April 2010 Archives

Noah's Ark has been found, then.

This will show all those people who have questioned the plausibility of a story about a boat containing two of every single species (excluding birds and fish obviously, which were outrunners I guess).

I might have to go and visit this intriguing relic.  It has been carbon dated as 4000 years old which, in context, doesn't sound all that long ago to me.  Knowing the lasting effect that carrying a wet spaniel can have on the fragrance of a car, God knows what that boat still smells like.

We haven't taken a day off for at least the last four weeks - the daffodil harvesting is a seven-day-a-week operation and we have been planting potatoes too.

The last daffodils were sold from the coldstore on Thursday and we now planting the penultimate field of potatoes.  We decided that we have earned a day of rest.  This means I can briefly metamorphasise into suburban man.  I'm having a coffee and a croissant while I write this, for instance.  I intend to potter furiously in the garden, wash my car. If that doesn't sound grey enough for you, I'm also going to sort out my personal receipts for the accountant. 

Spring is a busy time of year for us, it is an annoying period for the financial year end to fall.  Worse still is the fact that the Single Farm Payment forms have to be completed around now.  They have sat untouched in my in-tray for the last few weeks while I got on with some real work.  I toyed with the idea of starting them today while the office was quiet.  Unfortunately the maps that they have sent us are incorrect for ther umpteenth time and I couldn't face it. 

This wouldn't be a proper farming blog (what do you mean "It isn't") if I didn't regularly moan about the Rural Payments Agency.  It will be a miserable experience to try to sort out the needless complexity of our application.  I probably shouldn't be ungrateful for the 25 grand that they sent us last week (it was rather more than I expected) but I find the whole system bizarre.  I object to the principles and execution of the scheme so strongly that I grind my teeth to dust as I fill in the forms. 

The incompetence of the RPA enhances the experience no end.  As our late neighbour, Ted Grocock, used to say, "They're a bunch of shithouses, boy"

Rosie Boycott made an interesting point in a Guardian article this week.  She suggested that there are more prisoners in the UK now than there are farmers.

I don't subscribe to all of Rosie's views on food production (my farming activities have to support my writing rather than the other way around) but I share her concerns upon sustainability. 

This is a devastating statistic, what a degenerated civilisation we are becoming.

We are talking statistics here so you could massage the figures to make the claim true or false.  There are 85 076 people in prison at the time of writing.  I would guess that there are a 120 000 independent farming units in the UK but that only 60 000 farmers derive their main income from production.

However you look at the figures you have to admit it makes a bloody good excuse to use a picture of a dog dressed as an inmate.

Can you remember, Pure Tilth, the podcast that Tim Teague, Ian Pigott and I used to record?  Did you think that it had died and been buried in a unmarked grave?  Yeh, so did we. 

It turns out that the podcast wasn't dead after all.  The corpse spluttered and vomitted it's way back to life this week and we are doing some new episodes.  We hope to get these up on the website in the next few days.

I'm not sure where this new momentum came from.  It must be because it's Spring.

We have been through a few manic weeks on the farm.  The late Spring has condensed our workload considerably. 

We harvested our last daffodils on Friday (by far the latest finish that we have ever known) and will be selling these over the next few days.  I have been recording all of our sales information on a spreadsheet, like the good nerd that I am.  Considering that the flowers needed to be harvested in a much shorter time frame, it was suprising how many flowers we sold and how the market maintained a reasonable price. 

You only have to look at the title for this entry to see that I am back on form. 

This volcano, then.

The grounding of European planes has demonstrated how much we all depend upon air travel.  Even my favouritest person in the world, the eco-entrepreneur Heather Gorringe (from Wriggling Worms.com), is stranded on foreign shores.  Here she is checking flight times.

There is a BBC news story here about the impact that this is having on  the Kenyan flower industry.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the Kenyan flower growers.  There is no home market for their products and they cannot be stored for many days before they are no longer saleable.  It has been suggested that the disruption may last for some time.

This highlights the fragility of our current system for distributing food and fresh produce.  It has proved remarkably resilient despite the challenges that it has already faced in recent years; terrosist attacks on planes, the Kenyan civil unrest, escalating fuel costs, weakening of sterling etc, but you really have to wonder if someone is trying to tell us something.

We have planted our first field of potatoes.  Here is some of the machinery that we use.

Phoof *wipes brow* What a busy week.

There are a number of topics which you and I need to discuss but it's toooo busy.  Let's get the stock-take out the way on Wednesday and then we can have a natter.

I am writing this entry because I feel that I ought to and not because I have anything specific to tell you.  It's been a while.

I am in a ridiculously good mood today - I have no idea why; nothing great has happened and things aren't going my way particularly.  In actual fact I ought to be miserable; I've got the sorest throat in the history of throat.  I have taken over two packets of Halls Soothers today (that's three packets of Halls Soothers in case you are wondering).  Maybe there is some sort of happy drug in them, there certainly isn't anything to make your throat feel not sore.

It isn't even sunny.  I saw our barn owl this morning, maybe that's the reason I'm cheerful.

Our daffodil harvest is slowly coming to an end and it looks as though we will be able to start planting potatoes at the end of the week.  We have been through a rather intense few weeks and I have been rather focused on flowers for a while.  I can't wait to spend a few days in the isolation of a tractor cab with the radio on.

In the Farmers Weekly this week I wrote that only nerds calculate the gross margins for their farms.  Just in case you are still not sure if you are a nerd or not, here is a helpful Venn diagram to explain