July 2009 Archives

I bought the Times today for a change (I also bought a Star Bar.  It was great; chocolatey, chewy and just a little bit salty).

They have given a lot of space in the Thunderer to the Food Standard's Agency report (www.food.gov.uk) on the nutritional value of organic food.  It was on the front page and had a couple of pages inside - it must have been a slow news day or something.

Don't worry, I'm not going to gloat about the organic stuff supposedly being no better just because of my run in with Blatch.  I've nothing against organic farmers or their products.  I only defend agrochemicals because I believe that a lot of people would starve to death if we didn't have them. 

My view is supported by the fact that only 0.8% of the world's farm land is currently managed organically.  In Africa and Asia (indisputably the two hungriest continents) only 0.1% of the land is farmed organically.

This said, the FSA report was irrelevant to the whole debate of organic versus conventional.  Measuring the levels of essential elements seems to be missing the point.  As a consumer the question that I want answered is "Are there residues in conventional food which will hurt me?"  A secondary (and admittedly devilish) question would be "Is there more bacteria on organic food and will it hurt me?

We will not know for many years the effects that tiny traces of agrochemicals have on human health.  We have all heard the familiar mantra from the organic lobby about "lethal cocktails of chemicals in our food" and I would like to see research into this theory instead.

On the evidence I've seen, I can't currently see the basis for thinking that conventional food is poisonous.  Life expectancy in the West is greater than at any time previously.  Human beings are taller and stronger than ever before (present company excepted). The liver is a remarkable organ.

I concede that agrochemical use is still in its infancy and has a long way to go, I am certainly not blase about the long-term risks.  The food that we produce on our farm is always submitted for residue testing which can detect the smallest number of parts per million of things that shouldn't be there.  Some of the newer chemical products that we use leave no residues and I suspect that we are not many years from food which is completely residue free.   

There is certainly a place for organic food and I hope that the results don't dent the sales.  It has been an important niche allowing some small businesses to survive which wouldn't have done otherwise, it has put more money in at the farming end of the supply chain and the Soil Association have reintroduced ideas about good husbandry which have been adopted by conventional farmers.  These are all reasons to celebrate.

Ultimately consumers will get the methods of production that they pay for.  If it turns out that consumers were only buying organic food on selfish health grounds rather than from moral concern about the environment then it is a very disappointing reflection on society.

Comments and challenges welcome as always - I've never failed to publish one yet.   

As a small compensation for forgetting to post you a wig yesterday (and to celebrate the FSA research).  Here is a special bonus photo.

This product is a dog gas neutralising thong.  You can buy them here. 

Miss Pickering has bought one already and is considering getting a second one for her dog.

The Relfster wants to know if they do one for cats.

 

Now that's what I call asymmetrical 1.

These pictures seem to be getting smaller.  Maybe that's a good thing. 

Oh Lord, will someone please make it stop.

The Relfster has gone and opened the floodgate (or should that be sewer pipe valve) over on the FWi forum by launching a poetry competition for farmers. 

FOR. THE. LOVE. OF. GOD.  Nooooooooooooooooooooooo.  It's like the Vogons have landed

Look.  If you are only able to write limericks which don't scan, have too many verses and contain at least two lines that don't make sense then I urge you to take part in the competition - you are in with a good chance of winning the first prize.  See, that's your second chance to win something today.  This blog just keeps on giving

It was hard to pick out a personal favourite from the entries so far; they are all masterpieces in their own special way.  This one made me laugh loud and hard though.

There was once a rural bobby, who's out on the beat,
A chat and a smile to all who he greet,
He slipped in dog shyte,
And tried how he mite,
But he hovered and dropped in excrete.

Do you want to win some flowers?  Is that what you want?

My friend, Miss Pickering, the talented Stamford florist, photographer and humorist is offering the chance to win one of her sublime bouquets if you leave a comment on her blog.  Check it out here.

Points

One    This is a great example the web providing producers with opportunities to build close relationships with their consumers. 

Two     It shows how emotionally needy bloggers are - we'll do anything for a comment.  Why else would anyone publish their diary? (That means you too, Alan Bennett)

Three   I haven't got a kitchen sink at the moment and it's sending me slowly potty.  New kitchen being fitted this week.  The water softener sprayed me with two pints of water from a pipe last night.  Should be finished by Wednesday.

 

I wonder how future generations will look back on our decisions.

I have just had my daily glance through the papers online.  Today's Guardian is leading with a story about the Department of Culture, Media and Sport promising more grants than it has the cash for.

Hidden away on their environment page is an article on the report that Parliament's Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published yesterday.  The report accepts what the Commercial Farmers Group have been trying to highlight for years; that we face grave food shortages if the population continues to grow at its current rate.

Isn't it strange to value our current cultural "needs" as more newsworthy than the basic human needs of the next generation?  How will the Guardian be judged by anyone reading today's issue in 2050?

It is obvious that we will need to learn how to produce tomorrow's food with less water, less fossil fuel, less fertiliser, less agrochemicals and, most importantly, less land.  Surely this increases the problem to the power of ten.  Why does no one seem bothered by the looming crisis? 

If I only ever manage to make one serious point on here it is that stable and cultured societies have always been built upon organised and productive agriculture.  Never in history have food shortages stimulated great art or philosophy just revolution or deprivation.  Farming is the bedrock of all of civilisation.

Ironically Radio 4 have launched their Food and Farming Awards this week.  They say that they are looking for farming "revolutionaries."  No doubt the awards will go to a maker of speciality cheeses or someone who has managed to reduce their yields by going organic.  What they are actually looking for is "regressionaries."

How can anyone prize sophistication in areas like communication, transportation and energy generation yet fear it in food production? 

We all know that intensified agriculture is far from perfect.  This is true of all developing technology; mobile phones fry your brain, oil-powered cars and coal-fired power stations produce pollution.  It is only by using the technology and refining it that we can move towards something better.

To me it feels as odd as if Radio 4 gave awards to pigeon breeders for helping to "revolutionise" communication or to Dr Scholl for "revolutionising" transport.

I'm not even sure if I agree with my own point here.  Anyway, you know how to leave a comment on here by now - the angry ones are always the best.

Here's today's.

I was strugglin' a bit today - I thought that I was going to have to use the picture that I have of a dog in a thong (perhaps that could be a Thursday theme in the future).

Then I had a brainwave.  I decided to break Google's monopoly and I used Lycos ("oh yehhh, Lycos.  I remember my Granny mentioning them")

Now I have found enough new pictures to last until the end of time (well the end of August anyway).

I've changed at some point in the last year.

It has rained for most of the day and, after clearing my desk of paperwork, I had time to nip off to choose a carpet for the newly-decorated dining room.

Without thinking, I went to the nearest shop (a mile and half from home) and bought one made of British wool. 

So much for being a free-trader, eh?  It must be the credit crunch.

Hello.  I'm back from my mini, hippy break at Latitude festival.  I'm not going to tell you how good it was because you might decide to go next year and make it all busy and crowded; it was perfect as it was. 

Hey, I could get used to taking time off in the summer.  It was brilliant; I love Suffolk for a start.  I've also discovered that I love camping, even when it's raining (the bad weather meant that I was vindicated over my "all eventualities" packing). 

I'm always going on about chillaxing but this was the real deal, squatting on a rug in the Literature tent while people read stories, drinking perry in the sunshine, bopping around to bands with names that I couldn't pronounce and wearing beads.  OH YES, I wore beads and linen let me tell you.

I know that I supposed to be cynical on here but I can't today.  I'm even resisting sarcastically mentioning that Stockings bought Dutch bacon for our breakfast (there's a picture of it on Twitter)

The rest of this entry is about music so if you're not interested you can nip along...

 

Guess who I am. Go on, guess. Nope, not the dog featured in this week's Wednesday Wig photo. No, not Blatch either.

It's Caroline 'off of' the FW noos revoo. I'm a guest blogger. Fancy, hey?

Matthew had been planning to post this morning, but he's taking longer to pack than expected so I've stepped in. We're both off to Suffolk for the Latitude festival. For those of you who haven't heard of Latitude, think of a posh person's Glastonbury and you're about there. It's fair to say the pink shirt Matthew's packed probably won't be out of place on the campsite.

Have you ever camped with a farmer? As I left FW Towers yesterday the FW team mocked the size of my rucksack, but it pales in comparison with the amount of stuff Matthew's taking with him.

 Apparently, we're going to need (along with a camping stove, kettle and baby wipes) Agri-Tape, pliers, wax jacket water-proof dressing, Mole Grips, a wheelbarrow,water-proof jackets AND water-proof leggings (Erm, Matthew. We're not going brussel sprout picking). I know a lot of rain's been forecast, but I dread to think what could possibly happen over the next four days to make us need most of those things.

 

We're both very excited about the weekend, though for different reasons. Matthew's seeing this as a great excuse to use all the Tuppawear boxes he's bought over the years, as well as an excuse to go shopping at Lathams of Potter Heighem (in fact, he's more excited about going there than seeing the bands). Meanwhile I'm trying to see how many indie rock bands we can see in a weekend (not many, if Matthew gets his way).

Anyway, Matthew's just putting the finishing touches to his festival outfit (apparently the addition of beads dresses down his obligatory white shirt) and then we're ready to go. Both of us will no doubt be Tweeting all weekend, or as long as the battery on my iPhone lasts. You can follow me here and Matthew here.

P.S. Matthew has asked if you'd be kind enough not to burgle his house while he's away.

Now.  Unlike human wigs, the thing about the dog wigs is that you can normally tell straight away, even from a considerable difference, that they are not real. 

You wouldn't have any reason to suspect it from this photo but Richard Whiteley was rumoured to to wear a stirrup (or whatever it is that the cockneys call them.  Should that be cocknies? Anyway.)

Dog wigs are usually much less subtle that that .  But.  Take a butchers (I think that is a cockney phrase too) at today's Wenesday wig. 

Convincing, eh?  This photo was taken by Mario Testino and the hair styled by Nicky Clarke.

We started size-grading and packing the daffodil bulbs today.  The machinery is running nicely after my maintenance frenzy at the weekend.  I had to fetch my drill and pop-riveter when everyone went for their tea break to make a few tweaks to stop the dust blowing about but the task is actually running as smoothly as it ever has. 

Goodness knows this was a pig of a job when I first started doing it twenty-ahem summers ago.  I used to dread it.  It was dusty and strenuous and felt like we would never get to the end of the job.  All my friends were off doing interesting summer things but not me.  We used to put all the bulbs into small wooden trays to dry and I would have to lift thousands of them each season.  Now we handle them in larger wooden bins with a forklift; this is much better for the bulbs but the change in practice and the twenty-ahem winters since explain why my tummy isn't as flat as it used to be. It is only when you look back that you can see the shift because it has only been achieved a step at a time using experience, effort, imagination and gradual investment. 

We are sufficiently well-organised in fact that I am going to get a few days off in July for the first time in my life so I'm going to recapture my lost youth at a festival.  I'm even camping.  I can't wait. 

After years of plugging away at this bit of the business I can't convey how relieved I am to feel in control.  It takes a lifetime to learn how to do this job.  I feel much more confident as a daffodil grower now and I can concentrate on improving what we do.  We are adding a few different cultivars to our range this year and are selling some of the more disease-susceptible stocks, these are going to be processed into a drug to treat Alzheimers.  I am also hoping to buy back a variety which my Grandad grew decades ago because it will fill a small gap in our flower programme and keep the flower croppers in full employment and the customers smiling (or scowling less anyway).  This winter I am turning my attention to improving the hot water treatment process and trying to incorporate a biopit and we have plans to modify our harvester a bit.

Once the machinery was humming along nicely, I managed to get a proper look around the farm and I spent a couple of hours at our trial ground.  The crops around the farm look remarkably well considering how little rain we have had and the potatoes will really benefit from the shower this afternoon.     

The best bit, however, was behind the old potato store at Welland House where we compost our organic waste (potato grade-outs, delphinium leaves and daffodil bulb husks). There were two small Owls perched on a branch (there were also 12 rabbits loitering around but I'm not mentioning them - the rabbit population has exploded in the banks and hedge bottoms). 

The owls quickly flew into the hedge when they saw me but I'm pretty sure that they were young Barn Owls and not Small Owls.  We have Barn Owls nesting at Welland House most years.  The irony is that this year they have snubbed the nesting box in favour of a gap in the large stack of wooden trays.  The same trays that we once used for daffodils bulbs.

Eh?  How's that for a neatly-rounded entry?      

Oh crikey.  I've got another bloomin' enemy.  They are called Blatch.  I hope that Blatch never meets Poodle Pam, they might start a hate club or something.

Blatch writes a blog here called afewviews; it's a "light-hearted" look at GM crops, Intensive Industrial Farming and Pesticides.   It has the following catchy strapline

"It is our human right to prevent our water, food, air and soil from being polluted-particularly when government legislation promotes pollution of our natural resources"

Did you read my column in this week's Farmers Weekly? 

Did you notice that it had even more cack-handed phrases and cliches in it than usual? This is because I have hidden several song titles in the text. 

I've reprinted it below.  This is a exclusive competition just for blog readers.  There's a Farmers Weekly mug to the first person to spot them all and identify the link between them.  (I haven't cleared this with anyone at the Farmers Weekly so I hope that they don't charge me £80 for that mug.) 

Here's a funny one for you.  We finished harvesting the daffodil bulbs on Friday morning.  This is the earliest that we have ever completed the task by about 10 days.

To celebrate I should have put my feet up, pulled the smug face and chillaxed but instead I have been at work all weekend.  I was still there until 9pm Friday, 6pm on Saturday and 5pm today.  I have been re-configuring the daffodil grading machinery and re-wiring it to make the next stage of the process simpler and more efficient.

It's a bit of a virtuous circle in some ways.  When you are on top of your workload it's a pleasure to be there and you are able to analyse it and become better organised.  There's always stacks to do on the farm and I probably ought to have taken a rest while the opportunity existed.  I'm pooped but happy anyway.

Right.  Enough of all that, the next entry is important. 

The Relfster  called yesterday to talk about the FW's 75th anniversary supplement.  I was on the mobile in a tractor so I couldn't hear perfectly and I thought he said "I hear that you're an ageing Streets fan"

Now I quite like Mike Skinner  (although I didn't know that his middle name was Geoffrey until I Googled him just now) but I thought that calling me "ageing" was a bit cruel.

Turns out he had heard that I was an A. G. Street fan (possibly even an ageing A. G. Street fan but he didn't say so) and he wanted me to write something about him (he didn't mention a Mike Skinner feature).

I've been a bit touchy about my age lately not least because I became a year older at the end of last week.

Four people have thought that my Dad was my brother this year.  A couple of weeks ago someone thought that Chris (who is 25) was my son.  I am 36.  This would mean I was 10 at the time of conception, that is considered young even in Lincolnshire so shouldn't be a natural assumption.  Normally I would be able to string this out into an amusing and self-deprecating anecdote, but not now. 

What with the rain and my deteriorating physical state, I am starting to feel rather victimised.  If God keeps treating me like this I am going to have to start believing in him again. 

Oh and since it's Wednesday..

I don't ever recall our farm being as dry as it is this year. 

There was a report on the radio on Monday that the roads were flooded just two miles up the road from here while we had barely 2mm of rain.  Yesterday they had another 35mm of rain, we had next to nothing and I went home with dust in my hair and ears yet again.  Sometimes is taking the mickey here.

The wind is in the North for some strange reason and it looks as though the rain is following the river.  This is a disaster for our potato crops, they still look OK for now but they are desperate for rainfall, we will yield hundreds of tonnes less than the neighbours' crops that caught the deluge.

Still we have almost finished harvesting the daffodil bulbs, we just have a block left that have been sold to be processed into an Alzheimers drug and then we can do the poeticus varieties.

No other news on the farm, sorry it's so boring.

 

This is supposed to be a genuine call to Asda's complaints department.  Does the fact that he's Welsh make it funnier for you too. 

 

It's bloomin' dry here.  It rained quite heavily a few moments ago but now you can't see where it fell.  The ground is like ash.  I think that I put in a request on here for steady rainfall on our potatoes and a drought in the rest of Europe.  We've had the opposite.  It's a disaster.

You can imagine what a living hell it is trying to harvest daffodil bulbs from the baked earth.  They have had two wet summers which means the soil is like granite.

I was knackered before we even started the job, I look like I'm 200 years old.

Anyway.  The new machinery is working well and we are nearly half-way through although I shouldn't tempt fate by opening my cakehole. 

Sorry that I haven't been writing much.  Mum and Dad had a couple of weeks away and so I had a very busy spell.  I couldn't mentioned this at the time because I thought that you would burgle their house.

Do you know, I've had a couple of accident-prone days.  Yesterday I smashed the door on the big John Deere (they are like a solid sheet of glass) and today I locked both my bunches of keys in the garage.  I have been Mr Security since I was broken into last year and so the garage is like Fort Knox

I said FORT Knox, that's Barbara Knox.  You've got the wrong end of the stick again, the garage is nothing like her.  I suppose you could say it's a bit like the cabin...

Look, we're getting distracted, I haven't even seen Coronation Street since that picture was taken.  Basically I had to break into my own garage with a crowbar.  I was suprisingly good actually.  I have managed to effect a repair too so it is barely noticable what I did (a shame the villains didn't show the same courtesy last time).

I have also managed to lock myself out of my safe in the house but I'm going to need a professional to get in there.  I tried looking in the Yellow Pages under "Thieves" and "Bank Robbers" but there were no adverts.

I have just finished writing my column for next week's FW magazine.  It took a bit longer than usual because I had to incorporate a few special phrases.  It's like a little challenge for you.  I'll see if Isabel will stump up a Farmers Weekly mug for the first person to work out what I've done exactly.  CLUE: You might want to listen to Stockings' on this week's Noos Revoo.  The magazine's out next Friday and I'll put the column up on here too if I remember.