Marrying a farmer is one of those fantasies, like the knight in shining
armour, that are born when you’re a kid. The knight has money, looks, a
castle. Farmers? Well, they’re real men, aren’t they? Men with a house in
the country and room for a pony.
Becoming a cynical urban grown-up – spending your life in the rat race,
driving a desk and living in an overpriced shoe box – seemingly does nothing
to crush the dream. Far from it. In the organic Noughties, the pastoral
idyll is the last word in lifestyle porn. Alice Temperley’s family cider
farm in Somerset, Amanda Wakeley’s ex-model cousin and his organic market
garden, handsome Alex James and his rare-breed pigs and speciality cheeses
... Despite everything your common sense tells you, despite the knowledge
that Britain is in one hell of an agricultural pickle, the silly idea
remains. Because, save for the pretty versions you find in the glossies, you
don’t get to meet many farmers up town.
Which is why I come to be spending my weekend at the annual conference of the
National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs, in Torquay. Somewhere in the
back of my mind is the lingering hope that I may find a rustic Mr Right. It
won’t thank you for saying so, but Young Farmers is the recognised rural
marriage bureau – and here, 4,000 young custodians of the British
countryside, half of them male, are conveniently gathered in one place.
On first impressions, they aren’t exactly the stuff that dreams are made of.
To be honest, this seems a world almost entirely untouched by sophistication
or cool. And glad of it – someone comments on how similar Torquay is to
Italy. YFs of both sexes wear nondescript jeans, Oakley shades and a “club”
T-shirt, usually in an unwitting nu-rave shade and with a political,
booze-related or, most typically, sex-themed slogan on the back. As the
hairy blokes and not-so-hairy girls cheer on their clubs at the finals of
the YF’s disco-dancing competition, whooping and phwoaring “Jailbait” or “Go
on, my girl”, I get to read a few of them: “Bollocks to Blair”, “North
Somerset born, North Somerset bred, good on the farm, but better in bed”,
“Hampshire Young Farmers do it in wellies, the only rubber strong enough”.
“Ooh, it’s all a bit tribal,” frets Jane Lewis, the Young Farmers’
communications officer, as we observe the roars of county-based support for
the dancefloor bosoms and fly, if often slightly out of sync, moves. “I
can’t think what you make of it. You will mention the drama and
public-speaking competitions, won’t you?” She seems completely baffled as to
why I’m here; I’m not entirely sure myself. So far, my analytical questions
about isolation and the human need for belonging have been met with total
disdain and a disbelief that anyone could be quite so pretentious.
When I was a teenager in Devon, the YFs were a powerful rural tribe. The kids
at school who were involved with the group had an extra string to their
social bow and got to hang out with older boys who had been driving tractors
since they were toddlers. That, weirdly, was pretty cool. YF pubs always had
the most fun and the least fighting. YFs were going somewhere other than to
the bus shelter to drink Woodpecker.
The organisation is a bit like a unisex Scouts, with lashings of sex and cider
on top. It’s officially for 10-to 26-year-olds, though plenty older than
that knock around the YF scene. Along with the WI, it’s probably the closest
thing the countryside has to social networking – although, when I
mention this to a number of YFs, they all look at me blankly. Like, what the
bloody hell is social networking? What is certainly true is that they
support each other in an industry that is famously inward-looking.
But being a YF also gives sticks-dwellers a way to meet like-minded members of
the opposite sex. The YFs are split down the middle: there are slightly more
men than women; half farm or come from farming families, and another 20%
work in auxiliary services. Not all YFs are actually farmers: 30% of the
22,000 members just dig the rural scene. Really, YF is just a ginormous
self-governed youth club and dating agency.
And a successful one, at that. If you take urban habits such as recreational
drugs and trying to look cool out of the mix, sex happens a lot quicker and
feels a lot more palpable. On Sunday, while I’m talking to a senior and
rather square female figure, a guy rushes at her, going: “Yeah, I had sex
with a real live woman last night.” Incidents such as this happen with
alarming regularity at YF. Lewd suggestions and sexually motivated joshing,
albeit good-natured, are fairly constant – although there is also a
genuine mutual respect between the sexes.
Everyone says that being a YF looks good on your CV. In return for unrivalled
access to the fundaments of fun, a YF commits to a roster of self-improving
activities, from public speaking, bake-offs, quizzes, fence-erection and
disco-dancing tournaments to getting involved in the administration of their
club. There are charity ploughing marathons and muck hauls. As the chairman
of Eccleshall YF tells me: “That’s right, selling manure for charity. We go
round the villages with a tractor full of muck. We raise £600 a time from
selling poo.”
It’s all good, wholesome stuff. If a YF gets into drugs, he doesn’t stay a YF
for long. The weekend’s worst crime is when some joker drops a stink bomb
during the Wurzels gig. As the collected voices swell to I Am a Cider
Drinker, nobody seems bothered that the drummer is a 78-year-old yokel.
Later, I offer a bloke a glass of wine. He takes a sip and says: “I haven’t
had wine for ages. Dry, isn’t it?”
It’s this no-nonsense environment that makes me doubt I would ever cut it as a
farmer’s wife. I’m simply too much of a ponce. The music is the same stuff I
was dancing to 25 years ago at my first Scout-hut disco. And everyone is
kind of irritated by the cluelessness of townies. They’re nice, but
different, in a way that makes me realise Britain is divided as much by
location as by class, even colour.
I have met some hot blokes. But the truth is, the girl most likely to marry a
farmer is, you guessed it, a YF. You’ll come across sons and daughters of
couples who got together through the organisation; those kids also get into
it, and land up engaged to another YF. I meet two sisters marrying two
farming brothers, and two best mates marrying two best mates. The teenagers
I talk to at the disco, choking on air thick with aerosol glitter, are
divided. Half want to marry a farmer – “because they’re rich”, or
because they like the idea of playing that farmer’s-wife role.
One bright cookie, Rachael Chamberlayne, the chairman of the YF’s serious
Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, surprises me when I ask if she
feels that the traditional supportive role is for a well-educated girl like
her? “God willing,” she says, “should we have kids, I intend to go home,
keep house, assist him in any way I can on the farm and raise our family. Be
a farmer’s wife.” A couple of proper YF foxes in short skirts and high boots
present a different face from Chamberlayne’s ruddy-cheeked goodness. I ask
them what they want out of life, and they say: “A nice big landowner to
marry.”
But let’s not disparage the female YFs. For every woman wanting to find a man
with his own farm, there is a guy looking for a girl who can offer the same
thing. As Eifion from Carmarthen puts it: “I’m coming up here to find a
single daughter with 1,000 acres I can farm for her.”
And he is not the only one. James is a tall, lean ox of a man who, like many
these days, works the land of rich city folk who buy farms for their pretty
houses and agricultural tax breaks. “What else can we do?” he asks. “We’re
the poorest-paid industry for what we do, but there’s no job like it.” He is
that rare breed, a first-generation farmer, and goes into a reverie about
rural life that is marred only when he says: “YF women have great
personalities, but . . .” – he makes an unflattering lady shape
in the air with his meaty hands. So why is he here? “Because I want to
better myself. I am searching for a fairly good-looking woman with something
to inherit.”
He looks me over and says: “You’re not a farmer’s daughter.” Then he adds,
with the now-familiar farmer’s bluntness: “Too scrawny.” I say that some
urban dwellers would consider me quite plump, and he tells me that’s weird.
My acreage is lacking, and in more ways than one. Later, I find out James
has taken a Canadian girl to bed – with 50,000 acres to inherit.
