The end of an era! Having enjoyed every moment, for the past ten years, of filling this back page with fables and foibles from Coopers Farm, the time has come to bid you all a very fond farewell.
Looking back has been a great reminder of the many ups and downs of being a small-scale livestock farmer here in the High Weald, a remarkable patch of south-east England and the best preserved example of a mediaeval landscape in northern Europe.
Over the years we’ve tried our hand at just about everything: cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, bees and – the least successful of all our enterprises – goats. While sheep and cows graze on grass, goats browse and will have a go at eating almost anything. Armed with this useful information I was advised that they would be the perfect solution to keeping all our rough verges and overgrown patches in order and so much more organic than a strimmer. So I sought out two goats pre-trained to be on a chain and thought they could be pegged out on a different patch every day and goodbye to the brambles, nettles and docks. None of it. Within ten minutes they had wound around each other and created an unholy tangle of goat and chain. They did this on repeat. The only time they did indeed browse was when they escaped and had a hey day in my herbaceous border, treating it like the pick and mix counter in a sweet shop.

Even though we no longer have pigs, they were a huge joy. Gloria and Sybil, two wonderful spotty Oxford Sandy and Black pigs, unforgettable characters, lived happily in the woods. We hired a boar a couple of times a year and hey presto, three months, three weeks and three days later – pigs are very exact in the gestation department – they would deliver a bundle of shiny plump piglets.

 It has also been a hoot corresponding with those of you who have enthusiastically responded to my scribblings

I think fourteen was the record. It was all very straightforward and even profitable – a rare occurrence in farming – until outside influences got involved. After the Forest of Dean, the High Weald has the highest populations of Wild Boar in the country. Word got round that there was top totty in the woods at Coopers Farm and soon the boar started visiting.

Gloria and Sybil obliged but instead of producing squishy plump Oxford Sandy & Black piglets we got wily, stripey, lean wild boarlets that stayed with mum a few weeks before packing their spotty handkerchiefs and pushing off into the undergrowth never to be seen again. And there went our profit!
But it isn’t just about the animals. It has also been a hoot corresponding with those of you who have enthusiastically responded to my scribblings, none more so than Tim, who he informs me catches the early train from Wadhurst and looks forward each month to gleaning useless snippets on the joys or a rural existence. And then there was petrol-head Charlie, who complained that I never wrote about machinery – not surprising as apart from the on and off button, my knowledge in this department is zero. And loved the chat with Mrs Collins about old Sussex rural vocabulary such as bishy barnabees (ladybirds), flittermice (bats) and especially lood (large chunks of food).
Yep, a very entertaining ten years. I’ve really enjoyed every minute of it and to all of you who have turned to the back page for some rural flim-flam mixed in hopefully with some fascinating facts, thank you.