Flindt on Friday: Fair weather for game of find the footpath

There was a stage in May when I contemplated not bothering to mark out the footpaths through the arable land.

It wasn’t because I was going all militant and “get orff moy land” or anything like that – it was down to the fabulous weather.

There were so many people using the footpaths that Dad’s Rule of Footpaths was about to be invoked: if enough people use it, there’ll be no need to mark it out.

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Mind you, it’s worth remembering that he was unaware of where one footpath went because no one ever used it – a situation that was a bit “chicken and egg”.

There was also the small matter of the cost of the Roundup, which is now somewhere above inkjet printer ink, and the loss of arable crop, which I was relying on to buy more printer ink.

The splendid spring weather meant that I was busy elsewhere, chasing my tail with chemical and fertiliser applications.

Fine talk

One should never complain when a run of weather like that arrives, but it does mean that other jobs tend to get put on the back boiler – game strips, RPA forms, mending the pasture fence to stop Feral Beryl the Escapologist Ewe (Shepherd Ella’s nemesis) getting out with her lambs again. And putting Roundup on the footpaths.

It didn’t help that the DIY skid unit that slots into the back of the Kubota UTV was in need of some TLC.

The pallet base is a bit knackered, and some silly sod drove into the booms after forgetting he still had the weight block on the front of his Deere – the key one-metre section was bent back by thirty degrees, which means an application width of (reaches for A-level calculator) 58-ish centimetres. And Mr Rat and his chums had had a party in the wiring just under the Kubota’s seat.

My mind was changed by a lovely couple in Roe Hill, who were looking up across the spring barley in some confusion. I stopped and asked them if they were OK. “We can’t see the path,” they pleaded apologetically.

I apologised for its invisibility (although I could still just about make it out of course, and all the apologising seemed frightfully English) and we parted with more apologies.      

Levelling up

Time to get busy with the Kubota before we get a letter from the council. (Last time the Inspector came out, there was a surreal argument about the most welcoming way to orient a kissing gate – and my decades-old one was apparently not welcoming. I don’t want to have to go through all that again.)

It took an hour or two to rebuild the skid, connect all the pipes, rewire the loom and straighten the boom as best I could.

© Charlie Flindt

I carefully bent the working width back to about 80cm, and decided that would have to do. The flimsy boom metalwork was reaching the limit of its structural integrity.  

In went 100 litres of water and a splash of the new amber nectar, and off I went.

In the tall wheat, the plants ended up restricting width again, and out in the Roe Hill spring barley, the morning wind had picked up a bit. As usual, I had put too much in the tank, and reconnected the whole boom and did a farmyard or two.

Within days, a garish yellow strip appeared across Roe Hill. It was quite wide enough, and occasional wind gusts had ensured a margin of error that would keep even the most bloody-minded inspector happy. The path is crystal clear again – as is my conscience. I can stop apologising.