November 2009 Archives

Poor old Phil Archer spoke his last yesterday.

Today, the actor who plays David Archer (who once stood at the next urinal to me in the White Horse in Burnham Deepdale - he was on a mobile phone too; that's how I identified him) posted a photo on Twitter of the kitchen from Brookfield, the Archers' family home.  Are you still with me?  That was a very long and complicated sentence.

Here's that kitchen.

Perhaps the best pictures really are in the mind after all.

Friends of the Earth organised a comedy night called LIVEstock a few days ago.  The idea of the event was to publicise their "Fix the Food Chain" campaign.

I have no respect for "celebities" who lend their support to campaigns that they don't entirely understand but I am a fan of Friends of the Earth.

 See what you think to the campaign.

Obviously EVERY farm in Britain has an element of industrialisation to it and always has so some of the language alienates the farming viewer.  This is a shame because I think that FoE are trying to support UK farmers. 

They are calling for a supermarket ombudsmen which I agree with. 

I am not sure that I agree that EU subsidies should be used to encourage less productive systems; the CAP (for all its many faults) is there to keep food affordable.  I agree that the government should be doing all that it can to encourage the adoption of "greener" methods of production.

One area that annoys me is that everyone believes that there is a capitalist conspiracy to force people to accept "factory farming."  The sad truth is that it is the consumers who like cheap and ready-prepared food.  It is they, and not the politicians, who are driving production methods to become more intensive and more centralised.

I support the objectives of this campaign, as do 240 MPs have already pledged their backing.  Do the comedians and musicians who performed at the LIVEstock gig realise that they are arguing for a society with more expensive food and, consequently, one with many more people beneath the poverty line?

I completely lost my blogging mojo.  I haven't spent much time in the office this year and my laptop at home is still in two separate pieces.  Really I should get a telephone that allows me to post entries but I can't being doing with trying to understand the technology. 

I've been all over the place.  I'll give you a rough round up of the basics and then we can get back to normal.

I went to the Highlands for a few days to speak at a conference and to visit my friend, Andrew Booth.  I now try to use a train where it's possible and, since it's a bloomin' long way, I had a cabin on the sleeper train and travelled through the night.  Boothy drove me around some fantastic farms while we were there - the trip would have been perfect if his labrador hadn't pooed in his Land Rover (actually it's a Range Rover Sport but you'll think less of us both if I put that so we'll just call it a Land Rover).  He had done his best with the vanilla air freshener but it honked pretty badly in there

The renewable energy industry seems more advanced in the Aberdeenshire area, I saw one of the first AD plants that was built in the UK, and there are a number of wind farms.  The farms were generally very progressive in their views.  If you want to see where I was (and possibly buy some of Boothy's Aberdeen Angus) you can check out his website here.  There's a picture on the first page of Boothy with the Queen (he's the one laughing at his own joke, she's the one on green with the polite yet appalled expression).

Last week was our NFU Branch AGM and my mate, Jules, was elected for his second year as Chairman.  There was a presentation from a chap from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust.  Essentially he said that they had very successfully increased the populations of all species by creating more habitats and through winter feeding but had seen the numbers fall back to their original levels since they stopped controlling predators.  I'll pick up on all this stuff another day, I guess, but it's highly possible that the demise of farmland birds has more to do with the demise of game keepers.

Last week I gave an after dinner speech to the Stamford 20 Club, a farming dining/discussion group.  I was reasonably provocative so although we had a good debate, Icame home feeling unloved afterwards. 

This weekend I've been in Harrogate for the reunion of our Worshipful Company of Farmers Advanced Farm Business Management Course year group. We have seen some fantastic farming businesses and it was a lot of fun.  I really enjoy seeing them each year, there is the most wonderful chemistry between us.  We laughed a lot and came home stimulated.

Not only have I not been blogging, I've not been doing laundry.  Tonight I have six loads of washing to do and there will be almost 20 shirts to iron.  It's enough to make naturism look like an viable life-style choice.

I am sad to record the death of Reg Dobbs OBE, a Spalding farmer who was a wise and kind source of advice to me on many occasions.

He had a remarkable life.  He was one of the very first Nuffield scholars in the 1950's, an adventure involving telegrams and boat voyages in an age before long-distance travel was common.  He was very energetic and served the farming industry tirelessly.  During his lifetime his farm grew from 30 acres to 1400.  He was one of the founders of Spalding Young Farmers Club and played an important part in the success of Spalding Flower Parade, Springfields gardens, South Holland Horticultural Association, the Lingarden Co-operative, South Holland and Lincs County NFU... the list goes on.

He contributed to Farmers Weekly and the Lincs Free Pree Press (under the pen name of Harvester) for many years and even wrote a book about his life which is a fascinating document of the changes that farming has seen in the last century.

He was a huge source of support when I was Young Farmers Chairman and made me welcome when I first started attending NFU meetings.  He encouraged me to go for a Nuffield Scholarship and nominated me for my Award. 

Reg was a highly intelligent but disarmingly modest man and I liked and admired him enormously.  He will be sadly missed but fondly remembered.

Although I am deeply ashamed to admit it, we have only just finished harvesting our potatoes.  The conditions have been as challenging as I have ever known them.  It didn't rain here for 12 weeks and even up to the end of October it was still too dry to harvest them without causing bruising.  And then it was too wet.  And we had the building of the new polytunnels going on in October and then they had to be planted with flowers.  And we've had a smaller team of people this year.  And (looks at ground and goes red) I went to Kenya. 

Anway.  We've finished now and, as we always unsportingly say at this point, anyone who has still got potatoes left in the ground deserves to lose them.

Nothing seems funny (and news events seem less serious) when you have an important job to get your teeth into.  These posts are always poor when I haven't had time to reflect what is going on around me (either that or you get rather more pictures of dogs in wigs than you need or want)

It may seem a bit sad to be obsessed by potato harvesting but it's the last big task of the year and the financial consequences of getting this bit wrong can be severe.  Now we just have the cultivations, ploughing, cleaning and maintenance to do.  None of these tasks are quite as time-sensitive or weather dependent.

I'm heading up to Scotland, loads to tell you at the weekend.

And, for good measure, I'll chuck you in a obese squirrel

Stockings did good.  The bear with no hair was, I have to admit, impressively freaky.  So do I gracefully concede defeat? 

Nah.  Have a shaved cat.

It took me a while to shape the moon boots and the cat wouldn't sit still, it nearly took my eyes out a couple of times, but I'm pleased with the end result (Well, more pleased than the cat, anyway) 

Stockings has upped the ante over on Catchat by posting a picture of the second largest cat in the world.

I won't waste your time showing you the also-rans here.  You lead a busy life, you want to cut to the chase, you want to see the numero uno. So here it is. This is THE fattest cat to ever walk the earth.  Obviously it doesn't do much walking of the earth these days - it just sits there like a heap of hair while an army of idiot cat lovers shovel mice into its mouth.

Her name is "Gutsy" and she is 69.2 inches long.  She weighs 88.1 lbs and eats 32 mini-Mars bars and drinks two pints of Slimfast every day.

Look at the state of the bloody thing.  It looks like it's just eaten a duvet 

Stockings is sittin' in for the Relfster over on Catchat.  He is takin' a well-earned rest - the world of whimsy has been very busy of late.

As usual I imagine we will be havin' a little contest to see who can find the most absurd animal related pictures.

This cow wearin' Frankie Howerd's toupee should get the ball rollin' nicely. 

It's been a week since I got back from Kenya and I haven't told you anything about it.  Soz.

I love Kenya and I'm really rather partial to the local brew, Tusker beer.

One night we went to a funny little bar which was in a corrugated tin hut.  It had a lot of low sofas and dim lighting and was really terribly "chilled out" in a basic sort of way.

We were sitting around talking about our day when a wart hog walked in.

Have you seen a wart hog?  Their ugliness is not in question.  Even a wart hog's mother would call him a minger.

Not at all the sort of thing that you want to be sharing a beer with.  The bloomin' thing knocked the drinks over and climbed on a sofa.  You are wondering if I shrieked like a girl and jumped on a table, are you?  Never mind, that's not the point.

It has now occurred to me that the poor creature was probably just there to enter itself in the FW's "sexy farmer competition".  Have a look at the entries, let's just say that the wart hog wouldn't be in the bottom ten.

I am sad to report that Bob Davies, the Farmers Weekly correspondant for Wales, died yesterday.  I spoke to Bob a couple of times over the past few weeks while I was researching my article on AG Street and he was a great help.

Bob started work at the Farmers Weekly when AG Street was still around (Street died about 18 months after Bob joined) and it was fascinating to be able to discuss things with him.  44 years service with one magazine is really rather incredible and naturally Bob was a wealth of knowledge and fascinating to talk to.

My deepest condolences to his family and friends.

I was quite cynical about the government's car scrappage scheme initially but it looks as though it has been effective in raising car sales.  There is questionable benefit to the practice of crushing perfectly reliable cars and manufacturing new ones, of course, but the defence is that it is helping motorists and car makers to move towards greener transport.

Perhaps there would be a bit of merit in a subsidised scheme for crushing old farm machinery too.  A lot of farms are littered with redundant machinery giving the countryside an air of degradation and lack of direction.  The deeper problem is that each time a new piece of agricultural equipment is produced it increases the industry's productive capacity.  We are capable of producing way more food than the country presently needs and this is why commodity prices are so low.  When a farmer buys a new machine, the old one is invariably sold cheaply to a potential competitor. 

I have heard several movers and shakers recently mumbling about market interventions to remove the price volatility that is currently affecting us all.  A machinery scrappage scheme would be an interesting and less disruptive option.