A memory at Christmas of grim times on a small farm
He lives outside the town on a small farm that suffered all the vicissitudes over the years of holdings of its kind. That fickle beast the market, manipulated by ruthless retailers, plunged him into a prolonged recession that put years on him, and a droop in his shoulders. Leeches.
When the bottom fell out of the dairy business, he switched to sucklers. If less remunerative than the milk business, it was less laborious. Dairying pinned him down seven days a week, 52 weeks of each year. And for what? A millstone, it had him working his socks off for buttons and still single in his mid-30s — not having the means to settle down and raise a family. Wives, he told me, don’t come cheaply as they used to in Abbeylaune, his ex-girlfriends spurning the penny-pinching prospects of life on a small farm.
