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
BY JIM WEBSTER Many years ago a friend of mine used to regale me with stories of an old farmer he’d worked with. The old chap farmed at the top of one of the valleys that run into the Pennines. Back in the day, the farm at the foot of the valley would be a really good dairy farm with a fair bit of ploughing. … Continue reading Young Women & Hay
BY JIM WEBSTER Falling asleep at the wheel when mowing isn’t something you do too often. I’ve never managed it. My father did. He was mowing whilst I was greasing round the forage harvester. The field he was cutting was on a slope, so I could hear the tractor get nearer and then get further way as he was mowing. Then I realised the note … Continue reading Tough to Farm
BY JIM WEBSTER From talking to fellow farmers and others over the last few months, there has been ‘considerable dislocation’ in the market. The nearer you are to ‘commodity’ food production the more stable things have been. Whereas if you’ve specialised to produce for niche markets or even sell direct to the catering trade or at farmers’ markets, everything went very messy very quickly in … Continue reading Food Prices & Bumps in the Road
BY JIM WEBSTER I saw an interesting comment somewhere in the farming press. Apparently in agriculture we’re going to have to get with the programme and adopt more cutting edge technology. The ‘smart home’ is here, we’re now going to have the ‘smart farm’. Certainly moving to robot milking is now an option for dairy farmers. Economics and other factors might mean it’s not for … Continue reading Farming’s Robot Idealism
BY JIM WEBSTER Yes, Prime Minister, if you’ll just walk this way please. I’m glad to see that your advisers made sure they bought you a pair of wellingtons especially for this trip. Oh? Wellington has been airbrushed from history because of his links with Slavery? Or Ireland? Whatever, just put them on. The purpose of taking you round this comparatively ordinary dairy farm is … Continue reading Dairy Farm 2050
BY JIM WEBSTER As you can imagine, a slaughterhouse will get an awful lot of paperwork, and a lot of it has to be properly disposed of because it’s government documents. So a manager I know installed a shredding machine to dispose of it securely. Last time I talked to him he saved this paper for bedding up the pen in the lairage that they … Continue reading Farming & Politics Don’t Mix
