Farmers are exceptionally good at hiding true feelings and are experts at covering up health issues.

That especially applies to male farmers – we like to portray ourselves as some kind of invincible superman.

When we are young, it is much easier to pull this off, but as the years move on, the hard life that we go through starts to take its toll – things that we once found easy to deal with become much more of a chore. And before we realise it, we are past our best, but still trying to do as much work as when we were younger.

I feel very much in this phase of my own life at the moment and it now takes me a lot longer to do the same amount of work.

When I was younger, I could run around the yard or the fields after cattle or sheep. Nowadays it is a gentle walk or hop onto the quad.

The invincible feeling is long gone, and I feel a lot more vulnerable. I would still like to keep working on the farm, but I feel that I need to take more care of my personal health.

Appointment

The health service in our area is atrocious. To get an appointment with the doctor you have to ring nonstop for a couple of hours before you get through to the surgery. Then if you are lucky enough to get through, they tell you that they have no appointments for up to three weeks. It is truly little wonder that farmers often don’t bother. Instead, we are left to hope that the problem will go away with time.

Check

Our local Plough On group recently had the Farm Families Health Check van out at our local meeting. We all got booked into a time slot to have a health check.

I have used the van before at other events, so I had a rough idea about what to expect. Having said that, I was still nervous about what they would tell me.

The staff are really friendly and we were soon into a good chat and I started to relax.

A lot of the session was just them asking questions about general health and lifestyle. They did a risk assessment for diabetes, which showed a moderate risk, but also provided suggestions on how to reduce the risk.

Then they moved on to the more detailed stuff. They took a blood sample for cholesterol, measured my height, took my weight, measured my waist and took my blood pressure.

My cholesterol is slightly high, but it has reduced since I last had it checked. They told me that I was slightly overweight and that my blood pressure was normal.

Overall, I was reasonably happy, but there is still room for improvement, and they offered some good advice on the changes I need to make.

Pop in

Reflecting on it all, I think the health check van offers a wonderful service, which is free to use.

They regularly go around different marts and shows, and you can pop in at any time. The whole thing only lasts about 20 minutes.

I got chatting to the ladies in the van about why more people do not avail of it.

One thing, they said, is that some farmers do not want to be seen entering or leaving the van, which is probably part of a ‘macho’ approach that can exist in farming.

The other thing that was suggested was that farmers were always in a rush and won’t take the time to go into the van.

I know that farmers have a lot to do and never seem to have any spare time, but this could be 20 minutes well spent, especially if it saved your life or improved your overall health.

Farmers are particularly good at looking after our livestock and crops, but we are unbelievably bad at looking after ourselves.

We are the most valuable asset on our farms so why not take the time to step into the white van at the next opportunity?