FARMING MATTERS: Our columnist is not a traditional farmer’s wife

Just as my husband’s vocation in life is farming, mine is journalism. As a child he worked on the family farm, as a child I made my own newspapers and magazines. However, I did also have a toy farm, and the name I gave to the farmer’s son spookily turned out to be the name of my future husband!

But being married to a farmer does have an enormous impact on every aspect of my life, and it is not at all like being married to any other kind of man. It dictates where we live, the house that we live in and every aspect of our family and social life.

So I do feel like a farmer’s wife, even if I don’t feed the cattle every day.

I have been known to drive a tractor and trailer through the town and I have helped with the occasional lambing and calving. I do all the paperwork for our little farm shop, and work with our son to produce videos about our farm.

But it works both ways and my husband also supports my career.

Over the years I’ve worked in some far flung places, and for three years he rose at the crack of dawn each Monday, not to go out and feed the cattle, but to drive me to Luton airport to fly over to Belfast where I was working at the time.