I really must get my kit car finished.....

[IainCameron]

.......the daily run-around is turning into a right old pig sty.

 

 

Not much progress recently.... I've been busy accommodating these wee fellas, and fitting a 75m2 EPDM flat roof (minutes before the rain started).  Must get back into the shed; summer's nearly here (or did I just miss it?)

[Alan Cutler (Adge) - Dorset AO]

See your new arrivals are sprayed a similar colour to your Westfield 😉. Missed a few bits though!

[Glen_I]

Brilliant,  I was lucky (well I think so) as I was dragged up on a farm with about 1000 sheep. My younger sister had a pair of Vietnamese Pot-Bellied Pigs, Pong and Florence. Pong was a grumpy old git who spent most of his days chasing us around the garden, dread to think what would've happened if he had got hold off one of us, he was a bigun!

 

My two Daughters would love that life-style, my eldest remembers the farm before my parents retired but the youngest doesn't, but then again she can't remember 10mins ago it seems!!

 

 

[Glen_I]

In fact @IainCameron, the more I think about it the more I do miss it all, not just as a kid living on a farm, but I worked on a very large farm from when I was 13, this was every Saturday morning and school holidays and I only left when I started my apprenticeship for Mercedes-Benz.

 

Deep down I'm an outdoors person....I was happy as pig in poo the last couple of evenings fixing a pair of community owned cultivators for the allotment opposite us, just a simple country boy at heart it seems!😜

[Nic Chase (NICO) - Shropshire & Mid-Wales AO]

3 hours ago, IainCameron said:

.......the daily run-around is turning into a right old pig sty.

 

 

Not much progress recently.... I've been busy accommodating these wee fellas, and fitting a 75m2 EPDM flat roof (minutes before the rain started).  Must get back into the shed; summer's nearly here (or did I just miss it?)

Are they Gloucester Old Spots?

Crack on Iain. Too many distractions. 

[MR.C]

There is not much my wife would like more than a boot full of shopping,

but that boot beats it. Cute little guy's.

[IainCameron]

13 hours ago, Glen_I said:

I was dragged up on a farm

Likewise, Glen.  From the age of 13 until joining up, I worked every hour I could spare on the adjacent farm, which was a mixture of milk, beef and arable.  Taught me stuff I didn't even dream would be useful (essential?) in later life, and it was only much later that I realised that most people aren't so fortunate to work outdoors with animals and on the land, and that a simple life is so much more rewarding than sitting in meetings or running around being 'busy'.

 

@Nic (NICO) - Shropshire and Mid-Wales AO they're possibly the longest-named breed there is... Gloucester Old Spot cross Oxford Sandy and Black.  Or GoSxOSB for short!

[Captain Colonial]

Mmmm... bacon sandwiches with HP sauce...

[Glen_I]

1 hour ago, IainCameron said:

and that a simple life is so much more rewarding than sitting in meetings or running around being 'busy'.

100% true. Just finished another pointless 1 2 1 meeting via Teams with my Team Leader.....just nod and agree as whatever I say doesn't make a difference.....whilst he discusses some more spreadsheets to monitor our efficiency.🤔

 

I miss my old Ford 6610 tractor (art to changing gear on that bl**** thing) as I was 13 yrs old and left alone with it and then they let me loose with a brand new Matbro Telehandler by the time I was 14.....what kid wouldn't be happy playing with this every Saturday morning and school holidays whilst getting paid! 😁

[IainCameron]

29 minutes ago, Glen_I said:

Ford 6610 tractor

Blimey that's a bit posh.... I was only allowed on the (cabless) David Brown 880.  And my current ride of choice is a 1950s International B250.  Must roll the field when it's rained a bit more....  Mind you, the 1985 JCB 3CX is also good fun.  And a bit more useful.

[Glen_I]

It was a very large farm/estate. They had 3 Combine Harvesters which was unheard off, can't remember the acreage now but it was by no means the typical 1000 or so acre farm.

 

It was split and the other half was for the pigs, my mate worked there and he had the quads to play on.

 

IIRC there were approx 20 staff and this would increase with students in the summer......nothing like the farm my Dad managed for 20 odd years with 1200 acres and 3 staff including himself. Another sign of how things have changed.

[cast iron]

Farms are an awesome non H&S bushl!7 environment to grow up in. Learn things the hard way, DIY skills building drystone walls, driving tractors and milkround pick up truck at 14 & 15, compassion ,hopefully, for animals, business skills,(never having any money yet getting by) life and death cycles! none of which was/is taught in schools, too many student today would cry

[Captain Colonial]

My first years were in a small Midwest town and farmers used to send their boys (as young as eight) into town on tractors to pick up stuff, which was (unbelievably) legal but not very sensible.  Every year at least one kid would get killed driving a tractor up or across a slope and it would roll over and flatten them.

 

One teenager brought his dad’s old tractor in to Auto Shop in high school, where he swapped out the diesel  engine and gearbox for a huge V8 from an Oldsmobile.  Fastest and loudest tractor to 30mph you’d ever see, but that was its top speed - 30.  He used to drive it into town on a Saturday night and try to pick up girls - no girl went near him, which is when I figured out that girls were probably smarter than boys.

[pistonbroke]

We kept a smallholding with 150 pigs , no tractors just 1 pony and cart we used to collect "swill " (household food waste ) mostly veg peelings , cabbage leaves etc. which we boiled up for pig feed . Loved it , we worked there early AM before school mucking the styles out then after school sorting the feeding  stuff 

[corsechris]

Lived near farms when I was very young and used to spend a lot of my time ‘helping’. I was about 6 the first time I drove a tractor, Following the combine with the open trailer. Pretty sure H&S wouldn’t approve.

 

Some years later I did a short stint at the Ford tracor plant on engine machining so helped to build a few hundred.