David's Digest

I ran into our bank manager the other day. We compared notes on the state of crops and together wondered if those wheats and barleys drilled during the last few weeks will emerge or if the seeds will die in the soil. We had both seen patchy emergence across East Anglia - we have some on this farm - and were not optimistic. We also wondered how sugar beet factories would be able to keep processing if we don't soon get a rain. There are rumours that, having opened, some of them are having to close again for want of roots to slice.

Then we started talking about money. The banker had been travelling around a great many of his customers at their request to see whether he was able to increase their overdrafts. The price of grain has collapsed and most of them were holding off the market in the hope that they would rise a bit closer to break even levels. Meanwhile they needed an extra buffer at the bank to enable them to pay their bills.

He told me that in most cases he had been able to help, although, like me, he was far from sure that value's would increase as grain growers hoped. But in negotiating with farmers he had been reviewing their budgets for the coming year. He had not, he told me, seen a single one with a positive cash flow forecast at the end of the trading year next autumn. If that doesn't tell you something about the state of the industry I don't know what does.

Having complained about lack of rain in virtually every posting for the last several weeks I should, at least, express some satisfaction that we have had about 15mm this week. Its not enough and we need a fair bit more to keep autumn drillings growing and allow sugar beet to be lifted comfortably. But there's been enough mainly gentle rainfall to break clods and germinate seeds and the corn drill has been rolling again.

The earlier drillings are still looking patchy with some parts of fields showing a healthy green while others are still brown. I hope the reluctant germinating areas will now emerge and catch up the rest during the winter. That said, I have heard of a number of cases up and down the east of England where farmers have already re-drilled both wheat and rape that they judged had died.

This mixed growth pattern is not good for potential yield. I well remember a meticulous German farmer I visited on his farm many years ago who had designed his own grain drill. Every seed was placed in the soil at exactly the same depth, he claimed, because "It is my ambition zat every seedling should emerge on ze same afternoon".

We certainly won't achieve that level of perfection this year but the rain will at least allow us to get a bit closer to it with the drillings now taking place. The moist soil will also let the sugar beet harvesters into the ground and reduce wear on lifting shares. Sods law being what it is, the next concern will probably be too much rain, given that the weather usually averages out over a period. But we're not at that stage yet and are feeling much happier than we were a week ago.

One of my long held ambitions is to visit New England in the "fall" when the leaves on the trees in the huge forests there turn from green to their autumn colours before being blown away leaving the branches bare until spring. I've seen photographs and the colours are glorious. But its always too busy on the farm at this time of year to find time to take a trip to look at them on the ground, so to speak.

But there really is no need this year. Leaves here at home are turning to yellows and browns and reds and what is more, in the absence of brisk breezes recently, they are clinging to the trees. OK, so we don't have the volume they do in the North Eastern corner of the USA but the colours in our small woods and copses are just as dramatic and I am enjoying them.

With the £ worth so little against the $ and the value of wheat well below cost of production I probably couldn't afford a trip stateside anyway. So I will satisfy myself with local pleasures.

After an extended period of fine summer weather we usually have a good crop of wild mushrooms. This year is no exception and I'm convinced our horse livery helps. Anyway, on a wander around our horse paddocks I have just found loads. 

In my humble opinion there is little that can beat the taste of wild mushrooms fried in a pan with good English bacon and a couple of eggs. So, off came my cap and out came my penknife. I cut enough to fill my cap to overflowing in no time at all and headed back to the farmhouse kitchen.

I am now dribbling as I anticipate the feast to come. It will be better than all the cultivated mushrooms in the world and the taste will add piquancy to the bacon and the eggs. I might even throw in a piece of fried bread to soak up the juices left in the pan.

I read somewhere recently that a good fry-up is better for you than lots of over salted and over sugared corn flakes. I shall cling to that information as I enjoy the fungal fruits of the field. I don't think I've ever tasted a truffle, but I can't believe it could be better than what I am about to enjoy.

If you didn't laugh, you'd cry. According to todays Daily Mail the department of government in charge of agriculture has spent £181,000 redesigning its website. Defra has apparently changed the colour scheme after a focus group said the brown colour of its logo suggested the department was too "farm-orientated".

So, the new masthead is maroon and green so as not to appear agriculturally focussed and to reflect the current priorities and role of the Department. As Nick Herbert, the Conservative Shadow of Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, is quoted as saying "At least its now clear that, like the rest of the country, Defra have gone off Brown". 

Very amusing. But of course, it isn't really funny at all. It is yet more evidence that whatever Defra ministers may say about farming being a vital sector of the economy and how we must produce as much food as possible to feed the nation, etc, etc, they don't give a damn about us or what we do for them and for the nation. It is, in fact, outrageous.

Norman Painting - the voice of Phil Archer - who has just died aged 85, was a charming man. I used to meet him occasionally when I went to the BBC's Pebble Mill Studio's in the1970's and before that their Broad Street predecessor in Birmingham to present real farming programmes.

But physically he was as unlike his radio image as it was possible to imagine. He probably stood no more than 5 feet 6 or 7 inches and rather than the swarthy weather beaten look of most farmers he was delicately built and wore a goatee beard. Despite that he was an excellent actor and writer and turned in convincing performances as Phil for over fifty years. He will be much missed.

I met several of the Archers cast at various times. Gwen Berryman for instance, who was Phil's radio mother, looked and behaved just like her fictional alter ego and the actor who played Dan, her husband and the original patriach of the soap, looked like he could have been a real farmer.

In those early days, before there were hundreds of TV channels, The Archers was even more popular than it is today. I well remember, in 1955, I was visiting my father in hospital where he had just had a hernia operation. Visiting time was 7.00pm and at that time the programme was broadcast at 6.45pm. As I walked into the ward at the beginning of visiting time every patient in every bed was in the middle of taking off their wireless headphones and all looked aghast.

Whats the matter? I asked my father who looked equally shocked. "Grace is dead" he replied with a face as white as the sheets he was lying on and went on to explain how Phil Archers first wife, Grace, had been burned to death trying to rescue her horse from a fire in the stable and how Phil had had to be restrained from going in there to try to rescue her. It was an incredible illustration of how powerful radio drama can be. All those hernia patients felt they had lost a real friend and it was more painful than the operations they had just endured.

And what a "spoiler" for the first night of ITV. Hey ho. Those were the days.