Years of talking to farmers changed how I see the ground. When that curiosity followed me home onto a winter windowsill, I learned that lane soil and pot soil are two different jobs.
A wet April morning, a man on his knees in a gateway fixing a water pipe, and me strolling past with a flask of coffee. A piece about what it means that my favourite view is the surface of somebody's working year.
I once opened a conversation at a gate by asking whether the path was a right of way. It went about as well as you would expect. Six seasons of gate conversations, one bad opening line, and what actually works when you meet somebody on their own land.
I put myself on a single track lane at eight on an August evening with trailers running flat out, and spent twenty minutes pressed into a hedge. Since then I plan around the farming calendar instead of pretending it is not happening.
A collie I was minding put up a flock of sheep in a bottom field and I could not call her back. Nothing was hurt. It could easily have gone another way. Here is how I handle a dog in farm country now, and why the lead goes on before the gate.
I misread a group of young bullocks one May evening and ended up backing toward a hedge with my heart going. Here is what I have learned since about reading a herd, choosing a line, and the one thing I got badly wrong about dogs and cows.
A March walk on a hill lane, a gate I thought I had shut, and sheep on the road two hours later. What that afternoon taught me about latches, hinges, and the difference between closing a gate and actually closing it.