BY ALLISON LEE After enjoying a rare evening out with friends, I was woken the next morning at 6.30 am by a call from a neighbouring farmer. He told me that my ponies, Chieftain and Jo-Jo, had escaped and were making their way past the community hall towards the next village! I can honestly say I have never got dressed so quickly in my life. … Continue reading Ponies’ Night on the Town
BY ALLISON LEE Hares are mammals belonging to the genus Lepus. They are herbivores and live either in pairs or alone. They nest in slight depressions, which are known as ‘forms’, and their young, known as leverets, are able to fend for themselves shortly after birth. Hares are very different from rabbits. For one, they are generally much bigger than rabbits, and they have longer … Continue reading Brown Hares
Dear Editor, Ben O’Rourke’s excellent article last week, Shamefully Burning Taxpayers’ Cash, is a blistering indictment of the bureaucratic lunacy that now passes for countryside stewardship. At last, someone has dared to say what every farmer and gamekeeper has known for years: that the clipboard-wielding zealots of Natural England and the RSPB are not just misguided—they’re actively dismantling rural Britain in the name of saving it. … Continue reading The Clipboard-Wielding Zealots of Natural England
BY A FARMER’S CHILD Most of us know a farmer. Some of us may even be blessed to be one or be the child of one. For those who live on farms, or live in town and drive out to work for someone who owns a farming business, I wanted to say this: Some people seem to forget to take the five seconds needed to … Continue reading Farmer
BY JIM WEBSTER Don’t you know there is a war on? What does it take to get people to take things seriously? Do we need Chief Warden Hodges from Dad’s Army storming round Brussels shouting ‘Put that Light Out’? There is a problem with people. They will continue to believe things even when they’re obviously not true. As an example of this, YouGov do a … Continue reading The EU Has Lost its Marbles
BY JIM WEBSTER Now we live at the actual point within our postcode area that the postcode refers to. This can happen with you in a rural area. Rural postcodes here in the UK can be quite big. So from any given point in the post code you cannot see all the houses in it. But in our case, the point your satnav will bring … Continue reading The Rural Delivery Nightmare
BY JIM WEBSTER The whole system of farm payments is up in the air. To be brutally frank, this isn’t surprising. On a general, first world level, governments have blown so much money on the pandemic they are scrabbling behind the sofa for loose change. I would be surprised if, in five years’ time, any country hasn’t cut its agricultural support, or moved the money … Continue reading Spending the Money Thrice
BY JIM WEBSTER You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store It’s a funny old world. You really have to be careful what you read. As it was I picked up a book on the Dark Ages and medieval agriculture … Continue reading Whose Serfdom?
BY JIM WEBSTER I kept a few pigs before the last foot and mouth outbreak. I used to buy a weaned litter or two and fatten them on a mix of spare milk and some 16% protein dairy feed. This is grossly inefficient but was quite profitable because I was having them killed at a local abattoir. Then they were cut up for me by … Continue reading Pigs & Boars
BY JIM WEBSTER There are times you have to ask where all the grown-ups have gone to. I won’t say that the lunatics are running the asylum but there are a lot of people setting out the rules who obviously haven’t a clue how the world works. I know a chap who is going into hospital for an operation. He has to self-isolate first. For … Continue reading Townhouse Desk Rules
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 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 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 Yesterday started at 4am. That’s when I woke up and realised it was dark. What I didn’t realise was that it was 4am. The darkness and my inability to tell the time had the same cause. The radio alarm clock wasn’t on. So we’d had a power cut. Now that needed further exploration. Had there been a power cut, one that affected … Continue reading Where’s Our Rural Broadband?
BY JIM WEBSTER A young farmer was chatting with me the other day. An old chap had told him that when they wanted to buy a new tractor they sold three new calved dairy heifers. The young farmer wanted to know if this was true. The answer is, yes, it was true. Admittedly his informant bred damned good cows, and the rest of us might … Continue reading Livestock Farming’s Money Drain
BY JIM WEBSTER Last week seventy seasonal workers out of two hundred working on a Herefordshire vegetable farm tested positive for Covid. All across social media a storm of people asked, “Why are we bringing in Romanians when there are people in this country looking for work?” The problem is that whilst people in this country may be looking for work, they don’t want that … Continue reading Farms Don’t Want UK Workers
BY JIM WEBSTER Here I’m talking not about selling farms, I’m discussing the sale that occurs on the farm when ‘everything must go.’ This is normally because the last tenant or previous owner is retiring. Traditionally round here there were three components to a sale. They’d start off with the ‘small tools’. This was the miscellaneous rubbish out of the workshop and other buildings. Old … Continue reading Farm Sales
BY JIM WEBSTER It struck me that you might want to open your village hall or community centre, so I thought I’d guide you through the new rules which can be found here. First there is a series of warnings: Many community facilities are also workplaces and those responsible for the premises should therefore be aware of their responsibilities as employers. The government is clear … Continue reading Reality-Free Civil Servants
BY JIM WEBSTER There are no lingering doubts now. This virus has turned the world upside down. The late, great, Douglas Adams wrote, “The History of every major Galactic Civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question ‘How … Continue reading Self-Sufficient Kingdom
BY JIM WEBSTER The other day I took the car in to get an MOT and service. As I walked home two women passed me walking in the opposite direction. One said to the other, “he were having a fag behind the recycling bins.” Such is the joy of the English language that this probably means something entirely different depending on what part of the … Continue reading Linguistic Good Taste
