My First Day.

Well just started my “Earn a shag with Kate Humble” volunteering program at Graves Park Farm. Fab, even though an absurdly early start made 10.30 seem like teatime. The farming types, often misperceived as slack jawed yokels, are in fact concise and measured philosophers, having realised life need not be pursued frantically. They make hedge fund managers look like flies round excrement with insufficient brain to do anything else. I am set too watering the goats and rabbits and progress to providing silage. Skill with a wheelbarrow, the rural equivalent of an articulated lorry, is central to pretty well everything. I progress in leaps and bounds to mucking out the Highland cattle. Now the first day at anything is fraught with pitfalls. Negotiating multiple gates between cattle and sheep enclosures begins to resemble one of those TV mental challenge programs. ‘How do you get two barrow loads of shit from the sheep pen through the cattle pen without providing the opportunity for mutant procreation and/or stray ruminant traffic accidents?’ Luckily the natural world isn’t that interested in genetic mutation or j walking. I succeed and in a moment of relaxation drape my coat over a gate and carry on. After several minutes scraping sheep shit I notice my coat is gone. It has been dragged off and is now on the floor being generously slavered over by several young cows. After reclaiming it I take a glove off and put it on a post for some reason I forget. In moments that was gone too. I check the cattle shed, not there; I check the sheep shed, not there either. Dam. I feel like a fresh faced supply teacher in front of a class of chewing Y9s reduced to tearfully screaming, “Who’s got my glove!” I then notice a small slit in a wall I erroneously thought was part of the sheep shed adjacent to the glove-less post, and peer in. Three goats, a sheep and a glove. Obviously a goat’s work. But why were these four in isolation? Worried they may be pregnant or suffering from some contagious disease I went to ask an authority. “No they’re just escapers, get through anything they will.” My relief that I could get my glove back was quickly followed by the apprehension that I must now pit my whits against multiple four legged Houdinis. I win, eat that you goa…  No don’t! Lunch and a trip to feed some very spiky horned cows overlooking Sheffield airport, which is little more than a medium sized lay-by by the way, took up most of the afternoon, followed by a spot of rabbit catching to round off a very pleasant day. I can think of no nicer way to earn a romantic evening with Ms Humble.