BY JIM WEBSTER I escaped and went for a walk last weekend. I just made my way along the various back paths to a village about eight miles away. It was a glorious day, the sun shone, and everything looked green and well cared for. The village has a coffee morning come jumble sale so I dropped in. After eight miles I felt I merited … Continue reading Stirks & Sunshine
BY JIM WEBSTER The BBC has been at it again, telling the world that government is paying farmers large sums of money to retire. OK so where to start? Let’s start with the money. The EU had a system of farm support. Because it was an EU scheme it was obviously worthy (at least to the metropolitan BBC crowd) and was supported by all right … Continue reading BBC Wrong Again on Farming
BY JIM WEBSTER There are more ways of stirring up a slurry pit Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Parking a tractor with a slurry stirrer by the side of the pit suddenly seems so pedestrian. There again, at least with the tractor you’ve less chance of an early bath. The picture below is a still from a video available on Facebook but, … Continue reading Well Stirred Shit
BY JIM WEBSTER Whilst my time in agriculture has been a time of impressive change, I suspect that the industry has been moving so quickly that every generation born since 1900 will be able to say that. I started my life working alongside men who’d been in farm work in the 1920s and 1930s. They were horsemen but I just missed that era. But being … Continue reading Moving to Mechanisation
BY NICK PEARCE The video below is a must watch. It encapsulates the growing feeling across many parts of the countryside that the ‘progressivism’ pushed by the animal rights lobby has reached a dangerous point. The farming community is now being continually undermined and threatened by woke campaigners who, knowingly or unknowingly, are empowering animal rights extremists who can make their lives hell. The realities … Continue reading Outspoken Hamilton Wrong
BY JIM WEBSTER Spend much time in farming and you’ll end up dealing with agricultural engineers. There is only so much you can fix with baler twine. In my time I’ve seen steel bars ‘reinforced’ by having heavy pieces of timber strapped to them using string. I’ve seen somebody get a tractor home, steering with the independent brake because the steering wheel no longer turned … Continue reading Just Fix This
BY JIM WEBSTER I remember an old farmer commenting about lads ‘helping out.’ “One boy is one boy. Two boys is half a boy, three boys is no boy at all.” I know of a couple of farms round here that used to get a lot of lads ‘helping out.’ With village farms where the village was a community, not a dormitory suburb, it was … Continue reading Lads
BY JIM WEBSTER Six days shall you labour and on the seventh rest. Except when I took this photo (featured) it was Sunday morning, and we were pretty much guaranteed showers the day after and heavy rain on the Wednesday. So the reseeding had to be done now. And time off in lieu? That’s not an agricultural term. After they’d finished ploughing, just out of … Continue reading Quiet Heroes
BY JIM WEBSTER On the twelfth of February a friend of mine posted a quite spectacular photo of a fire on Dartmoor: This is an accident waiting to happen. Winter wildfires are not unusual. At the same time firefighters were tackling a fire near the Cogra Moss reservoir, in West Cumbria (hence the photo from one of our local papers.) In Scotland, the Scottish … Continue reading Winter Wildfires
BY JIM WEBSTER Are they worth it and if you’re not a farmer have you ever even heard of them? I was lucky in that when they were coming in, I was out of dairy and was buying calves and selling store cattle. So I managed without the extra expense. I did finish a handful of cattle, but I sold them direct to the consumer. … Continue reading Farm Assurance Schemes
BY JIM WEBSTER I came across this almost certainly apocryphal story. Apparently a town gets its first 5G phone mast. Almost immediately all sorts of people develop medical conditions. A protest group against the mast is formed. The local council arrange a public meeting and bring in the representatives of the company that erected the mast. In it everybody is waving their doctors notes and … Continue reading Spreading Muck
BY JIM WEBSTER I’ve worked with sheep, but I’d never call myself a shepherd. I’ve not got that level of expertise. But one of the things about shepherds is that they tend not to be centre stage. Historically they were always looked down on. Even more than the rest of us involved in agriculture, they were shunned. (Even now ‘peasant’ is an insult in the … Continue reading Unfashionable Shepherds
From The Countryside Alliance yesterday: “BBC presenter and activist Chris Packham found himself engulfed in a social media storm this week, after being called out publicly for making incorrect claims on Twitter about veganism in the UK. In an extraordinary tweet , Mr. Packham brazenly claimed: “So half a million people have signed up to veganuary to reduce their food-related carbon footprint by 73 per … Continue reading Pinocchio Packham Strikes Again
BY JIM WEBSTER I know a lot of farmers’ sons have played rugby in their time. Certainly working with livestock gives you a lot of transferable skills as well as a higher than usual pain threshold and the ability to soak up damage. But then I was shown a video of Indonesian Cow Racing which does seem to take this to a whole new level … Continue reading Bullocks and Barbadore
CSM EDITORIAL Britain is a significant food producer. We produced more than half of the food we consumed last year (55%) and we’re also a big exporter of food. Most food we consume does not come from the EU – only about a quarter does (26%). The remainder is imported from the Rest of the World. (Source: DEFRA). The EU used to pay farmers “set … Continue reading Time to Buy British
