Farmers behaving badly

Monday, February 3, 2014

Some bizarre stories of farmer misbehaviour have been making the headlines lately. The Irish Examiner reports that pig farmer Donal Connaughton was sentenced to a year in jail after he ordered two repossession men to strip naked and get into a pen with an "agitated" boar. A cellphone recording taken by one of the men during the ordeal features the sound of the boar in the background while the men plead for their release. Connaughton made the men kneel and say an "Our Father" before finally letting them leave, without their truck.

In Lancashire, a cattle farmer has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for violating U.K. gun laws. The Daily Mail reports that Paul Alton possessed a "bizarre" homemade gun "crudely constructed from lumps of wood, belts and tags" attached to an air-rifle barrel. The weird weapon could fire 74 rounds of "expanding ammunition" that would mushroom upon hitting flesh. Police were told about the gun by Alton's wife when they came to investigate a domestic dispute.

Shame these farmers couldn't just blow off steam like Australian farmer Oscar Bell. He told ABC that, after a November frost ruined his canola crop, he fed it to his sheep. While making paths with the slasher, he wrote a giant "Sh*t Happens" into his field. He then asked his father to check the paddock from the air, and when Geoff Bell flew his ultralight over the artwork he captured his son's "deep-felt sentiments" on camera. BF