One criticism not infrequently levelled against my River Cottage programmes is that they give a pretty rose-tinted view of life in the country. Or, more seriously perhaps, that I have presented farming as an easy game - giving the impression that, with a little honest toil and enthusiasm, a good living can be made off the fat of the land.
The most honest response to the first of these charges is that, if it seems rosy it's only because, on the whole, it is rosy. It's not that my specs are tinted (like any goggles-wearer, I've been through that phase). It's that I really am having rather a good time down here.
To the second charge I am inclined to plead guilty - on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The responsibility in question being the one of actually having to make a living out of farming. I don't. I make my living from writing and being on the telly. And if anyone's surprised to hear that, then it's they who've been wearing the russet-tinged face furniture.
This makes me - it's almost impossible to dodge this epithet, little though I care for it - what is generally referred to as a 'hobby farmer'. What this means, to be brutally frank, is that I am prepared to pay a pretty substantial sum from out of my media earnings to live on a farm, among farm animals, with farm machinery lying about, all of which I own, so that I, and my family, can enjoy the feeling of being properly rooted in the countryside - without significantly risking any of our security on how we decide to manage our land.
On the other hand, for me, being a hobby farmer has the huge benefit - I could almost say justification - that it gets me actively involved in the production of food, which happens to be the chosen topic of most of my media endeavours.
I love the fact that I can feed my family on our own home-grown pork, beef, lamb and poultry. And I see it as a privilege, given my own perspective on meat, that I can rear my own livestock, concentrating entirely on the issues of quality and taste, and without losing sleep over the cost of organic pig-feed, or fluctuating wholesale beef prices. It allows me to thoroughly enjoy my pigs, while at the same time learning a good deal about what makes good meat.
Meanwhile, do I worry about what 'real farmers', especially local ones, think of me? Yes. Do I think they might be insulted by my portrayal of rural easy living, and an indulgent harvest of the fat of the land, without much visible sign of the extreme financial pressures under which most small farms now operate? Well, not insulted, I hope. Perhaps I could be allowed to get away with 'wryly amused'?
This is the impression I get when I talk to local farmers - though it's an issue we tend to skirt around, rather than tackle head-on. Many of them seem to watch, and enjoy the show. It is, after all, about a part of the country they know and love, and a way of life to which they are, at a deeper and more permanent level than me, completely committed. They agree with me, at least, that the business of growing food and raising livestock gets scant attention on television. That it is important to remind the public, for example, that meat comes from animals, which need to be both cared for, and killed, before the chop, burger or sausage can land on their plate. And I hope they approve of the underlying maxim of the show - that people who live in the country, like blondes, have more fun.
Every once in a while, however, something happens on the farm that brings on the inferiority complex that, from time to time, inevitably infiltrates the psyche of the hobby farmer.
On Friday, one of my cows aborted her five-month old foetus. The stillborn, rubber- pink miniature cow, about the size of a Jack Russell terrier, was strangely beautiful. To find it, almost luminescent on a patch of golden straw in the cow shed, was poignant, and very sad. But in a curious way, I didn't feel too bad about it. You need a bit of light and shade in farming, as in life. And this setback - there have not been that many in my short time as a guardian of livestock - made me feel, for a moment, that my farming endeavour was a bit more gritty and real. It was a negative I felt ready to turn into a positive.
All that changed when the vet arrived. On the phone, he'd said there were any number of reasons a cow might abort - including practically no reason at all. But if I wanted to make sure there was nothing seriously awry, he would come and check out the cow and the foetus. I said yes to that. Us hobby farmers love a visit from the vet.
On seeing the silage bale in the feeder in the yard, the vet asked me if I'd been having any problems with the silage. Like what, I asked? Like moulds or fungus, he said. That hit me with some force. Yes, I had noticed some musty, mildewy mould on the silage. We'd been feeding the last few bales of the previous year's silage, now 18 months old, before moving on to the sweet stuff made this summer just past.
The vet explained that fungal infection of stale silage is a not infrequent cause, in young heifers with their first calves particularly, of aborted foetuses. It wasn't a certainty, and would be almost impossible to prove. But it was the most likely explanation for what had occurred.
I felt such an idiot. Feeding this old silage was in strict contravention of my 'spare no expense' hobby-farmer regime of indulging my livestock to the maximum. After all, we had piles of the fresh, sweet stuff just standing by. So why did I do it? Well, had I had any inkling of the possible ill effects on my cows, then of course I wouldn't have. It wasn't a decision I'd stopped to fret over. But I do recall a fleeting thought that we really ought to use up the old stuff before starting on the new, because that would be sound, thrifty, agricultural practice. I was doing what a real farmer would do, I had thought to myself - a farmer who minded about the money.
I'm still waiting to see if more of my cows succumb to the phenomenon of 'fungal abortion' as it's known. They're on the fresh, sweet silage now, and if nothing bad happens within a week, I'm probably in the clear.
But I'm feeling horribly guilty about it. Guilty that my ignorance led to a basic error in husbandry which cost my poor cow her calf. And particularly guilty that, for a moment, I even allowed the event to fuel a little fantasy about the harsh reality of my rural existence.
I wonder how would a real farmer have felt about it? I guess that's the kind of question I should stop allowing myself to indulge.
