FOR several days, taking drinkings down to John has been a risky business that requires a set of earplugs and a tube of smelling salts. The reason? He is ploughing, and there is a necessity to protect and if required, revive me, after I have fainted away at the stream of invective emanating from my husband as he repairs yet another sheared bolt on his mole plough or subsoiler. The soil in all of our fields is heavy clay. Over the years John and Geoff have done much to improve the friability of the soil with muck spreading and a crop rotation that includes legumes (beans) whose roots benefit the soil composition.

All of the land that is in crop production is drained, but to help the drainage, John subsoils and mole ploughs wherever possible before starting the actual ploughing. This lifts, lightens and breaks up the soil and provides a deep channel for any surface water to drain away into. The problem has been that the land has been either too wet for a tractor to pull the tackle - even the four-wheel drive tractor slips and slides on the land when it is greasy and wet - or too dry to pull the ploughs through at any depth, as dry clay has the consistency of iron. The something that has to give when the pressure is on the mole plough or subsoiler is a bolt, and the result is foul in terms of the range and inventiveness of the cursing and bad language involved. I swear (even I'm at it) that I can hear John cursing when the dogs and I turn off into the field. This demented green clad figure is stomping around the back of the crawler or tractor, flinging sets of grips and wrenches around, and taking vengeful and totally useless kicks at the inanimate object of his fury. The dogs cower in the back of the Land Rover and are only coaxed out by the promise of sandwiches, crisps and cake. "It's so frustrating," he says. "I just want to get on and I can't."

This feeling is very familiar to farmers' wives. Any job at home is liable to interruption. This is compounded when home is also the office and in my case, the base for my other work. Whatever I am doing takes second place to lunch, drinkings and teatime refreshments. Pleas for John to take a mobile phone down the fields so that I can contact him, for example when there is some official on from the Ministry, are met with a stern refusal. I even offered to buy some walkie-talkie radios so that we could all keep in touch at no telephone expense. "I shan't switch it on," I was told, "so there's no point you getting them." Instead of which I have to switch off the computer, move saucepans off the boil, interrupt my radio programme (no radio in the Land Rover to keep on listening to) and make an informed guess as to where John might be on the farm as the dogs and I bounce off down the lanes to find him. This is the compensation. The opportunity to enjoy the fields, keep in touch, give the dogs an extra run and just make the most of our lovely surroundings.

A mobile telephone may still be on the cards, however. People such as reps, just do not call at the farm on spec anymore. The restrictions placed on vehicles coming onto the farm by foot and mouth precautions has meant that many reps and officials make most of their contact by ringing up. As much as it needs a wife in the house to answer the phone and take messages, the economics demand secondary incomes on many farms and an answer-phone to meet the shortfall of an absent wife.

Updated: 12:07 Thursday, August 23, 2001