Opinion: Spending time with a ‘farming genius’

I’ve known Matty since he was 27, and he’s known me since the day I was born. We sit together and talk in the hospice.

He was once my father’s farm manager, although friend, confidant and soulmate would be equally apt. 

Sometimes, in a given field of work, a relationship between two people transcends the conventional. That was the case with my father and Matty.

See also: Opinion – my days of buying cheap heifers are over

About the author

Stephen Carr

Farmers Weekly Opinion writer

Stephen Carr runs an 800ha beef, sheep and arable farm on the South Downs near Eastbourne in Sussex in partnership with his wife and four of his daughters. He also runs a nearby pub with his nephew, The Sussex Ox, which serves the farm’s beef, lamb, (and fruit and vegetables from the farmhouse kitchen-garden in season) through its restaurant.

Read more articles by Stephen Carr

It would not be an exaggeration to say that for half a century they worshipped the professional ground each other stood on. My father, an entrepreneurial farmer and risk taker.

Matty, a genius at getting farm work done on time and at low cost so that all the risk-taking paid off. 

On the face of it, it was not an obvious perfect professional match.

My father was the eldest son of an East Sussex farmer whose family could trace its roots back in the county for centuries.

Matty had left the west coast of Ireland as a child loaded onto his father’s pony and cart.

His family had been driven to emigrate to England after a priest had marked a pig they had taken to market with a cross on its back “to be sold for the Church”. The final straw.

Ten years later and now aged 14, Matty was to be found working in the school holidays (and during much of term time) on my father’s farm.

It was the late 1940s and one fine harvesting day my grandfather visited the fields, and noticing Matty riding on a binder behind two horses, commented: “That looks like a useful boy.”

My father replied: “‘Boy’, did you say? There are 32 men on this farm and he’s the best of them.”

By the time my children were growing up, Matty had bought his own farm and had largely retired (one of his sons is now my farm manager).

He continued to help out at harvest time, however, even into his 80s.

He was, as my father called him, “the king of the harvest field” – able to push half-worn-out kit across large hectarages with breathtaking efficiency, mending breakdowns and motivating those around him.  

But while he might have retired, my daughters were still raised on “Matty stories” (as they still call them).

Not for these girls bedtime readings of Peter Pan or Swallows and Amazons.

Instead, it was tales of what it was possible to achieve on a farm with enough enthusiasm, courage and audacity.

What they loved about the stories was that each was laced with details of Matty’s strong rebellious streak, egalitarian spirit and love of adventure.

The qualities that regularly brought him into conflict on the farm with all sorts of people, from an officious policeman to an unpleasant gamekeeper or a rude retired major.

I continue to make my visits to see Matty in the hospice. We talk about my father.

He and I agree that neither of us would like to go back to the old days when things on the farm were so much more dirty and dangerous than they are today.

We also agree that him sitting in a chair all day, but still feeling tired, is not something either of us could ever have imagined.