Chez Farmer Tim's
Where a canapé is a roast potato, and cocktail attire is a Barbour.
On Sunday night I broke my winter rule about never going out in the country after dark. As many of my dear readers already know, despite the fact that I love socialising and meeting people, I am mostly allergic to accepting evening invitations when I’m at my farm in Gloucestershire. At the moment, sunset commences at around half past three in the afternoon and darkness sets in before four, at which point the idea of being situated anywhere but in my armchair beside the fire seems barmy. I am a human hedgehog, really, and as far as I’m concerned winter is for hibernating.
Imagine my distress then when I received a message from my neighbour inviting me to ‘Christmas drinks’ on Sunday night — for this was an invitation I was bound to accept: sunset or no sunset, three line whip, no excuses, I had to be there. You see, although my closest neighbour out here in the deepest darkest Cotswolds is neither duke nor lord, tycoon nor Beckham, he is a farmer, and that makes him the kind of VIP you spring out of your armchair for.
Let me tell you a little about Tim The Farmer, as he’s known in local circles. (Btw, surnames are rarely required around here. Why bother when Tim the Farmer is most easily distinguished from Tim the Vet and Tim The Terrierman simply by a job suffix?) Tim farms a bucolic few hundred acres on his family farm that adjoins mine, and, lucky for me, he also farms my land. The deal is simple, and a common one: for a ‘peppercorn’ rent of £1 a year, he gets to farm my land with his livestock. In return, the land is managed beautifully for me, and at far less cost than were I to manage it myself (which I couldn’t: yours truly is no farmer-ess, believe me). He raises majestic Red Devon cattle which live on pasture and hay, and rarely see the inside of a barn. He farms the land alone, having no employees, works three hundred and sixty five days a year (cattle don’t take Christmas day off from being cattle, you see), makes minimal profit (like many British farmers) and, come rain or shine, reliably appears every single morning on my farm on his tractor, usually in a boiler suit, wellies and a tweed cap, to check his cattle, mend fences, check water troughs, harrow the land or cut hay, among other things. If he’s not on his tractor, he appears on a wild-looking bay horse as he likes to trail hunt in the winter months with the local Cotswold Hunt, where he was a MFH (Master of Foxhounds, as it’s known) for decades. He is never without a twinkle in his eye, or a witty quip on his lips: he is one of those old-fashioned people who manages to be relentlessly cheerful despite everything. My farm wouldn’t survive without Tim to manage it. When you live in as remote a place as I do, a Reliable Farmer With A Tractor is non-negotiable. Tree fallen down? Call Tim. Muck trailer overflowing? I wonder if Tim’s about… Horse lorry broken? Tim will know what to do. Idiot brother-in-law from New York driven a flashy Tesla into a field on Christmas Eve and got it stuck in two feet of mud? S.O.S Tim (see clip below). Snowed in? Ditto. My gratitude to Tim overfloweth every day, and there was no way I was going to miss his party.
