On this land we loved the best 194

This a very pertinent or should I say relevant poem right now, as of yesterday (25th March 2014) I gave up the tenancy of 200 acres of the farm after 35 years, and just for now we still have the farm house and a few fields that surround it. Then later in the summer we hope to retire proppa to a house a 100 yards down the road.
Our move prior to that, was also only about a 100 yards where I had started farming in 1960 and stayed for twenty years.
My move from the home farm where we were brought up to my first farm was half a mile, all within the village.
When I get up in a morning at the farm house, track to the bathroom and then off back down to the kitchen to put the kettle on , I have done 65 paces, in our retirement house it will be all of 10 paces. Think i'll have to join a gym or sommat crazy.


Since I wrote this a couple of years ago  "On this land we love the best"  it should be renamed   "On this land we loved the best".

They always told us as kids that there is a pot of gold at the base of a rainbow, don't even bother looking now.

On this land we love the best

We are watched from way up high, on how we treat our land,

This land that we are caring for, for generations stand,

To stand just where our fathers stood, see it through their eyes,

And how the fields and lanes have looked, neath the clear blue skies.

The misty foggy mornings, dew drops on all the leaves,

The sunrise on the meadows, the bird song in the trees,

Long shadows in the evening, as the sun sets in the west,

Trees and bushes in full bloom, on this land we love the best.

Owd Fred

A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.

Cicero (106BC - 43BC)