Wild Dorset
BETWEEN YOU, ME AND THE GATEPOST Ellen Simon, Tamarisk Farm
B
hutan, we hear, measures its success in gross national happiness instead of gross national product. Provided we stay above the breadline and can pay the bills, I think we might measure the farm’s success by whether the gates are good. Gates in good order are a joy. A gate should unlatch with one hand and easily swing open with just a light push. It should stay roughly where it is left, neither swinging wide open nor closing onto the person passing through. It should not touch the ground or have space underneath it to allow lambs to find their way through. It should have clear space at head level for the user, with no bramble shoots or sallow whips to catch unwary faces. It should close readily and latch securely when given a gentle nudge in the right direction. It should make a distinctive noise as it latches so that one can be totally sure without going to check that it cannot be opened with a shove from the next passing animal. Ideally a gate should stay like this forever. We have 36 | Bridport Times | December 2019
a lot of gates which we keep in pretty good order with the help of a spanner and a spade from time to time. We have just one gate on the farm which has stayed in excellent order for many years with no attention at all. It isn’t perfect: it closes very slightly faster than ideal and it latches just a tiny bit too easily. Just occasionally, it is handy to be able to leave a gate pushed to but unlatched, and this gate will not stay like that; the latch is slightly too responsive to the weight of the gate. It is a ten-foot gate and we now much prefer twelve-foot gates wherever we expect to use a tractor. Over the years, even on our conservative farm, machinery has gotten a little larger and every now and then we ask ourselves whether we should replace this gate with a longer one. It would entail replacing the sleepers which went in to hang the gate as a falling-to post back in the 1960s and which, unlike almost every other post we have put in since, seems to stay still whatever the weather and clay soil do. We don’t take the tractor in very often. The largest implement which needs