David's Digest

It probably doesn't feel like 2008 has been a fecund year to farmers who still have grain to harvest. But my observations suggest most crops have produced exceptional yields this year. That goes for hay, vegetables, roots, top fruit and soft fruit as well as cereals. Our apple trees are laden at present; the hedgerows are full of blackberries and other berries best left for birds; and the other day I picked a bumper crop of wild mushrooms.

In my view there is little that beats a pan full of wild mushrooms picked straight from the field. A bit of English bacon and a couple of fresh, home produced eggs make a meal fit for a king. It's one of the few dishes I can cook rather well myself and although I'm not allowed it often it's a real treat when I am. The flavours are so much better and sharper than the bland cultivated mushrooms that come from supermarkets. It's one of the reasons I, and you too, I imagine, enjoy living and working in the British countryside. Aren't we lucky?

I was walking round the farm with my six year old grandson, Angus, the other day. He loves to learn about the farm but we also have erudite conversations about space, rockets, planets, meteorites and the like, about all of which he knows more than me. Another of his preoccupations is volcano's and we often speak of a visit I made a few years ago to Vesuvius near Naples in Italy and about the destruction it wrought on Pompei two thousand years ago. At times his questions are quite intimidating and I often find myself looking up details so as not to be left behind.

On the day in question we were just getting close to the limits of my knowledge about earthquakes and how they are caused when we came upon a couple of the girls who work in our livery. I used the encounter to change the subject and give myself a bit more time to dredge into my memory as much as to be polite the the girls and we had a brief chat about horses.

Angus declined to join in and after they had moved on to continue their work he said "You know, Grandpa, I'm allergic to girls". I managed to keep a straight face and said "What, all of them?"

"Well, not Mummy, of course, but pretty well all of the others." I suggested he would probably get over his allergy when he grew up. But he disagreed because "they were, well, different to boys."

I didn't dig any deeper although doubtless his misogyny will come up again in our conversations one day. But at least it got me off the hook re tectonic plates.

I write this with mixed emotions. On one hand I am intensely grateful that we finished combining about 9 days ago and that our crops are in the barn and in no danger of flooding. On the other, I feel almost guilty at our good fortune while others around the country are suffering severe problems - both emotional and financial.

What can I do? Not a lot really, except to express my deepest sympathy and hope for better weather soon. As it happens I need it too - to get next years rape drilled. The optimum time for drilling is slipping away and it won't be long until it will be too late for viable establishment before the winter. With expensive seed and fertiliser paid for and sitting in the shed I can foresee the possibility of losses stretching to next year at this time.

That said, we are, of course, better off than many. But these are worrying times. 

I suppose farmers should be grateful that the powers that be at Defra have temporarily suspended the rule forbidding farmers from going onto waterlogged land to harvest crops.

It was originally imposed for environmental reasons and to protect soil from erosion and run-off. Good enough reasons on the face of it, but do the officials who write such regulations not realise that no farmer in his right mind would venture onto fields as wet as many are now if it were not absolutely necessary; that they would only do so to salvage something from disaster; that farmers are only too well aware of the long term and costly damage done to land by running over it with heavy tackle in such conditions?

Such rules are unnecessary and constitute part of the regulatory straightjacket that annoy our industry so much. They should be suspended permanently. For as this harvest weather has demonstrated in a year like this when their provisions might be most relevant they have to be relaxed anyway in order to provide a chance to harvest crops - the culmination of a years work.

I read that Defra employs one civil servant per twenty farmers to administer Single Farm Payments alone. The Department could surely cull this excessive number and lots more who are engaged in the writing and policing useless rules. The savings could be devoted to things that really matter. 

Following the highly successful auction of pieces by Damien Hirst at Sotheby's which grossed over £70m in one day, including more than £10m for a dead calf, I have decided to auction a few of my own artistic creations. With luck they will attract the attention of underbidders at the Hirst event and the income generated will go part way towards paying for next years nitrogen fertiliser.

The first piece is the carcass of a dead pigeon preserved in red diesel fuel. It was the first casualty to be found attacking this years rape crops and was shot by me on Sept 14th with a twelve bore and a 28gm number 6 cartridge. It is entitled "Gottcha you b......".

The second piece on offer is a plaster cast of a rut in one of our harvest fields featuring the tread of a rare Michelin tyre and the unmistakable marks made by really sad stubble and a few sprouted grains, the whole decorated in a sticky dirty yellowy brown. I have named it "2008- a harvest to hate."

And the third item on offer during this unusual opportunity to acquire contemporary art of great distinction is a piece of genuine dung produced by a pedigree Friesian of my close acquaintance, moulded into an artistic shape and presented in a sealed surround of transparent plastic. I call it "Norfolk Bull sh-one-t".

I think you will find these items of peculiar and topical interest and irresistable. There will be a reserve price on each of £1m.

What am I bid?

I've spent the last few days rolling freshly drilled wheat. It's necessary to break the clods left after the drill and to try to inhibit slugs.

This must be one of the worst years ever for the slimy little vandals, which is hardly a surprise after all the rain. You don't even have to dig for them. They've eaten off most of the volunteer rape plants that grew behind the combine on some fields so it was clearly vital to spread slug pellets to protect the wheat seeds.

So, as with all the rape we have drilled this year, we have invested in Metaldehyde pellets on some of the wheat in the hope that combined with the rolling we can control the damage. It seems probable, according to our agronomist, that we will have to treat the fields again in a couple of weeks time.

He told us of neighbour who drilled his rape a few weeks ago and was then prevented from spreading slug pellets for a few days by heavy rain and had his entire crop wiped out. So the problem cannot be ignored.

Which makes the noises coming from water companies about Metaldehyde contamination all the more worrying. Apparently they are having trouble getting it out of water supplies and are calling for a ban on its use. Goodness knows where that would leave us if it happened.

But I understand there is growing evidence that most of the contamination is occuring in gardens and urban situations rather than farms. As often happens amateurs mess it up for professionals. But it does re-inforce the vital need for responsible use of the pellets on farms. As The Voluntary Initiative says "Always read the label" and do what it says. 

It gives me great pleasure to see people picking blackberries along our roadside hedges. I feel such people must appreciate the countryside. Most are middle aged or elderly. You don't see many young people doing it. And like them I can think of no better dessert for an autumn Sunday lunch than blackberry and apple tart.

This year the harvest of the hedgerows is huge. You don't have to pick for long to get a bowl full. Which must give our local pickers even greater satisfaction than usual as they take advantage of the free food during the credit crunch.

But why do some of them leave their cars parked along narrow lanes restricting and delaying tractors trying to drill wheat? And when we workers try to access our fields through gateways in which other of their vehicles have been left why do the drivers behave as if we shouldn't be there and that their right of way greater is than ours?

So, despite my instinctive pleasure at seeing the pickers I am sometimes almost guilty of blackberry rage. If any of them read this I ask them, please, to accept that some of us have work to do and to park their cars accordingly.

An article in todays Daily Telegraph under the by-line of one Jon Swaine informs readers that wood pigeons visit gardens more than robins. I don't know about you but I could have told them that without the expense of a British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) survey.

The piece then goes on to claim that pigeons have been "driven from the countryside by intensive farming" and attracted to urban and suburban gardens by bird feeders. If only!

The probability is that the 16,500 people who contributed to the survey were sitting in urban gardens as they did their count; that few, if any, of them actually went beyond the city limits to see what was happening on farmers fields. They then concluded, eroneously, that the increased numbers they were seeing in their gardens were refugees from farming systems.

Not only is their assessment demonstrably inaccurate (come and see for yourselves if you don't believe me) but they have also used it to take yet another unjustified swipe at our industry.

If the BTO and other bird agencies would like more pigeons in their city gardens and can find a feed to place on their bird tables that would be more attractive to them than my rape, I would encourage them to spread it around as widely as possible. Sadly, I doubt if that feed exists. For out here in the countryside we too have millions more pigeons and I would dearly love to significantly reduce their numbers.