757. Four sons

Marie and Nick were farmers. They had a sheep farm. They had four sons. The farm was a bit small to be farmed by four men when they left school, so Marie and Nick decided to sell and buy a bigger farm.

The farm they looked at first was a much larger sheep farm, set in the hill country towards the mountain ranges. It carried quite a few head of cattle as well.

Grant, the oldest son, fell in love with “the girl next door”. They married and (would you believe) had three sets of twins.

Brian, the second to oldest son, developed an interest in farm machinery, because of a neighbour’s tractor, and eventually moved away from the area and began his own contracting firm. He married a girl from way at the other end of the country. He’d met her at a machinery convention. They had four kids.

Gerald was the one who most liked to work on the farm. He kept it going, even when times were hard. He never married. “Never met the right one,” he used to say, although he did father a child with the local school mistress who ever so quietly “moved to another school”.

Terry was the youngest and he introduced pigs to the farm, and quite successfully. He had a pretty torrid affair with the wife of the local vicar. It was talked about for months. The woman’s husband was found hanging from the vestry ceiling, and in the end Terry and the woman moved away from the area altogether, thanks be to God.

But then, of course, none of this happened, because Marie and Nick didn’t buy this farm. They looked at it and decided against it. They bought another farm altogether, in another part of the country, and the history was therefore quite different.

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