Will’s World: Fate, futility and 14 inescapable farming truths

No matter which country you live in, or whether you have livestock, crops or both, there is a cast-iron guarantee in farming that anything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong.

Depending on where you’re from, you might blame these events on Sod’s Law or Murphy’s Law, but I prefer to use my own phrase for them: Worldwide Truths of Farming, or WTFs for short.

About the author

Will Evans

Farmers Weekly Opinion writer

Will Evans farms beef cattle and arable crops across 200ha near Wrexham in North Wales in partnership with his wife and parents.

Read more articles by Will Evans

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Of course, I have far too many WTFs to list all of them on this page, and I’m sure you have some of your own too, but here are a few of the ones that I think are the most inevitable.

1. It can be the most gloriously blue-skied and still May morning when you start putting the side sheets up on your silage pit, but by the time you’ve finished there’ll be a raging hurricane happening and you’ll be clinging on for dear life to stop them ending up in the next county.
2. When moving cattle or sheep from one field to another, there’ll always be one that either gets stuck behind the gate and left behind, or just turns around at the last possible moment and runs back to where it came from. You’ll swear.
3. The very second the thought enters your head that you might get the combine or forager out of the shed, and no matter what positive forecasts your 15 different weather apps have given you, it will start raining non-stop for a week.
4. On a baler there will always, always, be one knotter that gives you trouble. You can replace every single part on it, but it will still give you trouble.
5. You’ll only catch your waterproofs on a barbed-wire fence or put a fork through your wellies when they’re less than a week old.
6. If you’re going to get a random inspection for anything, officials will turn up on the busiest and most stressful day of the year. It’s as if they’ve planned it.
7. If you should have a fault or breakdown on a relatively new piece of kit, it will be the first time the dealer has ever seen anything like it. They will tell you this with a perfectly straight face.
8. If you’re going to run out of anything, it’ll be on a Saturday afternoon.
9. If any of your stock are going to get out, it’ll be on a Sunday afternoon.
10. If you have a blocked coulter while drilling, it will only happen in a field on a slope with a low hedge next to a busy main road so that every single neighbour within a 10-mile radius can see when they drive past. They might mention it to you on occasion.
11. If a cow is going to do the splits in the collecting yard or parlour, it’ll be on Christmas morning, shortly before the in-laws are due to arrive. Though if you’re honest, you’ll have mixed feelings about it.
12. You’ll always wish you’d put another two bays on that shed.
13. At some point in the winter, you’ll utter the words “what we really need is some good hard frost”. A week later you’ll curse yourself as you carry the 40th watering can of boiling water across the yard.
14. If there’s something a sheep can get stuck in, it will get stuck in it (I suspect this one is actual science).

There’s one WTF that’s absolute for all of us, though – you can’t possibly be a farmer without having an ironic sense of humour.