📕 Part 1: Farming

This episode's vocabulary

Traipse (verb) - to walk from one place to another, often feeling tired or bored.

Fleece (noun) - the thick covering of wool on a sheep, or this covering used to make a piece of clothing.

Dairy (noun) - foods that are made from milk, such as cream, butter, and cheese.

Tvorog (noun) - a soft Russian curd cheese.

Crop (noun) - a plant such as a grain, fruit, or vegetable grown in large amounts.

Grazing (noun) - land where farm animals feed on grass.

Plough (noun) - a large farming tool with blades that digs the soil in fields so that seeds can be planted.

Petting zoo (noun) - an open area where small or young animals are kept that children can hold, touch, and sometimes feed.

Tatty (noun) -  a potato.

Foodstuff (noun) - any substance that is used as food or to make food.

Hydroponics (noun) - the method of growing plants in water to which special chemicals are added, rather than growing them in earth.

Agriculture (noun) - farming.

Rugged (adj.) - (of land) wild and not even; not easy to travel over.

Sheepdog (noun) - a dog trained to help people control sheep and move them in the direction wanted.

Herd (verb) - to make animals move together as a group.

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Questions and Answers

M: Have you ever visited a farm?

R: Not for a while. We used to traipse to the fields at this farm in England when we were visiting our friends who lived nearby, but not recently.

M: What kinds of farms are there in your country?

R: Lots of kinds. Sheep farms or harvesting fleeces, dairy farms for all those dairy products that people like. Still no tvorog in the UK, unfortunately. And then there are farms of various crops. I think they change by the season actually, like crop rotations. So we have lots, we have most kinds, I think. Maybe not for tropical fruit, but the usual products that are found in Scotland for sure.

M: What kind of farm do you like?

R: Any farms with animals. Not necessarily beasts of burden, but it just looks nice when you can see the cows in the sheep grazing or horses pulling ploughs. It's not very efficient, but it's quite scenic and romantic.

M: What farm would you like to visit?

R: I don't have a huge preference, really. Maybe one with the petting zoo, but that's just to have fun with my friends. Sometimes I wonder if it's still possible to go tatty picking in Scotland. Um, I thought that might be fun for a day, actually, just to have a productive day out. Oh, and when I was younger, we used to go strawberry picking. I could go to a strawberry farm for a bit of nostalgia as well maybe when I go back home.

M: Do you think farming is important?

R: Well, without it, we wouldn't have enough foodstuffs to prevent people from starving or enjoying all the choices they have today. So I think that's pretty important. I'm also not sure how else you would sustain a population if not for farming. And some people say we could have genetically modified crops or hydroponics, but I think it still requires some sort of agriculture. So it's still farming.

M: Did you do any farm work when you were young?

R: Oh, God. Only very casually in the summer, we had days out to farms to pick fruit like strawberries. There was more coming for my parents' generation to do this like in the tattie holidays, which is the time when students were sent to the fields to harvest potatoes. Nowadays, that would probably violate a million health and safety in child labor laws, though.

M: Does your country use many traditional farming methods?

R: Well, that's a good question. I haven't thought about it much, to be honest. I think most farms, almost all farms use modern methods, probably. The machinery like tractors and various kinds of processing equipment. Harvesters as well. Possible in the far north where it's more rugged that people might still use the old ways. But that's the exception more than the rule. Maybe the closest thing that's old, which is still used would be sheepdogs for herding sheep. And I think the boundaries of fields are still marked by hedges and stone walls, and they're very, very old.

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Discussion

In progress.

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