Will’s World: The real power delivered by farming generations

As I get older, I find myself thinking about my grandparents more and more.

How I wish I could have tea and biscuits around the farmhouse kitchen table with them all to discuss world events and update them on everything that’s happened since they’ve been gone.

I don’t suppose they’d comprehend the current cost of farm inputs, let alone the price of machinery, and I’m not sure how I’d even begin to explain some of the everyday technology we all just take for granted on farms these days. 

And where do you even begin with how smartphones have changed all our lives?

See also: Video: 90 and Counting: Mixed farmer, Frankie Turner, Leicestershire

Telling tales

The thing I’d like most is telling them about my numerous daughters. Only the standard things, like how they’re doing in school, the sports they play, and what their personalities are like.

I know they’d love to hear it, and I can picture them all smiling throughout the conversation. I hope my grandmothers would also like that we named two of the girls after them.

We’re fortunate on multi-generational family farms to be able to get to know our grandparents so well, aren’t we? Although of course we don’t understand that when we’re young.

When I consider how much time I spent with them growing up, and how they each individually affected me, I now realise that it’s one of the best things about the incredibly rich and varied tapestry that is a farm childhood, and I’m so very thankful for that.

Now I have a different perspective, as I get to see our girls interacting with my parents on an almost daily basis. It’s wonderful to see how their relationships have developed over the years, and I’m sure in the future they’ll hold those memories as dear as I do.

I remember once when the old man was in the workshop with one of them when she was very little, and I could hear her asking him constant “why?” questions, the way small children do.

A man not known for his patience, it was hilarious to hear the rising level of exasperation in his voice as he answered them all, one by one, and I laughed for hours about it.

I’ve also got a great photo, taken around the same time, of them both wearing matching Massey Ferguson overalls, which I’m sure she’ll treasure one day.

New roll

Recently, when the present Mrs Evans and I were away for a weekend, we were thrilled to receive a selfie from our eldest daughter of her and the old man together in a tractor cab, with the caption: “Guess who just rolled the back field?”

I’m not sure why that made me feel so happy, but it did. Perhaps it’s just the continuance of a family legacy on the land or maybe, as usual, it’s just me overthinking things.

From a practical sense, there’s the childcare issue as well, and I don’t know how we’d manage without my parents being on standby for the school run or taking them to their various after-school clubs, especially at busy times of the year.

The old dear will drop everything to come and help if we need her and, as with most family farms, is very definitely the one who keeps us all on the straight and narrow, superstar that she is.

I’ve no idea which direction our girls will go in the future, if they’ll be farmers or not. But ultimately, whatever they do or wherever they end up, they’ll have an awful lot of family farming childhood memories to carry with them.