Sometimes you just need some time away. I have just come back to Brussels from a week in Scotland. I spent the biggest chunk of the week shearing sheep with a good friend of mine who is a shearing contractor in Aberdeenshire.
Shearing is a great leveller, and also binds people together. I first learnt when I was 16 after I took myself off to a course on a farm in Lancaster, and I am still friends with people from that time. I then tried and tried after that to get on to as many farms as possible. I hate driving machinery and I am also terrible at it, so my route to gain farm experience was through shearing. It worked.
You're either serious about shearing, or you leave the job to someone else. I love it. It is sweaty, hard work and most farmers are more than happy to call it a spectator sport, roll wool and make cups of tea instead. Shearing for me is a way to think about nothing in particular for a while - I am too busy concentrating on holding the sheep, making a good job and gently perspiring in the agricultural equivalent of running a marathon in a sauna.
 |
| I was hotter than the actual sun for most of the week |
I have done a fair bit of thinking since. Re-wind. I read this before I went away. I read this often. And this. I went to a meeting in Brussels on sustainable agriculture where the platform was dominated by an anti-pesticide campaigner with no room for moderate debate. I get into Twitter debates about animal welfare. I went to the Natural History Museum in London recently and saw their wildly outdated depiction of modern agriculture. Then yesterday I read this.
You know what? I don't recognise this as the farming industry I have just been practically involved in for the past week. I didn't see millionaire subsidy junkies; I saw farmers building their businesses on what of late has been little return. I didn't see huge faceless agribusiness operating; I saw family farms working hard to make sure their farm was in a better state for the future. I didn't see a barren decimated landscape; I saw rolling productive countryside and farmers bursting with pride in the sunshine. I was bursting with pride myself.
And here I am back in Brussels. I can still feel a twinge in the bottom of my back, and I know that this week away has done me some good. I am reminded why I do what I do. Next year when I go shearing, I think I'll invite George, Mark and Philip. We could get a holiday cottage together. I could take them to meet some farmers I know. I could teach them to shear sheep if they fancied it.
Wouldn't we have a lovely time in the countryside together?