Free Over the Farmer's Gate by Roger Evans Page A

on my way to see my daughter and her children.
    It doesn’t seem long ago that a full tank would cost £50. Last Sunday it was £72!
    This comes particularly hard for someone of a generation who, at one time, would have thought nothing of taking five gallons of red diesel down the fields to light a bonfire and if there were a couple of gallons left in the tin, throwing that on the fire as well, to save carrying it back.

    THUS FAR this season we’ve been lucky enough to take our two silage cuts in good order, and most importantly, in good weather. Those in the neighbourhood who farm beef and sheep, work to a different timescale.
    They tend to graze their grass fields in the winter and spring and take just one cut of silage and much of that is round bales.
    They probably number in the majority around here, so while we are watching the hot sun and very heavy showers speed the growth of our third cut of silage, they are in the throes of what must be quite a difficult season.
    Round bales wrapped in plastic were among the best things that ever happened as far as livestock are concerned. It took them from a diet that in many years was very bad hay to a palatable, nutritious feed of silage that could be made very simply in a 24-hour window.
    Once it was wrapped it was safe and the bales could be carted at leisure, whatever the weather, and stacked outside to feed during the winter as required.
    Even in a season like this it is possible to make good, round-bale silage. But one or two of my neighbours have still been tempted to try and make hay.

    I’ve never made much hay in my farming career. I’ve never had much luck in my life, certainly not enough spare to try haymaking .
    What these neighbours have been tempted to do is save the cost of the plastic wrap.
    ‘Forecast not too bad, those showers might not affect us, we’ll make hay of those two fields,’ I’ve been told.
    Now there are several fields around here that come into that category. They’ve been cut several days, successively soaked and dried several times, and they look brown and worthless.
    My wife’s late father used to be philosophical about making some bad hay. He used to keep a herd of Hereford suckler cows that were out-wintered and calved in the spring. If he had a bay or two of poor hay it was always considered good enough for the cows. Which was fair enough, but if he made all his hay perfectly he would worry about what he would give the cows, as good hay was considered too good for them! They would probably end up having to eat straw and swedes.
    I could never quite get my head around that. Probably he thought that some bales of good hay would keep until the next year, when he might not get much good hay at all but plenty that was good enough for the cows.
    I often used to help him feed them on Sunday mornings and wondered, as I threw wads of mouldy hay off the trailer, white with mould they would be, how the cows survived on their diet. But they did.

    I ALWAYS drive slowly through the small village where my daughter lives. It’s more of a hamlet, really – no shop, no pub – and the road through it doesn’t go anywhere in particular, so traffic is minimal and children can play in the road and adults canstand and chat in it.
    I often think that bypasses around most villages would be the making of them, taking traffic away and restoring peace and calm. I might put that in my manifesto.
    On the last occasion I drove through there was a man standing in the middle of the road with his arm outstretched, so I slowed down even more.
    Purposeful border collies then appeared from all directions, fully intent on their work. They popped out of this gate, over the garden wall. I hadn’t seen them but I knew there were sheep about.
    I recognised the collies. There were five of them and they travel with their owner everywhere in his Land Rover.
    He rarely lets them all out at the same time, as he explained to me: ‘Some of them like to eat sheep, some like