Country matters 3

My wife returned from Fieldays last night with a copy of Footprints to the Future, a history of Landcorp’s first 20 years. In between all the photos of grass and cows, it has some good stories of the rural life, like this one:

A situation had arisen on one of our farms where the Farm Manager had developed a sexual relationship with a shepherd’s wife. When it came to our notice, the Farm Manager had sacked the shepherd and employed the shepherd’s wife as a casual docking hand.

The matter apparently came to a head following a visit to the local pub on a Saturday evening. The shepherd’s wife was in bed, the Farm Manager was disrobing prior to joining her and underneath the bed was the shepherd with a loaded shotgun.

The Farm Manager jumped into bed, and in so doing, saved his life. The shepherd discharged the shotgun and instead of killing the Farm Manager, he shot his foot off.

We then had a Farm Manager without a foot who couldn’t kick his farm bike over, a shepherd on charges of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm and a casual docking hand who wasn’t officially on the books.

The Police had naturally been called and had chalk marks on the floor delineating blood spatters and pieces of bone. Being the country, the neighbours had called to offer assistance. One arrived with his dog which immediately licked up the blood and ran off with the main bone fragment, chased by several policemen. He buried this, creating a problem in the chain of evidence for the Police.