Sarah Todd: Egg outrage – and a few other things that make us spit feathers

OVER the years The Husband has good-naturedly taken a lot of stick about a wide range of subjects covering a broad spectrum of personality traits, from his obsessive compulsive mowing of the lawn through to his tight hold of the purse strings. The only time he's ever shown any sign of irritation came last week when a correspondent criticised our ability to keep hens.

"Talk about telling us how to suck eggs," he fumed, demanding the record be put straight.

He wants it to be known that he grew up on what was, at the time, one of the largest poultry farms in Yorkshire. Our children, the egg entrepreneurs, only have about a dozen hens – a number that's on a downward spiral with the dastardly dog that keeps visiting – but there's not a feather has to be out of place before you-know-who is poking his nose in. We do have plenty of daft incidents here, but readers can rest assured that poor hen husbandry isn't among them.

Now might be as good a time as any to give a little background to this column. I'm bred, on both sides, from generations of farmers. Cattle and horse breeding and dealing have been popular pursuits away from the day-to-day of farming.

At the age of 18, writing the reports for the Young Farmers' Club set me on the path of journalism. When this column started a new chapter in our lives had begun. I'd given up a "good job" as a magazine editor as, with children who never saw their mother because of the long working hours, we took a step back to our rural roots.

As so many people before us have discovered, it's not an easy option. A place with land sounds smashing, but it's not all roses around the door.

Animals aren't our only talking point. Rural life is a subject that brings out the red-head in me. A property advertised the other week caught the eye for all the wrong reasons. It makes my blood boil when village homes that should be lived in by local youngsters starting out on their own are done up as holiday cottages and second homes. The new Government should do something to put an end to the second home scandal ripping the heart out of so many country communities.

Roads, or rather the way the way country lanes are used as rat-runs, are another hot potato. As is our namby-pamby hand washing world. We've recently opened a small five-van caravan site on an unused paddock and the way children go wailing back to their mothers when they get blathered up is beyond belief.

The Husband will be looking skywards. He asked for the hen to be mentioned and now the soapbox has been pulled out…

CW 19/6/10