Farming Aquaintences!

I think it depends on your(or their) attitude towards whoever you ask for help from, it certainly goes a long way, I will help anyone, however they have to also help themselves.

I will also ask for help if I need it, but certainly do not expect to receive.

I don't like asking for help, but on the odd occasion I do I always find someone willing to lend a hand. Neighbours and customers alike.

And so it goes in return.

Yet in everyday life outside farming I find many people to be selfish and unhelpful. Only the other day I approached a busy road junction at about 5.30pm. A car was broken down with a young woman in the drivers seat and an older woman trying to push it onto the verge. The verge my side was wide so I pulled up, dodged speeding cars to cross and helped her push the car off the road. During that time we had two cars blast their horns in annoyance. One driver did stop - to tell us we were blocking the hazard lights as we pushed the car along. Very helpful.

An old man asked a young man to help him get his fuel cap off at the garage today. The young pillock looked at him and just walked off. I was going to finish filling up and help him but another chap did before me.

Fertiliser delivery drivers are the same. They won't make one jot of effort to help. One chap didn't even open a gate to tip on the concrete, just tipped it on the side of the road on a patch of hardcore. They will refuse to drive over a puddle in case it's too deep. No exaggeration at all.

Some folks wouldn't help to save their lives. But farmers? Top bunch of people.

Fert delivery drivers I've had all been very obliging

If they're bringing bags and need you to unload them, I dare say they're great.

They bring all mine in bulk ( 40 plus loads per year) and many couldn't give a stuff where they put it, although some are helpful.

I think its because of the weather.

Farmers are constantly battling nature, so there comes a camaraderie between them, as nature can't be beat, eventually it gets you one way or another. Crops are flooded, burn up, get eaten by pests, fail to yield due to disease, rot in the fields due to poor weather at harvest. Animals do poorly and die for myriad reasons. So as nature is your main competitor, helping your fellow farmer is less about helping someone who is going to take your business (in the way someone in another trade might) and more about helping a fellow striver against nature. Farmers have a common foe, that by and large other businesses do not.

Ukjay said:

Maybe it is just me - but I can honestly say that I have seen a lot more helpful individuals since our house move and starting to develop a small holding, than I have done in the last 15 years in the Corporate world!
!

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Oh my word, if you've spent 15 years in the Corporate World of the city, then no wonder you're finding life different today.

Round our neck of the woods, anyone in your position has always remarked the same. Farmers are generally different to other layers of Society in this respect. Not everyone I'd wager - some farmers I'm sure can be as unpleasant as anyone else, but on the whole we don't have that dog eat dog attitude.

I had a few beers in the company of a very intelligent and succesful guy some years ago who was up on holiday in Scotland. He worked in a huge office in a huge company in a huge city with a huge amount of time spent commuting each day.

He openly spoke of his intense dislike of his colleagues in the company, and of how his work culture was to view them as the opposition to be trampled on if at all possible. His greatest triumph he remarked, :was the day he got promotion from the office floor into his own private office - a space of his own where he didn't have to see, hear or smell his company colleagues. I briefly wondered in what light he would view people who worked in opposition to him in other companies, given how he viewed his own workmates.

He admitted he felt the stress and that escaping to the backwaters of Scotland was what he lived for.

So we blethered on and he asked me about my day, :which I had spent helping my neighbour cart silage in. To say he found that astonishing is an understatement. He simply could not get his head round why I would ever help out someone who he would see as a rival. But if you screw someone else over, you can pick up what they lose , as he put it.

No, I replied, one day I'll need a hand with something too, and then he'll come over and help me out, that's how it's always worked.

His expression was halfway between bemusement and incredulous humour.

When I left the cottage, I looked back at the top of the range car and all the expensive middle class trappings of his success, and I didn't envy him one little bit.

No, we are a bit different, always have been.

Will we still be in the future? Time will tell. I hope so.

Aye, agricultural/country living - one of life's great levellers.
The world would be a much better place if the likes of Saddam Hussein and that little fat bloke from North Korea had had to feed some cade lambs or a pen or two of calves before they went to school; they'd have grown up much nicer people

yellowbelly said:

Aye, agricultural/country living - one of life's great levellers.
The world would be a much better place if the likes of Saddam Hussein and that little fat bloke from North Korea had had to feed some cade lambs or a pen or two of calves before they went to school; they'd have grown up much nicer people

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You wouldn't look nearly as grandiosely tyrannical if you watched the test warheads being launched while 6 Texel lambs jumped up on your leg looking for their bottle and peeing all over the invited dignitaries.