Flindt on Friday: Turnips, tunes, treasures and almost tears

I was doing alright until I found the horseshoe in the Hangar field.

After all, my retirement from arable farming is not like a normal retirement – office folk keep going flat out until the last day, there’s a few glasses of warm fizz and a half-hearted card, and that’s it.

My retirement has been a long and gradual one. The last bit of arable sowing was on 30 March and the last tank of fertiliser was applied on 16 May.

See also: Driver’s view: Ralph Castle’s Virkar Dynamic DC no-till drill

There was the last day of spraying, the last acre of combining, the last lorry – it has been a long, slow wind-down, perfect for coming to terms with it.

Off the hoof

And then, a horseshoe. It was a suspiciously modern one rather than the gnarled dinner-plate ones that you usually come across. I wasn’t even doing “arable” work – I was in my new role as grass establisher for the landlord. But it was enough to break the dam of melancholy memories from working that field.

There was Paul Burnett announcing the latest Top 40 on Radio 1 – probably still on 247m MW back then (look it up kids), and on my little ITT radio, which sat nicely on the Ford 6600’s small toolbox.

There was Dad’s ill-fated attempts to outwinter the store cattle on turnips spun into the previous spring barley crop. Monster store cattle had no idea what an electric fence was, and would stroll straight through it.

And the storms of January 1990 saw the cattle off on a stampede round most of Hampshire as the poplars tumbled onto the proper fence, night after night.

A local Fendt dealer followed up an expression of interest with a demo, but neglected to tell me he was on the way, and arrived in the yard unannounced. A significant event, because it was one of the first calls on my new NEC P100 mobile telephone while I was drilling the Hangar. I suggested another day. I never heard from him again.

And down on the headland was where I first heard Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, but by then it was on FM through some expensive in-cab hi-fi – no tiny transistor radios anymore. That was just yards from first hearing Eminem’s Stan (the long version) and thinking I was getting a bit old for Radio 1.

Hunting ground

Then there’s the stuff you find as you work and walk ground: spanners, fossils, golf balls and, of course, horseshoes. And not just in the Hangar.

There’s 800 acres of mediocre Hampshire soil – some chalk, some gravel, some loam, some stiff clay – which has been slowly giving up its lonely secrets to me for decades.

No more. These little hints and memories of previous lives will stay undisturbed and forgotten from now on – assuming the grass seed grows away properly. Luckily, many of these fields will be down to public access – I know the Hangar will be, for certain.

So, I’ll still be able to have a stroll out there and enjoy the stunning evening sunset over Beauworth. But the chances of stumbling upon a freshly unearthed horseshoe? Nil. It’s melancholy, but not sad.

I’m very sad to stop Flindt on Friday, of course. For five years, I’ve been blessed with a constant stream of events and ideas to turn into 600 words of musings every week.

I’m going to miss the Hobnobs in the post, and the man-flu mints, and the kind letters. Thanks for them, and thanks to Farmer Weekly for letting me lurk on the back page. I’ll see you back in the middle pages in a few weeks.