A GREAT grandmother is still putting her farming skills to good use behind the wheel of a combine harvester at the age of 82.

Win Foot set this year’s harvest rolling at Haywards Farm in Bere Regis after 70 years of working on the land.

The Claas Lexion 540c combine harvester is a far cry from Mrs Foot’s early farming days when horses were used rather than modern machinery.

Win, who lives close to the farm in Roke Road, was born into farming where she grew up on her parent’s farm in Somerset.

Win, who works on the farm with her husband Alan and son Christopher, said she would often spend most of the day out on the farm during the harvest time.

She said: “I like to keep active doing it and whenever they want a hand up there I’ll help out.

“My son mainly takes cares of the farm but my husband does a few odd jobs too.

“We both like to keep busy.

“You have got to do something, you can’t just sit and wait until you die.

“We are reasonably healthy so we just keep going and I want to carry on as long as I can.”

She added that farming felt ‘normal’ to her because she grew up with it.

Win moved to Bere Regis when she married her husband in 1955 and says she can still remember her father getting his first tractor in 1935.

Win, who has five grandchildren and three great grandchildren, said she thinks she is a rarity in farming today.

“I don’t know of another woman my age doing it. But I’m just used to it.

“I was born into farming back when horses were used. I started doing odd jobs to help my dad on our farm when I was about nine or 10.

“When I met my husband he already owned a farm and I used to do milking and harvesting with a reaper binder which my sister and I used to do when we were younger.”

Mrs Foot’s daughter, Jenny Franklin, said the whole family was proud of her mother.

She said: “There cannot be many female 82 year olds combining, especially as they are all computerised now days. She also does rolling and all sorts of other tractor driving.

“When she was 14 she won a hedge laying competition, beating all the boys. She is a very hard working person and we are really proud of her and what she does.

“There seems to be nothing she can’t do.”

n lucy.pearce@dorsetcho.co.uk