Jon Watt: Don’t be hard on yourself if farming isn’t perfect

I like this time of year with the cooler mornings and magnificent sunsets. Cultivating and drilling are jobs I enjoy, too. It’s a new start, a time of optimism.

It’s also a reminder that there are few jobs more demanding than farming. To do well, so many things must go right – all of it requiring a delicate balance of timing, judgement, and no small amount of luck.

See also: Jon Watt – Don’t shut away the next generation in the farm office

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Jon Watt

Jon Watt runs a mixed arable and beef farm, with a suckler herd of pedigree Hereford cattle and a contracting business, with his dad in Suffolk. He is a former NFU Student and Young Farmer Ambassador.

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And yet, even when everything is done “right,” the outcome is still not guaranteed. The weather remains the ultimate variable and the one thing no amount of hard work can control.

A wet autumn, a dry spring or a drought can all unravel the best-laid plans in days. Farming is still at the mercy of higher powers far beyond human control, and I’m not referring to Defra. God’s irrigation system is after all far more potent than ours.

In this context it’s easy to see how mental health becomes an issue. Farming has always required resilience, but today it demands a level of perfection that can feel relentless.

You don’t just need to be good, you need to be good at everything, all the time. Perhaps the challenge, then, is to strike a balance.

To continue striving to do a good job, because that is what farming demands, while also recognising the limits of our control.

Doing the best you can with the conditions you are given is an achievement. No season will be perfect and not every decision will pay off, and that’s not a failure, just the reality of farming.

As a neighbour told me the other day in the pub, complimenting me on some lush, thick and newly emerged grass I’d drilled: “The weather can make you look like an absolute hero or a complete idiot and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

One of my goals for the year ahead, therefore, is to try to be grateful when the rain falls just when I need it, but also to try and not be too harsh on myself when it doesn’t and there’s nothing I could have done about it.