All Hands to the Plough

A real burst of early summer at the end of last week,sun and temperatures in the 20s,just right for the start of the ploughing season. They usually get this done in time to start planting the first of the Maize (corn on the cob) at Easter.

The sound of a tractor, quite close, caught my attention and I could see the dog, that connoisseur of all things fecal, standing quivering with excitement in the doorway. Looking out I saw that it was Muddy, our farmer neighbour, muck spreading, on the bit of ground across the lane, that he uses as a sort of kitchen garden. As I stood there he emerged from a great shower of shit with a grin and a cheery wave.

We call him Muddy partly because his farmyard is always a morass of deep slimy black mud but mostly because his name is "Lafitte" ( La Feet); thus Muddy La Feet! Not original, from the Pink Panther I think!

He spends a disproportionate amount of time on the kitchen garden, not I think because of choice but because of the awkward site. It's only about the size of 2 tennis courts and bounded on all sides by barns and fences. He has no hope of getting a modern rigid pole plough onto it and seems to have an interesting collection of 1950s machinery that he uses on it. Even with these he has no room to turn the tractor and has to reverse to start every pass but even so he's currently leaving a generous coating of muck everywhere. The back of his barn is well spread as is the road; hence the dogs excitement as that's the way we walk some evenings!

Some of the kitchen garden is used for veg. but in the main it's planted with maize, for his wifes chickens I think. She's a wonderfull old lady about 4ft. 2ins in her high heels and weighing, at most, 5stone. I occaisionally 'phone her when their cows have escaped and she rushes out, armed with a stick as big as herself, and really lays into them. They are back in the field in no time and these are terrifyingly huge animals with horns like those Texas Longhorns one sees in the cowboy films.