For Flock's Sake - Please Let it End .....

One of the few books I’ve read more than once is “The Farming Ladder” by George Henderson.  I liked it so much, I named my Nuffield Scholarship study after it.  Oddly - even though there is so much wisdom within his book's cover - I would have hated to meet George.  He seemed to be incredibly opinionated, self-satisfied and humourless.  Yet he left a book to the world that - almost 70 years on - will still be inspirational to some and was, certainly, to me.

One thing he spoke of ... which was, in many ways, totally out of character to his normally practical and coldly objective attitude .... was of a spiritual connection with sheep.  If I’m weirding you out skip this next bit and go to the even weirder next post.

He described a couple of occasions of significant spiritual liaisons with sheep and sharing them with other shepherds.  Even though sheep became of less and less significance to his business, he described the overwhelming contentedness he felt like no other in farming ... when he knew all was well with his flock.

I can identify with this.  And I reckon even alot of proper stockmen might.  You feel uneasy when all is not well.  Every now and then you act on a gut feeling and think its weird because there was something a bit psychic to it (obviously I imagine this and it is simply coincidence but I like the idea).

The flock now has not seen grass for 4 weeks.  The Met Office keep teasing about a thaw but it never comes.  I’m not a real farmer - no tractor, don’t make silage, no shed.  My mission is to operate with very little fixed costs hence - no tractor, don’t make silage, no shed.  Its times like these, unlikely to be repeated,  extreme conditions, that you wish your fixed costs were extravagant and thus the sheep were happy.  Its like torture relying so heavily on something you can't control. Please let it end, please let the thaw come, please let them see grass, please let all be well with the flock once again.

To prove there is a special relationship between Shepherd and his Sheep, one of my flock gave me the following yesterday .....

The Diary of Lamb Fank ....

18th November 2010 - Day 1

This has to be a first! I am a sheep and I’m actually writing a diary .... coooool!  Not only do I shed my own wool but I am genetically bred to be literate, to have an appreciation of the melancholic genius of Del Amitri lyrics and to have strong opinions on the subtleties of test cricket.

I live in the uplands above the Firth of Forth in West Fife and weigh 65 kg ... though horrifically, I’m pushing 70 at the moment.  Worse still my wool is growing and making my bum look really big. Otherwise, I’m feeling good and have lots of girl friends I can relate to on a spiritual and deeply emotional level.  I love life, though this does not constitute a contract and I may decide to end things at any time for no apparent reason.

19th November - Day 2

Feeling a bit odd today ... restless .... tense.  My mind calender reckons The Master of Disaster (our “shepherd” - Michael ) should have supplied a boy sheep to me by now.  He constantly disappoints me and needs to seriously up his game.

20th November - Day 3

At last - Boy Sheep supplied for my delectation. He is semi-gorgeous, though not exactly Brad Tup-Pitt.  However, he is kind and generous with his love ... albeit his chat needs work for him to be “The One”.

26th November - Day 9

Sorry for not writing for a while.  Been a bit busy. Mind elsewhere.  Boy Sheep bores me and I am ... like ... sooo vanilla about him.  He is a bit of a dog anyway .... God, I hate him ... he is dead to me.

27th November - Day 10

It snowed yesterday which was nice ... makes my nose tingle when I bury to eat the grass.  Boy Sheep really getting on my nerves.

28th November - Day 11

Still snowing. Feeling a bit peckish.  Burying to get at grass becoming tiresome, I prefer grazing without the foreplay, if you know what I mean.  Which reminds me ... Boy Sheep is potentially the biggest loser in the world.

2nd December - Day 15

Two feet of snow and not a lot to eat apart from rushes - the culinary equivalent of cardboard spread with doggy do-do, for sheep.  Boy Sheep doesn’t understand me - I am putting him in my mind box and shutting the lid forever!

10th December - Day 23

This is getting ridiculous.  We have a crap weather sandwich: Layer of snow - layer of ice above the luscious layer of grass ... I can almost touch it .... thinking about drilling for it.  Have to rely on His Uselessness to provide pityful morsels of hay.  Its bloody freezing.  Only plus point is Boy Sheep looks knackered and well ugly.

Me with my girlfriends.  He-Who-Can't-Be-Named is second from the left .... PRAT! 

15th December - Day 28

I am seriously thinking about giving this lark up.  Taking the “four feet in air” life-option.  If I were carnivorous, I could probably eat a horse.  My favourite colour is green and my favourite organic compound is cellulose .... please provide it to me and my friends (NB this does not include Boy Sheep) timeously!!

20th December - Day 33

Someone, somewhere is having a laugh!  This snow is like the sheep equivalent of water boarding and should be outlawed worldwide.  The big bum syndrome is no longer an issue.  Not weighed myself recently but as diets go this snow has been overly effective.  I have told my girlfriends that talk of Boy Sheep in my presence is totally banned or I will look annoyed.

I am stopping this diary as it bores me and I don’t have the strength any more.  I have decided not to have babies next Spring ... I don’t want to be reminded of their incredibly awful father.  Enjoy your Christmas dinner in the warmth.  Looks like me and 49 friends and one complete plonker will be spending it hungry, cold with occasional annoyed looks and resultant awkward silences. 

The Ghost of Christmas Past ....

Christmas 2008.  Something so right but sooo wrong has happened. This great new scheme has been launched that gives farmer’s access to more capital.  Its the Scottish Rural Development Programme - Rural Priorities ... catchy name.  You can get 50% funding on relevant shiny new stuff. I need it ... I need it bad!

I ignore that 50% means SRDP is a game of TWO halves and that I will actually have to fund the rest .... I get overly excited and, in the festive spirit, I write a wish list as if I were going to send it up the chimney on Christmas Eve.

The resultant application was essentially the following:

Two years on and the Ghost of Christmas Past has come to me ... telling me I am a total pillock.  All the items on the list can be justified ... apart from Number 5.  The others were useful and needed. They added efficiency and enhanced my balance sheet at effectively half their cost.  

Number 5 though! ... Its ostentatious.  Its completely OTT.  I originally planned on getting a Racewell - it senses the sheep,  reads its electronic tag, then grips it, then weighs it, then can draft it three ways according to just about any EID criteria you set ... all by itself ... all whilst I stand behind the sheep making funny body movements and eery sounds to keep them moving.  It was £11,500 in December 2008 ... now its £15,500 - GULP!  The cheque would bounce at this price and as the deadline approached for buying something, I wrote a cheque the other day for a Prattley 3 Way Auto Drafter ... 4 figures (but only just) ... I’ll get half back, but that still means  effectively a five grand investment and for what?  Its almost the same as a Racewell and can weigh and draft (but not grip) up to 600 sheep per hour.  I don’t need it!

This throws up the issue of capital and its efficient use.  Effective capital useage is absolutely key to the scaling of the farming ladder.  On the subject of what to invest in when building a business, the wise old men I have talked to have told me: "the less depreciating rust you have, the better"; “buy flesh, not metal”; “buy legs and land”; “keep it simple”.  Effectively I’ve said in response - “bugger that, I want a cool new toy to play with”.

I’ve bought the auto drafter to enter the complex world of EID.  I want to know what all my sheep are doing and how good or bad each of them are.  This ‘want’ costs money ... in many ways it makes work rather than saves it . What the hell am I doing?

But then there is this hope that the Ghost of Christmas’s Yet to Come will pay a visitation apon me soon and show that in the furure I am getting genetic improvement worth £2/ewe per year.  I am hiring it out.  I even go round farms contracting and consulting. Harvesting data through my pneumatic wonder toy ... spreading genetic gain to all who open their gates.  It pays for itself in a year and as a return on investment it is my best purchase ever .... Don’t stop believing! as the song says.

Simplicity saves, complexity costs.  The auto-drafter is the bastard child of these two extremes ... the end result could be drafted three ways ... its up to me to set the right criteria.

Hannah Montana Rocks ....

Sometimes, as a parent you are asked to perform great sacrifices for your children.  Sometimes, parent / child bonding means sitting beside each other ... saying nothing.  Keres ... (its Fijian, don’t ask) ... is the scariest five year old girl on earth.  I really try to say no to her, but can’t.  Her interests include style, fashion, singing, fairies, princesses, getting her photo taken and telling her father what to do.  

To incorporate most of the aforementioned - she told me to watch her heroine in ‘Hannah Montana: The Movie’ last night ... but to be quiet for its entire duration. I duly obliged.

Now this isn’t quite the sacrifice you might imagine.  The TV series has to be one of the best written children’s programmes I’ve seen (I’m being serious for a change!) and the absolute comic genius of Jackson (Miley/Hannah’s brother) is a wonder..... Have I just admitted I like Hannah Montana? .... let’s move on quickly.

I need to explain that the gist of the entire plot for every episode (and hence the film) is that Miley is a plain, normal girl but can put on a blond wig and become Hannah Montana - the most phenomenal teen music sensation in the world ... no one notices the facial similarities ... just the hair colour.  

The movie involves Miley/Hannah returning to her home town in Tennessee. She has become more Hannah than Miley and is a bit pretentious.  She meets a boy with lots of hair.  The boy is salt of the earth.  He has been given a chance to start farming by Miley’s grandma.  If he does up the chicken coup, he can sell the eggs (yes ... the farming ladder has reached mainstream ... I knew it would).  Miley doesn’t understand.  He says you have to start somewhere and that its all about “the climb”.  He stole this from me .... as in - its all in the struggle - but as he has more hair than me and the film was made before I thought of this - I’ll let him off ..... She is working on a song.  He says its OK, but his main criticism is that its not about anything.

In the end, she has let 'barnet boy' down by lying to him.  She does up the chicken coup to say sorry.  She plays a concert in her home town as Hannah but when she sees the boy with the hair style [who by now has grown a huge hat] ... she can’t continue.  She takes off the wig and sings the song she was working on, as her true “Miley self” ... this time its about something ... its about first generation farming ... its about life ... its about the process, not the result ...  its about “The Climb”. The coiffured egg seller boy smiles ... so does Miley ... [sigh].  

Please listen intently to the lyrics ... raise your arms ... sway them from side to side .... and enjoy (without smiling):

The End.  

Keres tells me to stop crying ... I try to do what I am told.  

Who would have thought Miley Cyrus would be the siren for the farming ladder and first generation farmers.  I think we've just found a new theme tune .... watch out, my next karaoke victims .... especially as its in completely the wrong key for a bass baritone!!!

Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em ....

I see this job in the paper.  £25k p.a. ... 21 hours per week ... really positive and proactive role which could seriously move Scotland’s rural economy forward .... even with me involved.  SRDP applications (my consultancy bread and butter) look as if they will be the equivalent of urinating into a strong south westerly next year; I might have a lot less sheep aswell and then there is always the threat of caravan living again.  All in all, £25k for half a week looks a sensible strategic move.

I apply at the last minute, juggling a SRDP deadline on the same day. 

I get an interview.  We have to do a presentation on one of the many subjects I know nothing about (its a long list). I do some research and even talk to someone about it.

The interview goes well.  They are very nice.  I do however talk about the Rural Leadership course I did in 2009 and describe the moment when we had an American Rural Policy guru giving his opinion on our individual presentations ....  I blurt out that he “touched” me (I might explain this one day).  Fortunately, they obviously don’t assume it was in the physical sense .... phew.

They phone me again.  Lambing and Nuffield commitments are a concern but they seem keen.

Get a call today, offering me the job ...  Back of the Net!! .... We review the terms and conditions ... get to the pay.  “So if its £25,000 pro rata” .... [pause, my end] .... PRO RATA! .... that’s half what I was thinking ... I consider just accepting the job to avoid embarrassment but manage to substitute this by saying “sorry” 34 times in 2 minutes.

Note to self: read the damn advert properly before applying for a job.

It wasn’t THE most embarrassing moment I’ve had to endure in my life ... but its a brand new entry in my top forty.

FREEEEEDOOOMMM!

It was Saturday night. The conference had ended. A massive 14.285714% (every little helps) of 2010 scholars had stayed for the final night.  Though this number didn’t include “groupies”.  As the lonely Scot I felt some pressure to make suggestions .... what did I come up with?  Scottish folk music!  Albeit semi-acoustic. Being “cool” is so over-rated, you know.

The Scotsman Lounge is my favourite pub in Edinburgh. More a Spit Only pub as they think Sawdust is for girls.  We could have gone to the trendy bars or the student pubs with Irish names ... but the Scotsman is part of Scotland many visitors don’t see .... or at least see and live to tell the tale.

Bearing in mind the guests were Sassenachs, I’m sure they felt comfortable and welcome with the dominant display above the bar:

Its from the Declaration of Arbroath, that declared Scottish Independence from England in 1320 .... we take a while to let go, north of the border! The two piece band played their own songs about love lost and the solace of alcohol.  When I first started going it was all about the protest song ... about oppression, injustice, the struggle, the fight, the revolution and the socialist way.  William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, the Jacobites, the Highland Clearances, the love of this country .... our country.  The oppressors were usually the English or the landowners .... or worse still, the English landowners.  A high proportion of my good friends are English - and some even own land - but when I used to step into the Scotsman there was a fever that took hold.  The thought of truth being repressed, compassion being discarded and justice being suffocated, does that to a man and makes you sing louder.  

This is mere history ... it just happened to involve the English (sorry) but the bottom line is ... all this anger involves the lust of some for wealth and therefore the lust for land. It’s not just the Scots and the English, its a common theme throughout the world with a few notable variations.

This culture permeates rural society a millennium on. People used to fight and die for land in the UK, so at least there’s been some form of progress.  Yet land still brings out a certain avarice in folk.  There is a significant minority of farmers that would rather farm 1000 acres at a loss, than 100 acres at a profit.  Land is emotional, it can become a fever, having more land is often the most important priority in a farmer’s brain.

This culture resists any temperance on who can own land, it gives rich approval to taxation breaks for land ownership, and, most importantly, it prevents trust in new (and even existing) ways to lease land.  After a 1,000 years - despite all the singing - land is still guarded warily and possessively.  Some people really want it, some people really want to keep it ..... nothing has changed.

This is the culture that saturates our soil .... to change it, seems impossible.  But there is hope - I reckon there is a reason why the two piece sing no longer of protest and prefer the more important things in life - love and good times. 11 years ago the Scottish Parliament opened and I have sensed a shift in culture since.  Scotland had a voice again, its destiny was partly in its ownership, we as a people had a bit of hope and pride.  It gave us an opportunity to make our own decisions.  I feel we love the English a bit more as a nation now because they were, in many respects, unselfish by helping Holyrood happen.

If not a bit more love, then at least a bit more unselfishness, a bit less fever, a bit more trust - from both sides of the land question - would go a long way to letting go of the past .... forgiving and forgetting .... and - for first generation farmers - walking on with hope in our hearts.

We've Only Got 12 Minutes to Save the World ....

And so they came ... to a place known as Edinburgh, birth place of Michael the Strange, son to Doreen the Nag.  Guided by the almighty Stones, they arrived. 

This was the location of the Nuffield conference.  2009 scholars each do their 12 minute talk.  We drink beer, but only after dark. I talk to some very interesting individuals.  A few people laugh at my jokes (.... and my flies weren’t even undone). 

The talks are intriguing.  There are some really good ones.  I imagine doing mine next year. I nip out to purchase additional underpants.  Later, I picture getting asked an aggressive question.  I nip out to get more handkerchiefs.  Then, I worry about what to say and envisage myself getting all emotional.  I nip out to pick up extra valium.

What struck me were the good ones.  One chap was a natural orator, used no notes that I could see and was incredibly lucid.  One guy was clever, original, with a wit so sharp you had to say “ouch”.  Another though was probably the most entertaining.  He talked on a controversial subject but was very funny and unconventional.  I heard later that his talk split opinion - a few were disapproving.  Apparently it wasn’t serious enough!!  I guess this disappoints me but maybe this is my first brush with stuffiness and as such it is a navigation point.  I might bring my target of 24 jokes in 12 minutes down in slight compromise ... and even incorporate at least one fact.

I noticed many were really professional, they were very controlled emotionally ... this is obviously a sensible thing.  I panic about when its my turn ... I think of embarrassment and a weird hybrid of Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars and Kevin Keegan getting mad with Sir Alex ... expressed through a 12 minute talk format about first generation farmers .... I’m nipping out again - and this time, I’m buying in bulk.