April 2008 Archives

I am halfway through completing the LEAF on-line audit. It's a bit of a long haul and I am getting a bit ratty.

Dad and I share an office with a large L-shaped desk. Dad just came in to the office and sat down at his computer and started typing. I assumed that he was updating the spray records or something. Then he said "How do you spell Bedouin?"

I was completely baffled. Next thing I know we have a Bedouin Soundclash http://www.bedouinsoundclash.com/song blasting out of his laptop and around the office.

Not sure how many other farmers have to complete their LEAF audits to the strains of loud urban music. Has anyone else got a teenager for a father?

I'm bloomin' mad. I've got plenty to do getting ready for two audits tomorrow but I have to share this with you.

A call on my mobile

Line 1 "Allo, Mafue?" (this is how most people around here have decided that my name should be pronounced)

Me "Yes"

Line 1 "My name is Mr Davis" (I have changed his name to save embarrassing him. His actual name was Mr Baxter. That's Mr Baxter)

I was furious. I bloody well hate people refering to themselves as Mr anything, particularly when they are calling me by my Christian name/given name/forename/first name.

Surely either he calls me Mr Naylor and I call him Mr Whatever, or we both use first names.

Calling people "Mr" either sounds sarcastic or gypsyish. "Do you want your drive tarmacing, I'll do you a good price Mister." "Lucky heather, Mister."

AAAaaaaaaaaargh.

I hope that I am not being unreasonable. Perhaps he had a really naff first name. Or possibly he was just christened with one name like Cher, Sting or Mr Bonio from U2

Oh. And it's raining again. We have only got the headlands to plant on the final field of potatoes. We only needed another hour last night when it started raining. Everything was working against us. A little electric clutch had already broken on the Standen "Big Boy" planter an hour before this. This meant that we were using a Matthew "Little Boy" with a stick to ride on the planter proggling the potatoes. (Tell me, is proggling a word used nationally or just in my world). It seemed as though God, or whoever is acting for him these days, didn't want us to get finished.

It would have been great to get finished and start cleaning the machinery. Now we have to wait for some fine weather.

I gave the after dinner speech to the LEAF Demonstration farmers at their annual dinner last night. I was very nervous about the whole thing and had been faffing around altering what I wanted to say for the last few days. I had a rough draft done on Sunday morning which I wasn't happy with but when it was time to leave for the dinner yesterday evening, I thought that I had finally got it sorted.

Anyway. When I came to print it off the compooter to take with me, I just couldn't get the printer to go. I was running late for a whole host of reasons and hadn't got time to dither about any longer. There was nothing for it but to take my laptop and the few scraps of paper that I had made notes on and leave.

So I was blundering around at the dinner with this laptop, thinking that I could read the words from that. When I turned it on, I couldn't find the speech that I wanted, there was only the crummy draft version from Sunday morning. And Caroline had started introducing me. I was sweating like a pig and had beetroot face. I thought that I might pass out. I had to leave the computer and rely on my scribbled notes.

The only bit that I could remember were the two jokes about vicars. Obviously there was a vicar sitting right in front of me.

I just about managed to crawl out of the wreckage. I was speaking so slowly that the audience would never have believed that English was my first language. My brain was clanking as I tried to think what to say next but you couldn't hear it over the sound of my heart beating like a timpani (I think that's a drum, or am I thinking of a panini, hang on isn't he a composer?).

We had a new chap start work today. I took him around the three sites to show him what goes on and introduced him to everyone. I introduced him to everyone as George. His name, of course, is Charles. I must have called him George a thousand times before he corrected me. What a strange start to a new job. He's bound to respect my sharp mind and the deep personal interest that I take in him. Anyway he's here to run an new interesting project at Vickers Farm - I will tell you more about that some other time.

I'm completely crop at remembering names. A few weeks ago a nice lady writer came, she wanted to feature our business in a book which she was writing. I kept forgetting her name, which was Sally. I ended up introducing her to my father as Fally (or Phally) which just isn't a name (however you spell it). Why did I do that, is that a Freudian slip or something?

Why can't life be like the Weakest Link with Anne Horrible where everyone has their name in front of them the whole time.

Basically there was a school bus parked outside my office for no apparent reason. That's basically what happened. The picture is utterly crumby for reasons which I will explain. If you wish to copy it and enter it in a national picture competitions for school buses, however, fill your boots.

I made a quick lap of the farm this morning and when I came back, there it was.

"Aye, aye," I thought, "that'll be a school bus then."

Our yard is on a B road in the middle of nowhere. It was all rather baffling and other worldly. We've never had a school bus here before.

Obviously the first thing that I did was to fetch my camera. I thought "I'm bloomin' havin' that for the blog." When I opened the lens I realised that the battery was flat. This was the same point that a Spanish man came running out the bus wearing a little high-visibility number and started shouting at me in a foreign tongue. I ran back in the office and shut the door (and put the camera on charge).

So then I had to run out and take a photo before he could come running out again. This, my feathered friend, is the reason that it is in such poor focus - immediacy was all. I had to get the snap before he could get up from laying on one of the seats. Laying on one of the seats was what he was doing inbetween shouting at me in tongues. And on my own premises too I might add.

I wasn't sure if he was Ottoman from the Simpsons or the bus conductor off the Nightbus in Harry Potter (who turns out to be a Death Eater - sorry if that ruins anything for you)

Anyway. It looked as though the bus was operated by Stagecoach. Presumably it had conked out or something; there was a trail of oil all around the yard. Clearly Stagecoach boss, Brian Souter (who I have a problem with), would be better spending his money on maintaining his buses rather than wasting it on bigoted campaigning.

Stop. Look at the time of the entry. That's right 6.00am. My resolution since the Leadership course is to listen to Farming Today while I have my breakfast. Not sure if this will last the year (or week) but hey ho. I was dreaming about my blog (please feel free to leave a comment about how sad I am) and so I thought I would post early today.

I was just reading about the badger cull in the Guardian. The National Trust have come out against the idea. I'm broadly in favour of farmers controlling animals on their own land as they see necessary, if you are interested in my opinion.

The point that I wish to make is that the story was illustrated with the photo above of a badger cub. Like most news stories, it could have been illustrated with any one of a thousand pictures. Something like the one below of a bit of foot and mouth disease perhaps.

Very few Guardian readers are going to look at that little badger and instinctively think "Well that bloody thing wants killing for a start." They are going to rather like the look of the little fellow. I am impying that the story is biased. Perhaps this is because I've been staying at the Farmers Club for a week where it is compulsory to read the Telegraph everyday. Every resident gets a copy at their door at 6.10am whether they want it or not. God love the traditions of the Farmers Club, hilarious.

To me this says that you should read two different newspapers or no newspaper at all.

Anyway. Today I'm not at the Farmers Club, I'm back at home so there is no one to serve me breakfast today, I was getting uncomfortably comfortable with all of that. Today it's coffee and Honey Nut Clusters. Hope that you love the detail.

Busy day today after a week away and I've got to fit everything around the stock taking valuation and the after dinner speech tonight.

I know that it is the agonising puns in the titles that you come here for so why not check out (that means look at, by the way) this website. In fact store it as your favourite blog. Wait. Store it as your second favourite blog.

I have managed to waste an hour surfing the net looking at stuff like this as I strain to find something funny to use in the after dinner speech to the LEAF demonstration farmers dinner this week. Progress still slow on the speech front. I'm really quite nervous about speaking to this particular group.

It was supposed to be raining all day today but it has been a gorgeous day. We have still got a couple of days of potato planting left to do so we would have worked today if the forecast had been more accurate. This is turning into a late spring because of the rain that we have had, there are rumours already that a lot of potatoes remain to be planted in parts of the country.

As it is I plodded on with all the jobs that I had been saving for a rainy day. I nipped into work to... I've just heard the most terible sound of breaking glass.

I have been and investigated and found nothing. The sound had an expensive ring to it. No doubt I will find out later in the week what it is.

Bit of a random entry today. I started without a subject - I'm just dossing to avoid writing my speech, I might pay a heavy price for this.

Hey. I've also got frog spawn in the pond at home, a great big blob of it. I'm very excited. I haven't seen any frog spawn since I was a dwarf, or child, or whatever it's called when you are small. Some of the tadpoles have made a break for it already. I saw a couple that are at the stage that us experts like to refer to as the "got a tail and some legs stage." Not sure what happens next. Will they get eaten by fish? Will I be overrun by a plague of toads? Tune in next time for another exciting instalment of "The Increasingly Tedious Life of Matthew Naylor"

I have been quiet for a week because I've been in London for the last leg of the leadership course that I have been doing. I didn't tell you this because obviously you would have come and burgled my home and that would never do. Actually I had the builders here while I was away as an extra line of defence.

So, since I'm blogging you from behind, we've a little catching up to do. We have been staying at the Farmers Club and have been moving around town to meet the great and the good of British agiculture. We had a day with Baroness Byford in the House of Lords and went behind the scenes at the House of Commons. WE EVEN SAW PRESCOTT (or spu jags as one of the tabloids referred to him the other day).

I have really found the course useful and have made some good new friends. It was a meaty and challenging few days so my brain is somewhat flaccid now that I am home. I have got a speech to write now for Monday night but I will try to tell you a bit more about the course when my brain has had a little rest.

Just to prove that I don't make up the stories in this blog and that my life is truly as absurd and humiliating as you like it to be, here is one of the photos from the photo shoot that I told you about.

Another good title - we are riding on the crest of a creative wave aren't we?

I'm blogging you from my laptop on a train. Yes, be stunned and amazed. We are living in the future now. I bet that you had no idea that such technology was available. Would you like me to order you a sugary tea when the drinks trolley comes by so that you can recover your composure?

I pop down to London on the train a few times each year and I am always intigued what people are doing on their laptops. Sometimes my curiousity takes over and I have to pretend to have a big yawn and stretch so that I can gawp at their screen. Usually it looks like a boring report about social housing.

Anyway. That's about it really, I've nothing else to report. I'm just blogging you because it's there - which I think was the reason that Sir Edmund Hillary gave for climbing Everest. Who would have thought that I would become as brave an adventurer as Hillary, eh?

Now THAT is a good title. In fact it's inspired and you are about to find out why. Yesterday I travelled South for a meeting with the Waitrose flower group. I had to give a little presentation about how we have got on with implementing the LEAF Marque standard across the business. Yesterday's meeting was in a Waitrose store and so we had a chance to look behind the scenes too.

My maternal grandfather was a retailer with a local grocery business. Yesterday reminded me of when me and my sister used to play at the back of the shop when we were children. One of our special tasks was to make sure that the cakes were within their sell by date. Once the date code had expired, it was necessary for us to eat the cakes immediately to protect the public from harm.

Our tasty lunch of Waitrose goodies made me quite nostalgic. I didn't remember to check the sell by dates.

I made the most of my moment out of Lincolnshire and dropped in to see Steve Armstrong in Northamptonshire for a cup of tea and then on to Hertfordshire to Ian and Gill Pigott's for dinner. It was great fun.

Other people's farms always seem much prettier than ours. It is a real change for me to see some rolling hills, trees and hedges. The Hertfordshire scenery makes this bit of Lincolnshire look as untidy as a gypsy camp.

Not that I am saying that there is anything wrong with untidy gypsy camps per se (please don't steal my Land Rover and burn my house down). This said, if you are a gypsy and reading this (or at least having it read to you) makes you feel as though you would like to wash your face with a flannel and tidy up around your caravan, then please don't let me stand in your way.

Right. Apologies to Mike who left an amusing story about his own high profile "wetting" incident (see below). He also pointed out a misspelling, in a very polite and gentle way. What did I do in return? I corrected the spelling and deleted his comment. How's that for a bad sport? Talk about rewriting history.

The bin has gone

Check this out

This is a new kind of map. It is designed for eco-entrepreneurs to see which areas have the most sun and wind. The search for alternative energy could turn into the next goldrush.

I do not need to consult the map to know that South Lincolnshire has the most wind and the least sunshine.

My garden has quite a lot of ground elder in it. All perennial weeds are bad news but ground elder is a particular pig and I hate it. I have decided that glyphosate is the only course of action and I have a little weed spray ready to zap a bit when I see it.

I've become worryingly zealous about the whole thing - it's become a kind of quest. I almost look forward to a finding a new bit to wipe out. I'm starting to remind myself of someone.

I lay in wait with my knapsack waiting for a flash of green to pop up and then I shoot it in the back.

So. I forgot to tell you.

Since the Leadership training that I am having began, I have been trying to organise my diary more effectively. I try to restrict all my meetings to only one or two days a week. This saves me hanging around waiting for people in the office when I want to be getting things done elsewhere.

Today, for example, was a morning with three different meetings in it. This stops meetings overrunning. A bit boring, all this, but I'm building up to a story..

Anyway

You know how some people are really difficult to buy presents for.

Well who could fail to appreciate these Giant Ants covered in Chocolate

You might have noticed the comment from lovely Emma "the unprintable nickname" Rutter a couple of days ago. She ran the London Snickers last weekend. You can sponsor her here which is what I am going to do in a minute just as soon as I have found my debit card.

If you don't like the sound of Emma, you can sponsor top bloke, Rufus Pilgrim instead here. Since he buys the potatoes for Marks and Spencer our donation to his charity can be claimed against tax as a legitimate bribe.

Well done to both of them.

I've discovered video conferencing on Skype. It's BRILLIANT.

Another day, another humiliation. Today I have had most of the afternoon with a photographer from the Gazette. This is the staff magazine for the partners at John Lewis and Waitrose and I am going to be featured in the Meet the Supplier section in May.

I seem to spend a bit over half of my time these days crouching down in flower fields having my photo taken. Today's assignment involved a photographer AND a photographic assistant AND lighting. It was referred to on at least three occasions as a "portrait." This made it sound much more dignified. Obviously there was still plenty of crouching involved and a fair bit of holding flower posies.

"Look at me. Chin up. OK. And RELAX" I'll tell you what, there wasn't much relaxing going on. I have never felt so self-concious.

Back in the day I was reasonably normal to look at and had a good head of hair (a bit big, yes, but at least there was plenty of it). Back then no one wanted to buy anything from me let alone take my photograph. Since I turned into the balding, gap-toothed clown with a bright red face and man boobs, I can't keep the photographers away.

Sam, today's photographer, was quite a bit more arty than your average farm snapper. In the shot that they are setting up in the photo, I was required to throw a large armful of flowers into the air with gay abandon. We had to attempt this five times because each time either the wind blew a hooley, I did a girl's throw or my abandon wasn't gay enough. Work stopped in the packhouse so that everyone could come outside and have a look at what the hell was going on. They thought that I had commissioned these pictures and that I had lost my mind. The two things that I moan to staff about most are waste and untidiness.

I kept looking at the mess on the floor and thinking "I'm going to have to clear that bloody mess up in a minute." Do you think that I'm developing OCD?

The last few shots were of me holding two flowers in front of each of my eyes. I used a variety called "Pheasant Eye." This was my own little in joke.

"OK. And look at me"

"I can't see anything, I've got flowers in front of me eyes"

I will post you some of the pictures up here when they come. I have just done the telephone interview for the article to talk about the introduction of LEAF marque to flowers in Waitrose. I was so cold and discombobulated after the whole photo experience that I couldn't have made much sense.

Kate Moss earns every penny.

Two things. Well three actually. OK Four.

Firstly this is entry number 250. We like to celebrate these milestones here so let's crack open a Babycham and kickback for a second.

Right. Drink up, back to work. I've got loads of boring little details about my uneventful week for you...

I am tonight, for the first time ever, writing my blog entries on the laptop at my kitchen table at home rather than on my PC in the office.

This may mean that the entries are a bit less boring. It may mean that they are great deal MORE boring. They may be exactly as boring as they always have been. This is for you to decide.

Anyway we are halfway through the potato planting but are now stopped after heavy rainfall. I can live with this - at least I got my asparagus crowns planted in the kitchen garden yesterday. Oh dear. Smug AND twee, let's hope this is not a taste of my new style.

I've got this bloomin' stoopid habit.

I store people's names in my mobile phone as wacky nicknames. Not nicknames that they would recognise themselves or that anyone else uses to describe them. Not entirely appropriate nicknames either.

This ridiculous and clumsy system is very hard to operate. First I have to come up with the absurd name and then, each time that I need to ring them, I have to find it again.

I needed to phone Martin Bacon the other day and it was ages before I realised that I had stored him under the name "Streaky". Logically, his father is stored next to him as "Smokey." I wouldn't call either of them by these names to their respective faces.

My phone is full of ridiculous names. There are quite a few names now that I just don't recognise.

Who is Gas Barry for goodness sake? Or "The Photo Guy." I think that "Minty" is for someone called Murray but I'm not truly certain. I bought a machine for the packhouse that automatically folds and seals cartons and, since I'm not likely to buy another one for a while, I recorded the name of the salesrep as Mr Box Closing Man.

Andrew Booth is in as "Scotch Boothy" not that there's anyone else in the phone called just "Boothy." We call our agronomist, Robert Boothman, "Boothy" but obviously in the phone he is stored as "Bob Bootman."

Part of the thinking here (well, what little thinking there is) is to control who is first and last in the phone book. This means that if my big clumsy bottom sits on the phone and makes an accidental call, it will be to someone that I know. If my greatest ever fear becomes a reality; that I should unwittingly call someone while I am singing in the car, then it will be Ali or Will that have to listen to the unimaginable racket.

I'm back. Sorry about the lack of entries but obviously I had to be cautious. After the wise and perfectly reasonable suggestion from the Daily Mail that blogging leads to DEATH, I have been careful not to exert myself on the blog front. You don't want me being all dead on you.

Anyway. Today I am risking life and limb to write an entry. Rather like the fat old biddy in this picture. I'm not sure which goon stuck the big red circle on arrow on there but it wasn't me, sorry about that sledgehammer punchline.

It's a peach of a picture. We are really throwing the gauntlet down there to Field Day which I have heard is being put together by lovely Caroline Stocks this week while the Relfster takes a well-earned rest on a beach somewhere with his cats.

May I present to you my new hedge.

Rosa canina
Vibunum opulus
Prunus spinosa
Crataegus monogyna
Acer campestre

Prunus spinosa is the important one. That's where the sloes come from.

I'm also sticking in a short avenue of lime trees.

I've been wanting to plant this stuff at Vickers Farm since 1999 but back then I had even less time and money than I have now. We are now sticking in a few hundred metres of native hedging each year.

I'm really keen to do more of this sort of thing but it's a real challenge, both financially and in terms of time, to get these environmental enhancements done. They always need doing at the same time that we are planting other crops. It's important, though, because this will determine the way that the farm looks for my remaining time here and beyond.

One advantage of embracing the green agenda is that it means that we now meet all the criteria for LEAF Marque

We had our LEAF Marque mock audit this week. It went well. Our audit is on the 1st May and I am confident that we will pass.

There's another boring little bit about green issues below. You don't have to read that if you don't want to.

Oh No.

According to the Daily Mail too much blogging can lead to DEATH.

I'm not sure what to do. I really haven't got time to be dead at the moment. This is classic Daily Mail; I dare say that blogging is also responsible for food inflation, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the abduction of that girl that they found in the divan drawer.

We still think that the soil is too cold to start planting potatoes so we have started cultivating land ready to plant some flowers.

My first job this morning was escort driver. Look at the flashing beacon on the top of the Freelander. I had to escort the power harrow to St Lamberts because it is quite a wide implement. It's important to always put on a bit of a show for the neighbours and I love driving with a flashing beacon the roof.

Around here potato planting is the main chance to show off. All the neighbours are watching one another to see who is the first to do each operation. There is always a competition to see who can get the most shiny bits of equipment in one field at any one time.

We are very small players around here but we still try to put in a performance. We have already got the tractors cleaned and polished in preparation. As I always say, it looks like Gerry Cottle's circus has arrived in town only with more clowns.

I notice that there is a new septic tank service in our area. He drove through the village in his sh!t cart last weekend handing out business cards. The name that he has chosen to have emblazoned across the side of the vehicle is "MR POO". Is that a good idea? With a name like that he's clearly aiming at the top end of the market (if there is a top end to that market).

Possibly that's his real name.

Hang On.

I've looked in the telephone directory and there isn't a single Mr Poo in there. The closest is Mr Pook (which, let's face it, is almost as bad)

Not sure if you have already seen this already. It is by the "guerrilla artist" Banksy.

When I am invited to give my opinion, I normally suggest that we should celebrate difference. It's the peculiarities of life that make it magical. The world would be a boring place if we were all the same etc etc etc. I'm a pretty liberal chap in this respect.

And see how artistically I have demonstrated my point in the photo above. This is an unwanted face in a cultivar called Pink Pride, a hobby stock of mine.

Anyhow. Now thinks get a bit blacker. My social tolerance does not extend to daffodils. When it comes to my daffodils, I am something of a fascist dictatorship (Oh and hi Robert Mugabe, if you are reading this by the way - I hope that you lose the "election"). We have nearly thirty different daffodil cultivars and the purity of my daffodil stocks is very important to me and my customers.

Each year we have to remove any odd daffodil bulbs which have got mixed into the stock. The number of the poor little fellow illustrated has been called. This, I guess, is the horticultural equivalent of ethnic cleansing. Some of the team have already been through and dug out the odd bulbs, or rogues as we call them in the trade. This is all done by hand and is a bit of a bothersome task.

Last year we bought in a stock of a cultivar that we haven't grown before. It arrived with a very high level of rogue varieties in it (mostly though it was polluted with my least favourite cultivar, Ice Follies. Eurgggghhh). We decided that there were too many bulbs to dig them all out by hand.

So Matthew took matters into his own hands. He was the SS officer on this one, if you like. I'm starting to wonder if all the Nazi analogies have made this is one of my darkest ever entries (which is pretty damning considering that Gary Glitter got a look in on the last one). I went out into the field to sort the problem out in person. Thankfully it was a bit to muddy to wear jackboots.

This was my weapon of choice.

It is a sheep vaccinating syringe with a mini back pack filled with glyphosate. This is pretty dangerous (goodness knows why I'm telling you about it), I certainly wouldn't dare send anyone else out to do a job like this. I put a little protective "sheath" (can I say that, does it sound too rude) over most of the needle to make it as safe as I could and went to work.

I managed to cover about one acre in an afternoon. It was a really quick method. The sun was blazing and there was no wind. It was a glorious afternoon, just me and my daffodils (oh and an ipod) I can't recall ever being happier.

My sister called me last week to see if I would look after my nephews on Saturday night. I'm normally right down the pecking order when it comes to babysitting. As my sister pointed out,

"I've tried everyone else. Even Gary Glitter and Jonathan King are out on Saturday, there's only you left."

So I duly did my Godfatherly duties. My nephews are still pretty tiny so I was a bit nervous about them being left in my sole care.

Oscar slept like a baby log but Sam's perceptive for a three year old, he can spot a soft touch at 200 yards, sorry 0.372894 km. He was straight out of bed and down the stairs.

So we got a few of the Britains toy tractors out and had a bit of overtime ("They are not TOYS, they are SCALE MODELS as my mate, Norfolk Ian, keeps telling me).

I had a John Deere with a Vaarderstadt (I don't care if I haven't spelt that correctly) and Sam was on a Case with a six furrow plough. We had covered most of the living room in fifteen minutes.

"YOU DON'T PLOUGH LAND WHEN YOU ARE USING A VAARDERSTAAADTT, YOU HORTICULTURAL TWIT" I can hear you saying. "You still have to think about your cost of production when you are playing."

This is true and I explained this to Sam in some detail. Thankfully he was soon so bored of my pedantry that he decided that he wanted to go to bed after all.