Mouth of the Wash

I bloomin' love Spring.  You suddenly feel alive again.

Yesterday we started tractor operations on the farm for the first time this year (we were cultivating lightly between the delphiniums) and, after months of being confined to the yards and buildings, it was like being allowed out to play by your mum.

The soil is is wonderful condition after the long winter and the plants are all breaking through the ground.  It will be some time before we can consider deep cultivations and planting crops - the ground is still wet and cold - but it is joyous to be making a start.

In other bird news.  Yesterday there was a most almighty kerfuffle at Vickers Farm, our trial nursery, when a sparrowhawk attacked, killed and subsequently ate a jay.

I'm not a fan of animals scrapping as a rule but these are both impressive (predatory) birds so the contest was a spectacle to behold.  The sparrowhawk was certainly rather plucky and the jay put up a noble fight, squawking all the way (bloomin' 'eck I had a devil of a job spelling squawking, did I do any good?).  They were both completely oblivious to their spectators.

I'm really going to have to buy an SLR camera, aren't I?

The RSPB survey Welland House Farm, our land at Fosdyke, together with our neighbour's.  The habitat there is reasonably diverse.  It is just a few 100 metres from the River Welland and it has buildings, hedges, trees, some reasonably- sized waterways and is located some distance from a main road. 

When they visited four years ago they found 52 different species.

Dad and I have been spending a bit of time down there recently walking daffodil fields and we have spotted some familiar species and a few new arrivals.  We have a barn owl nesting again and there was a egret flying along one of the drains this weekend.  Last week we saw a skylark fly up from one of the field margins; it is the first time that we have noticed one of these.

"Bugger me" said Dad "the ELS is working"

Then on Sunday we spotted a type of bird which neither of us recognised.  It was on the ground and hopping across the flower rows next to a large rough-grass field margin and near to some water.

It appeared to be about the size of a blackbird.  The plummage was mostly black but in the sunshine it shone almost like dark green.  When it flew, we saw that it had a light grey belly.  It had a short, slightly-curved bill which gave its head a hawk-like appearance.  The tail was fanned rather than pointed.

We stopped to look at it closely and then realised that there were 15 other birds of exactly the same species behind it.

I've not been able to find anything that matches the description.  The most likely species that I have found so far is the black-winged pratincole.  These normally breed around they Black Sea, would they come this far North?  It certainly looked much blacker than in this photo which I found on the net.

 Other suggestions greatly appreciated.

Today has been curious.  Can you remember the footage of OJ Simpson being pursued by helicopters? I've been hounded by the media in a similar way.  This is DAFFODILGATE.

I was tempted to jump into the back of my VW with a blanket over my head at one stage.  I've been as newsworthy as Jonathan Ross after he slept with Manuel (or whatever it was that he did to him).

We were on BBC Breakfast and the 1 o' Clock News, then ITV arrived this afternoon (and we got a 4x4 stuck when we took them to film the flower cropping and had to be towed out by a tractor). I hoped that I would escape the attention by driving to Yaxley for an appointment but on the way was called by Radio 2 who wanted a live interview at 6.30pm.  I'm told that even the One Show were harping on about daffodils tonight.

If you want to hear me talking in a posh voice on Simon Mayo's show then CLICK HERE and listen at one hour and thirty minutes.

Anyway.  Excitement is now over and I'm back to being a lonely Fenland troll again, I've got a home-made cottage pie.  Is super stardom like this for Jordan and Lady Gaga too?

We have got a satellite broadcasting van behind the office transmitting live OBs (outside broadcast, love) to BBC 1 from one of the daffodil fields.  I suppose this is quite exciting.

I have been in the office filling in proposed pesticide usage declarations for my potato customers and pretending to be nonchalant about the situation.  I went out to the engineer a moment ago to take him a cup of coffee and caught a glimpse of myself on one of the monitors giving the interview which was recorded yesterday. 

I normally avoid looking at film of myself or listening to my recorded voice, it makes me feel so terribly self-concious that there is a danger it will send me into cardiac arrest.  In the film, I had my head tilted demurely looking like a cross between the HMV dog

and Princess Diana in the Martin Bashir interview. 

There was also a fairly camp bit of arm waving from me in a coldstore.

I guess they will get Vinnie Jones to play me if they ever make a biopic of my life.

I am still available for the coming pantomime season, by the way.

I'm up early this morning again but today for a better reason than insomnia.  BBC Breakfast are running a little news story about how late the daffodils are flowering this year and are filming from our farm.

I had been expecting to film a little interview today - I washed an ironed plenty of shirts at the weekend so that I had a choice of something smart to wear.    

As it turned out I was ambushed and filmed yesterday instead.  To say that I hadn't made an effort with my appearance is to rather understate my general trampliness.  I was wearing a polo shirt and an old navy jumper.  My hair was all over the place.  I completed the ensemble with a fleece which was two sizes to big for me. 

So if you happen to see a little slaphead on the tellybox this morning, that is why he is dressed like Albert Steptoe.  

The broadcasts are pencilled in for 6.25, 7.25 and 8.25 but this is all subject to change. If Gordon Brown gets stressy again and punches his secretary in the face then daffodils might get pushed down the news agenda,

We have some new competition in the blogging firmament.

Sir Don Curry, the new chairman of the Better Regulation Executive, has a blog here.  It's not a real blog yet.  He's only done one entry.  There isn't a dog in a wig anywhere.

Don has done some good work for agriculture and this is another role where he could be effective.

A lot of farmers moan about unnecessary regulation and now we have someone to tell.  If you think that you could improve a bureaucratic process, you can report it here.

Tesco still haven't got planning permission to build a shop in Sheringham. (That link takes you to a rival publication.  Don't click on it else I will be taken to the Farmers Weekly correctional facility again - it makes Guantanamo Bay look like Ragdale Hall).

Instead the planning permission has been awarded to a local farmer, Clive Hay-Smith, who proposed an alternative in the form of an eco-version of a Waitrose store which support local producers. 

I am perplexed why this treatment of Tesco should make me feel as joyful as it does.  Generally I side with people who are passionate about making things happen rather than those who devote their energy to stopping things from happening.  At least Clive has provided a credible alternative - without his action the Tesco trucks would be trundling towards Norfolk already.

My schadenfraude is completely hypocritical - I shop in Tesco myself, after all.  There is a store less than 2 miles away which has everything that I need at reasonable prices (I never buy meat there though).  Like most humans, I am essentially lazy and take the easiest course of action in most situations. 

I could be self-righteous and tell you that I have to run a business AND a household and I don't have enough time to spend a day a week trawling the high street but, however convincing that sounds, it would be disingenuous.  Holbeach, the small market town in which I live, still has a greengrocer, fishmonger and baker, they bring a stall once a week. I could take an afternoon off work to go into town and shop there instead.  Instead I am addicted to the convenience of shopping when I have finished work.

There is no question that the majority of people are behaving in the same way that I am and Holbeach high street has suffered as a result.  If Tesco started doing haircuts, it would kill the town completely.

Obviously it is a shame for the people of Sheringham that they should be denied the convenience that the rest of us enjoy but I admire the stance of their planning officials.

We cannot, and should not, tell consumers where they can and can't shop and so it is only through planning regulation that we can challenge the unhealthy dominance of the food retailing giants.  Supermarkets usually offer financial inducements to local authorities and communities in order to get planning consent (I used the word inducements rather than "bribes" - I won't stand in your way if you wish to cut and paste this entry into a Word document so that you can substitute it).  It is to their credit that the Sheringham town planners did not bow to the commercial might of Teso and I wish them every success with their alternative vision.

I am keeping a cold at bay and so I have a made a spicy curry for dinner to keep my airwaves clear.  I only had wild rice in the cupboard and it took bloomin' ages to make it fluffy.

While it was fluffin' up, I had a chat with Stockings who is now a couple of days into her Nuffield group tour; they all get on a plane for Washington tomorrow.  She had a few moments free before a night out at a Mexican restaurant.  I felt a tiny bit jealous.  Not about the Mexican; I can make my own fajitas thank you very much, I mean about the study tour.

We had a lot of fun when we did the Nuffield study tour in London, Paris and Belgium in, I think, 2005.  We were in a restaurant in Notre Dame when Pope John Paul II died and we gave him a great send off.

I can remember that it took a while for our group to bond together.  It was only when we got to France that we worked out whose company we enjoyed and we dropped the stuffy and pompous facades that we farmers put up when we are nervous and in a new crowd.

Of course some farmers drop these facades to reveal an equally stuffy and pompous personality behind.

Did I tell you that the strategic thinker, James "Pecker" Peck is doing a Nuffield Scholarship this year?

Love ya really, Pecker.

I had a trip today to visit a plant propagating business who I was hoping would grow me 5000 plants from some seeds which I bought last week.  They are a hybrid variety of delphiniums which I haven't grown before.

There's a bit of a blah, blah, blah story about me not being able to get my car keys because I left them in Chris's 4x4 and it was locked and he wasn't about (you can see what I meant about this being boring).  The upshot was that the only vehicle around that I had keys for was Dad's menoPorsche.  I don't like going to meet people for the first time in a flash car and so I was a bit embarassed and the sun was shining so I looked an even bigger poseur (No one uses the word "poseur" anymore.  Come on, use the word "poseur" you lot, it's a great word).

So.  Where were we?  Right, this seed.  I had been given instructions that I needed to keep the seeds refrigerated and I suddenly realised that they had been in my pocket afternoon. 

Anyway.  The bit that I thought would be a funny comment is that keeping it next to my privates was probably a cold place anyway.

It's not that funny now I've written it down.

It's actually a bit crude.

Yet I've still published it.