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Helping hoodies hatch into good eggs

Helping hoodies hatch into good eggs

Clive Aslet meets Roger Hosking,
a farmer who combines rearing
livestock with aiding delinquents
 
1    Picture this, Roger Hosking, a    kids who come crush them, they are so
 Derbyshire farmer, is collecting eggs angry and tense that they’ll pick up
 with a young assistant. The assistant three eggs and they are squashed.
 is carrying 15 dozen of them. And then These youngsters come with angry
 for no apparent reason, he has thrown hands. But their hands change. Within
 them at Roger who is dripping egg yolk a day or two – certainly within a week
 and standing ankle deep in broken – I can guarantee those angry hands
 shells. Question is: what happens have become gentle hands. They’ve
 next? Does Roger tell him to get off never thought gentle before. Thinking
 the farm and never come back? Or gentle means I can have a decent
 say, in a mild sort of way, without conversation without swearing.”
 judgement: “Why did you do that?” and5    Egg collecting is not a mindstretching
 end up with a better understanding of job. While two people are at
 the teenager than anyone has had in it, they have time to talk. It is the
 the lad’s life. talking that leads to the blow-ups,
2    Roger, 64, has owned the 100- personal violence and sometimes egg
 acre farm Highfields Happy Hens since throwing. When the lad who threw the
 1967. On the farm he keeps free range 15 dozen eggs got over his explosion,
 hens (25,000), turkeys (1,600 - but that he started to talk, then cry. Finally, he
 was before Christmas), a few sheep, took off his shirt and showed Roger a
 pigs and goats. But what he and his back that was covered in wounds.
 wife, Beryl, principally farm are They were from the dog that his father
 delinquents, the sort of hoodies that would set on him for misbehaviour.
 everyone else has given up on. The6    Then there is love. It is a word
 Hoskings have been working with the Roger uses quite a lot, but in no soppy
 Youth Offending Service since their sense. One day Roger came back at
 sheep were slaughtered during a foot lunch time to find the yard wrecked,
 and mouth1) outbreak and they were the walls covered in graffiti. Roger told
 forced to find new ways of increasing the culprit: “If you do that again, you’ll
 their budget. have to go.” Then he realised that
3    The delinquents they work with, those words had been said to that boy
 have been expelled from school and time and time again in his life. The
 spend their free time smashing up bus Hoskings faced a choice: stop
 shelters and taunting the police. Roger fostering or stop being farmers. They
 has had his collarbone broken, and no decided to tough it out. Profit came
 end of windows smashed. But second. “To be honest with you, I
 something about the farm works. The wasn’t a very successful farmer.”
 re-offending rate is almost nil. The only Whatever happens, they will never
 exception was one lonely boy who again ask anybody to leave.
 made sure he got caught, in order to7    Roger and Beryl hope that the
 be sent back to the farm. model of their Highfields Happy Hens
4    Both Roger and Beryl have no will be rolled out across Britain. Roger
 degree in social science, no social believes: “Every town and city has kids
 work training. Their success is built on being expelled from school and a
 the twin foundations of egg collecting market for free range eggs. If the
 and love. Roger Hosking, who looks Hosking principle could be applied
 more like a jovial monk than a farmer, nationwide, a major social problem
 explains the magic of eggs. “At first the would be solved.”