Country Life

If not now, then when?

IN the beginning, we didn’t know it was the beginning. Our worries were elsewhere. After the wettest winter in memory, our fields of winter wheat looked like the bayous of Louisiana. The machinery barn stood tomb-like, the green hulks of machinery inside too heavy to go on the land without causing grievous harm to the soil beneath the water.

I am a woman who spots a rock in the middle of the road and says ‘apocalypse’. When I married, my dowry consisted of a vision of farming on the edge of the abyss. I’d. The larder looks like a well-stocked bomb shelter, because I’ve never walked out of Waitrose without a supply of loo paper, light bulbs and dog food.

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