May 2011 Archives

I was at a party last night.

Lady    "You look much thinner in real life.  Get the Farmers Weekly to retake your photo"

Moi     "It was only taken a couple of months ago"

Lady   "Well you look much better now.  Get them to retake it"

The difference, I imagine, is that she is sober when she reads the magazine.

Some days I suprise myself.  My office compooter stopped working for some reason this morning (it is 6 six old which in computer years is 116).  My usual routine is to do all of the invoicing for the business every Saturday so I was a bit cheesed.

So. Sleeves rolled, compooter back off, bits stripped out, PC World visited, components replaced and, tra la la, it is going again.  40 minutes and £19.99

I can't believe I did it.  When did I become a geek?

I've just ordered a new one of these

I've done the maths and everything and although it is pretty easy to justify the purchase, it still feels a bit extravagant (squint at that word and the spelling is perhaps acceptable).

Our business has grown and we need larger and more reliable equipment these days but I still feel guilt-stricken when I commit to shiny things.  I keep telling myself that with with low interest rates, inflation at current levels, strong trade-in values and the looming reduction of tax relief then it is almost madness not to invest in our productivity.

We drew up a shortlist of the three contenders, the Manitou 735, the Caterpillar TH336 and the JCB 531/70 (the same model as our trade-in). 

The Caterpillar was the most agile and the best value but we perceived the JCB to be the best brand with the best residual value (and we like our current model).  The JCB was the most expensive by about £6000, however.  We all preferred driving the Manitou.

Dad, Chris and I came into the office at 5.00pm after the packhouse finished work to make our decision.  Tom, the Manitou salesman, is on holiday next week.  We are all bitter about working long hours at the moment and so we decided that if he still answered the phone, this being 5.15 on a Friday, then he deserved the deal.  If he didn't, then we would all sleep on it until after the weekend.  He picked up. I managed to squeeze a DAB radio out of him. 

There is a farming section in Private Eye which is always worth a read. It's written under an alias (it used to be Muckspreader but I think it has changed) although I think it's written by Christopher Booker.  It's either him or Ryan Giggs, I can't be sure which.  Either way they made some interesting comments about the rising value of agricultural land.

In round figures, land values have doubled in the last half a dozen years.  Private Eye suggest that this is unsustainable because farm profitability can't justify the current prices.  The article speculates that land values may even fall.

My own view (and I would happily take a bet on it) is that the value of good land will double again over the next decade.  Although it is impossible to make a business case for buying farmland, it is never a bad investment at any price.

This blog post is LIVE! I am on the train to London.  Although we are desperately busy on the farm, I am (rather guiltily) heading to RHS Flower Show in Chelsea to do a couple of days on the Waitrose/NFU stand which we supply with flowers.  Waitrose have invested a lot of time, energy and money into promoting our products this year and so I am keen to support them (plus Chelsea is usually great fun)

I booked a seat on the 08:26 train and then almost everything conspired to make me me miss it.  The traffic was either static (I can't remember if it's staionary or stationery this morning so I put static) or it was moving at a geriatric pace.  All the time I kept thinking about an empty seat in 1st class heading to Knigs Cross without me (Knigs Cross, that's what all the cool kids are calling it these days.  It's a rocky ride today, I'm struggling to type here.  I think that this train has got one square wheel).

Anyway.  I'll be tweeting here

Well.  My report on the road trip came to an abrupt end, didn't it?  I didn't get near a broadband connection after my last report and the moment has sort of passed now.  Anyway, I had a brilliant time in great company and beautiful scenery.  When you live in South Lincolnshire, it is easy to forget how marvellous the British countryside is; especially in Spring. I am completely in love with Herefordshire and Shropshire now.

I came back to work with a bounce to my stride.  I have been leaping out of bed at 5.30am and have worked at least 14 hours every day (except yesterday and today when I did 12).  I've enjoyed every minute of it, we are approaching a peak in our cut flower harvest so there is plenty going on.  I haven't been in the office for more than a couple of hours all week.  You deserve a photograph or two and if I get a moment tomorrow, I will take some

Next stop, Somerset to join some of the LEAF demonstration farmers for their summer event.  We are staying here

This morning we were given a farm tour by Rob Aldicott and Jeremy Padfield.  They are long-standing LEAF demonstration farmers and they are doing a (I'm about to swear but it doesn't matter because my grandma doesn't read this) bloody excellent job.  Their crops look fantastic and they are doing some amazing educational work. (I'll write about that another day)

After that we set off for Glastonbury in a convoy of brand new Discoveries (LEAF - Linking Environment and FourWheelDrives). I'll tell you about Micahael Eavis tomorrow. WHAT. A. BEARD

I'm on a road trip.

First stop was a LEAF board meeting at Stoneleigh yesterday morning

You might enjoy this video from the Young Farmers AGM.  The Lady in Red singing Lady in Red made me smile and I found the boys singing "Torn" quite moving.

I really enjoyed my YFC days  and it brings back happy memories to see them behaving unselfconciously and having a laugh

I wonder if there is a future NFU president singing in there. 

Guess what I found?

We spent yesterday afternoon on forklifts stacking away wooden boxes at the back of the site in the order that we will need them later in the year.  We moved about 1000 boxes in three hours.

Underneath the heap I found this

I initially thought that it was a rat's nest.  Usually when you find a rat's nest the correct response, favoured by farmers since medieval times, is to drive over it with a forklift truck.  That is the tradition. I didn't do that on this occasion, not because it was cruel just because I wanted to get Chris to have a look at it to freak him out first.

Anyway.  It turns out that it was a nest of rabbit kits (or a wrack of nestlings, if you prefer, I checked the correct collection noun).

Rabbits are hardly an endangered species, they are a pretty series pest in certain parts of the farm and their population needs to be controlled.  They don't cause us any problems here and we like to see the odd one or two in the paddock behind my parent's house. This is why they had a stay of execution.

We erected an owl box at the trial ground yesterday.  We have a few nesting boxes scattered about the farm already, the one inside a barn and the one in a tree are both in use.  This is the first free-standing one that we have erected.

I know it is a bit Toryish to put a cost on this stuff but if you take everything into account, we are talking about £300 per owl here (It makes an oven-ready chicken for £3 look very cheap)

It's rewarding in other ways and we enjoyed the challenge of putting it in place.  We have got it more or less upright since the last photo was taken but I hope that the owl doesn't have a spirit level.

I was the second person at the polling station this morning - I was beaten by the woman with the big hair and the afghan hound, you know, the one in the tight leggings.

I wasn't that passionate about voting but then the last veteran from WW1 died and it made me feel ashamed of myself.  However boring democracy is, it's best not to take it for granted.

I tried to strike a deal with David before I went.  I said that if we were both going to vote differently then it wouldn't matter if neither of us went - we would cancel one another out. 

He was going to vote thus

YES            3 points

MAYBE       2 points

NO              1 point

I intended to vote

NO             3 points

MAYBE      2 points

YES           1 point

This meant that under the AV system then the result in our household was MAYBE

"We need a bit rain"

What we most certainly didn't need was a "bit of frost."

Sure enough, and apropos of nowt, what we got was a couple of degrees of freezing conditions on Tuesday night.  Most of the flowers escaped lightly (we had some minor damage at the trial ground and Dad's broad beans in the garden took a right pummelling) but we did see some significant damage in a couple of fields of emerged potatoes.

This is how one 8 hectare field looked this afternoon.

When you are a farmer you seem to have the same conversations over and over again.  Actually, that's just being a human being, isn't it?

"Do you want milk and sugar in that?"

"Have you been away this year?"

"We haven't got any industry left but you have to admit we DO do a good Royal wedding"

That sort of thing

A comment that I hear everyday and at least three times a day is

"We desperately need rain, don't we?"

When you think about it, it's a pretty daft thing to say.  We haven't got any choice in the matter.  It's like saying

"We need to win the lottery"

It would make much more sense to say

"We desperately need a water storage reservoir and an irrigation system"