March 2010 Archives

David Mitchell made an amusing observation in his Observer column today.  You probably don't read the Observer; if you did it wouldn't be in such financial peril. 

The second was Queen guitarist Brian May saying a proposed cull of badgers in west Wales, aimed at controlling bovine TB, "would be genocide". He didn't even say "like genocide". I disagree with, but concede the coherence of, the argument that animals, including badgers, should be accorded similar rights to humans. May goes further and suggests that they actually are humans. He said the cull would be like killing all ginger-haired people if it were found that that would eradicate smallpox. The flaws in this comparison centre around the words "all" and "people" being substituted for "some" and "badgers".

I've been playing with my brother in law's SLR camera around the farm this morning, I'm thinking of buying one myself.  I have a plan to illustrate this blog a bit more imaginatively in the future. 

Mouth of the Wash has never been the prettiest blog in the blogosphere.  Sure, you get all the canine fashion that you can eat and where else can you find out how many pesticides you've got in your pants?  I'm going to make it easier on the eye in the future.

I am going to FW Towers this week for lunch with the editor.  Providing this is not to tell me that I am sacked, I'll launch my campaign for a new masthead at the top as well.  I'm going to talk to the RBI blogmeister himself.  The trees and hills don't capture the austere nature of the fens.  Who needs hills anyway?  They block the view.

Hey. Before you read this, I need you to understand that I discovered this morsel of information from looking at articles about farming and not articles about underwear, OK? 

It is suggested here that the quantity of pesticide used in the production of cotton is so great that it equates to 10ml of chemical for every pair of pants that are produced.  This statistic comes from a Guardian blog and so, as Wikipedia would say, (citation needed).  

We all know that blogs lack the journalistic rigour that we expect from print media.  We do not know if we are talking about diluted chemicals or not.  We do not even know what size pants we are talking about - Peter Stringfellow-style thong (I don't think that we require an image of that to spoil our Sunday morning do you?) or some of those giant ones that teenagers wear up to their armpits. 

Anyway

The article suggests that the worst impact of cotton production is from a product called endosulfan, an insecticide which is maufactured by Bayer.  Recently an organisation called pantstopoverty.com launched this campaign encouraging people to send their mankiest underwear to Bayer to encourage them to withdraw endosulfan from the market.  Bayer responded with the speed and efficiency that you would expect from someone receiving hundreds of pairs of mucky brogs in the mail every morning and a timescale has been set to phase out endosulfan.

The story has many elements which fascinate me (not the underwear bit, well not just the underwear bit anyway).  The power of social media in the campaign is one thing - the pants protest was much more fun than a street riot but has proved equally effective.  The ease with which consumers can be made fearful of industrial agriculture is another.

I do not want to be thought of as an apologist for the agrochemical industry here (it is right to withdraw dangerous pesticides), but campaigns like this feed the underestimation of the importance of an organised agricultural industry.

We cannot yet hope to produce food, fibre and energy crops organically.  You can insert a blah, blah, blah paragraph here about the pressures from population growth/water scarcity/climate change - you have heard this enough already - my point is that every time a chemical product like this is withdrawn before a replacement control is found, we increase the challenge that faces mankind.

The problem with modern day consumers is that they only ever tell us what they don't want.  If we are not careful this will lead to us having nothing at all. 

I hope that a suitable replacement insect control is available. I much prefer wearing clothes made from natural materials (what's your memory like? I told you this a few years ago just here) and cotton remains a very important product.  Who, apart from His Royal Highness the Prince of Charles, wants to wear woolly pants on a hot day? 

I finally feel caught up after a very busy few days harvesting flowers.  We are still busy but I get a small breather at this time of day after the days sales are organised and before today's flowers start coming into the coldstore.

I am now at my desk trawling through purchase order numbers like a corporate drone.  I have at least got the consolation a good cup of coffee - I brought the filter coffee machine from home since  am spending much more time here than there.

I will take some photos for you when the sun starts shining - it is raining presently.

Anyway I just received an email telling me about a New York business called the Butch Bakery which specialises in cup cakes for men.  The website made me laugh

I'm a bit late to join the debate on Brian May and the Welsh badger cull.  He wrote this article in the Guardian declaring his opposition to it.

You may think that he is right.  You may think that he has great hair.  You may even think that he is completely out of proportion with his wife, Angie. 

.

He does at least seem to understand that TB is a scourge and he is not unsympathetic to farmers.  Instead of depicting the anti-cull lobby as the losers, he should remember that a trial cull is the only way to prove if his view is the correct one.

You will have guessed from the lack of stuff on here, that we are now into the daffodil flower harvest.  The flowers grew insanely last night - one variety grew over 3 inches in 24 hours.  I have never seen such rapid growth on them. 

They are growing more in an hour now that they were in a whole week at the start of March.  February ws even slower.  My hair was growing faster than the flowers were in February.  Spring always catches itself up at some point.

This means that we have a very busy week ahead, hopefully just in time for the extra Easter demand.  This is why I was out of bed at 5.40am.  It's like being a dairy farmer.

Oh.  And we now fairly certain that they were pratincoles that we saw.  They definitely weren't white enough for lapwings and didn't have the tufty little thing on their heads. They were too hawk-like in the face to be fieldfayres.  Thank you to everyone who offered advice.  They haven't been spotted since and we have concluded that they were passing through and were treating our habitats as a motorway service station.

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.

A report published yesterday by the Commission for Rural Communities has warned the government about the serious potential consequences of the loss of young people from rural areas.  Basically it says that the brainy kids from rural areas are all leaving to work in cities.

I have a lot of respect for this commission and its head, Sir Stuart Burgess, the rural advocate.  If you don't know him he is essentially Don Curry's counterpart representing the non-commercial side of the countryside.  He's a lovely man.  I sat next him at the FW Awards a couple of years ago and thought he was a dude - he's even on Twitter.

The commission report is highlighting an issue which has been around for two hundred years; it is a global problem too. The matter was being reported passionately by A G Street at the beginning of the last century.  Urban areas are becoming more sophicated but they are not allowing the countryside to evolve at the same speed.

When I was at our local, rural Grammar School our teachers actively encouraged us to get away from the area.  Most of my bright friends are now designing bridges in major cities or working as finance directors so the advice they were given wasn't necessarily bad.  It would be good, in fact, providing that brainy kids in urban areas were being told equally about the opportunities that exist in the countryside in the food/fresh produce/energy industries.  This doesn't appear to be happening, it may be an area that our industry needs to apply more effort.

The countryside is being starved of its home-bred talent but left with the remainder.  A society cannot function properly if constantly robbed of its young, ambitious, tax-paying talent.  Our area has a very high migrant population of retired people and a high percentage of people with learning problems - this is why we have such a low economic output per capita.

It may be the root cause in itself, but certainly low food prices compound the problem.  Bright young things are always attracted to glamorous and well-rewarded careers.  A rationalising industry with low financial return offers neither.

It's been a while.

I'm in a daft mood, it's a cold morning, we have a recession.  Let's have a dog in a wig.

Look at these three...I mean two.  I meant two.

Now this is funny.

It's a news story about a fox which broke into a chicken house and was pecked to death by the four "PLUCKY" chickens inside (that was a little pun; I put it in capitals and inverted commas because I have a dry sense of humour and don't like to make things too obvious for you). 

They must have "HATCHED" a plan to "LAY" into the "FOWL" intruder, because there was only a "POULTRY" number of them, they weren't even "BATTERY" chickens etc etc

It's a great story about fair play, made even more tabloid-friendly by the fact that the ringleader was a cock called "Dude."  This is quite a coincidence, I too call...oh, never mind 

Catchat will perhaps be onto this story later in the week, let's see how HE does pun-wise.

Mouth of the Wash - first for farming news