maize field and were herded into a barn by Amanda and Simon whilst I coaxed the farmyard four back into the pen with my able hairdressing assistant holding the gate.  In the meantime Dick collected the group of twenty in the trailer and returned them to Manor Farm. 

This was totally preventable and a waste of 45 minutes for three members of staff, myself and our hairdresser!  I hope our young farm hand now realises the utmost value of two minutes tieing up a gate. 

Great team work and a level headed hairdresser rescued a dicey situation. Thank you. 

How lucky we are that the idiot driving the fast car wasn’t five minutes earlier.