The Hermit on the Hill ....

What cows make the best spies? The ones that get past-ur-eyes’d! .... Drum roll; symbol clash; .... “Thank you very much, I’m here ‘till Thursday, try the veal and don’t forget the waitresses”.

You know your obsession with farming is acute when, after two hours of excellent comedic, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, entertainment, you are searching your memory for the corniest joke - just because it made some reference to a farm animal. Sadder still is that it bothers you that the aforementioned reference obviously lacks technical accuracy.

After a bit of day release to Edinburgh I have returned to being the Hermit of West Fife (remember: don’t ask, its very complicated) - unshaven, shouting at passers by, showering under a hose but only for special occassions and - most worryingly - talking to myself. Depressingly, my chat’s still not great even though I’m one of the few people that find me amusing.

Solitude and loneliness are too different things. I feel the former far more than the latter in the caravan but maybe that’s one of the less heralded benefits of carbon monoxide for you. (Also I cheat massively by going home at weekends). Solitude is a beneficial state and has seen me starting on the road of the Ryegrass Jedi, mentioned in a previous post. I’ve measured all the fields for pasture mass and done feed budgets as a result - ok, ok I am REALLY bored!

The calculations provided far more questions than answers. What growth rate can I budget on? What is the actual quality of the swards? Is there something wrong with my ruler - there seems to be more grass than I thought? How do I use the information to budget for tupping and for the winter and for the spring?

That’s the exciting bit (honest!). Whereas before it was a question of whether there was some grass or no grass on the day I looked; now the possibilities - that (almost) accurate planning for grass use can provide - seem endless.

For those non-believers, for those non-obsessives; I’ll end on another joke in an attempt to provide levity:

Me: Knock Knock

You: Who’s there?

Me: The Interrupting Sheep

You: The Interrupting Sh.....

Me: BAAAAA

Thank you, thank you very much, you’ve been a great audience ..... Michael has left the building.

The Law of Unintended Consequences .....

Recovering from my neediness for followers last week was a slow, painful process but I think I am better now. I have to thank “andreas” who represented the sum total of life beyond the hardcore half dozen and gave me an electronic hug. Now the followers are one stronger and we have the Magnificent Seven .... bagsie me being Charles Bronson’s character (you know - the one with anti-social behaviour issues, no chat but really good with a knife).

Life in the caravan - don’t ask, its very complicated - is a simple one with occasional carbon monoxide fueled moments of skewed clarity. Today I am thinking of the Scottish Government ... I’m so rock and roll, it hurts!

In Scotland we claim subsidy. The subsidy entitlements correspond to what individuals farmed 8 to 10 years ago (don’t ask, its very complicated). To claim subsidy you need acres to put on your subsidy form that no-one else claims. As the rules stand you can use land you will never even see, let alone farm (usually in the deepest, darkest north and covered in heather) to claim subsidy on. Some do this - about 4% of subsidy is claimed this way. Some of this 4% are claimants that have stopped farming altogether and receive an income because the rules enable them to. The term “Slipper Brigade” has been coined for this group and everybody is mildly irritated by them. Everybody except me, that is.

To risk this post turning into a glossary of terms the land that claimants never see tends to be referred to as “Naked Acres”. One of my favourite lines I’ve ever came up with (it’s a short list) was in a talk I did once, moaning about the Single Farm Payment: “... the armchair farmer, fiddling with his naked acres ...” ..... I suppose you had to be there!

Anyway, I digress. The front page of the Scottish Farmer this week had Richard Lochhead our Farming Minister saying how he was going to kick the Slipper Brigade’s ass, ‘cause he is well hard. Everybody is mildly irritated by the Slipper Brigade (N.B. except me) so this is easy popularity points. The proposal is to use undergrazing rules and implement these with rigourous enthusiasm - effectively ending Naked Acres. Minimum stocking rates will apply too.

Great! Everybody’s a winner .... though, actually, no-one really wins, more accurately, and only on the face of it, nobody’s a loser for once - except the Slipper Brigade and, apparently, they deserve to have their testicles wired to the National Grid. All the rest can take momentary satisfaction in the Slipper Brigade’s mild disappointment. They got money for nothing and if they can’t be dragged through the streets by a fast horse whilst everyone else throws eggs past their sell by date at them; or if they can’t be sent to Guantanamo now its shut; at least disband Naked Acres.

This is all very well. But I worry. I worry that the pressure release valve of naked acres, is now firmly shut. I don’t know the percentage of land offered for rent on the open market each year, but I suspect its less than 4% of the total land area. Lots of active farmers rent naked acres to claim a proportion of their subsidy. In the clamour to claim all entitlement to subsidy, I suggest the demand for seasonal land will be increased hugely. I suggest rents will increase significantly as a result. And where does that leave New Entrants, trying to get hold of land in an already highly dysfunctional land market? ..... Nowhere to go! People without stock may well get stock again - just enough (and who cares about quality!) to be over the stocking limits, thus taking opportunities away from those that are farming for production not subsidy.

This is where I have to own up to a vested interest. I was lucky enough to get some subsidy. I just can’t get land - that I actually farm - to claim it on. Believe me, I have tried really hard. So I have to fiddle with naked acres too. I produce but I never see the land I claim subsidy on. I will stand tall with the slipper brigade, brothers in arms, bracing ourselves for the punishment that’s due to us. A punishment undertaken by those that wanted the farcical system in the first place but feel its time for a new, improved farcical system to distort markets a bit more.

I read somewhere that Thailand was thriving agriculturally and one commentator, in all seriousness, put this down to having a crap Farming Minister .... he did nothing. Yet, this enabled Thai agriculture to progress, unhindered by government tinkering.

Wouldn’t it be great if things weren’t very complicated? If central government stopped tinkering? They mean well, but never consider the Law of Unintended Consequences. By solving one wrong they create two other wrongs in its place. We have fast multiplying armies of wrongs thanks to subsidy. They march, bayonets fixed, toward the centre of efficient agriculture with killing on their minds.

An Appeal on behalf of the Mikey No Mates Society ...

In a fit of egomania, I visited this site today, just to count the number of followers I have - its not that sad, is it? - anyway, it still doesn’t take long and I certainly don’t need a calculator (but thanks to all six of you that care). In an attempt to fill another few seconds, I looked at the post list. There are 31 days in July and I wrote 21 posts. I would often write two at a time. This isn’t bragging - all you have to do is try to read them to understand that this might not be construed as a good thing.

I used blogging as a special friend and told the blank page what I had learnt and what I was thinking. It was kind of a diary of my travels and it unnerves me slightly to hear some people have actually read them. In contrast, August has been a barren month so far, a month where the tumble weed blows and in the distance a bell rings in solitary, deliberate loneliness; barely audible above the sound of the desert wind.

I have nothing to say .... apart from that I have nothing to say ..... and I don’t have many followers. I could tell you about my testicle injury caused by a Wiltshire Horn traveling at what felt like the speed of sound. I could tell you my fat lambs did better this week than last. I could be a proper blogger and moan about the high heid yins in the Scottish Government changing the rules on SRDP the day after the deadline for submitted applications. I could even embarrass myself with the story of giving Reserve Champion to completely the wrong exhibitor in the Any Other Breed of sheep class at Perth Show (that WAS embarrassing .... obviously, I just ran away and left someone else to deal with it). But its not the same.

This is the “come-down” I heard about from some of the previous Nuffield Scholars. Its hard to adjust. To come home is easy but also very difficult. You find yourself desperately clinging on to the ideals you developed in six weeks of stimulation whilst figuring out how you could possibly enact them in reality and in the here and now.

If you feel sorry for me, maybe you are slightly saddened by my plight, all you have to do is become a follower. You would make a shallow, egotistical man desperate for reassurance, very happy. Its the electronic equivalent of a hug.

Back to Life, Back to Reality .....

Warning: The following post contains constant and detailed reference to sheep and should not be read by those with a low tolerance to sheep chat ....

Three days back and its all been a bit bonkers here. The reality is that I owe people money, which I didn’t when I left for my trip. Six weeks of not doing consultancy and cash flow has stopped - one of the rules of first generation farming club I learnt whilst away was that Cash is King..... Bugger - I’m breaking the rules already.

In a vain attempt to stop the men with baseball bats coming to make enquiries, I sent 40 lambs too market on Thursday. The results made me think:

To make a fair comparison, lets use the price per kg figure and then make both the first two groups 40 kg lambs instead. Per head, the Wiltshire crosses would have been £63.60; the Texel crosses would have been £68.40 - that’s almost £5 of a difference. On this basis, taking an example of a total of 650 lambs sold, that would be £3,120 more income if they were all texel lambs. To make this difference up I’d need 699 Wilt cross lambs to produce the same income as just 650 texel crosses.

On the evidence of the above, I probably should be happy to drop the Wiltshire and just use Texel rams ..... but I can’t. See, once upon a time, I had this plan to breed my own peculiar composite ewe. It would shed its wool (that’s why I needed the Wiltshire), be prolific, a great mum and have good conformation. One day I would have thousands of these perfect sheep. I believe in fairy tales - I’m a dreamer and a romantic - but it’s the hope this plan might actually work in reality that makes me happy.

The lambs in the first group were either 62.5% or 56.25% Wilt (its less complex than it sounds, honest!) but only 12.5% or 7.25% Texel (Ok not doing myself any favours re the complexity argument, am I?). The end aim for the composite sheep is for them to be Wilt 50%, Texel 25% and Lleyn 25% with most of them producing Texel sired lambs. I’ll get good prices with patience. I just need to endure some pain before I experience the pleasure. It will all end happily ever after - honest!

IF.....

Dear Lord, thank you for the blessing you have bestowed upon me on this Nuffield trip. For the people I have met and for the words they have spoken. For the lessons they have taught me and for the sights I have seen. Most of all thank you for not allowing me to make a fool of myself too much by ensuring there was no easy access to karaoke and reminding me to do my flies up at every turn.

Now is the important bit: the translation from Nuffield bubble to reality. Please don’t let my uselessness hamper my ability to apply things that I can translate for good; and please don’t let my uselessness make me think things that will never work are a good idea.

That’s the thing - some things I have learnt could help me immensely if I can translate them properly; other things may seem a good idea but will never work in my situation or at the very best distract me from what should be my true focus.

To paraphrase Kipling (NB Rudyard not Mr Cakeman): If I can trust myself, when all men doubt me, but make allowances for their doubting too... If I can dream - and not make dreams my master; If I can think - and not make thoughts my aim..... If I can watch the things I gave my life to, broken, and stoop and build them up with worn out tools; .....If I can force my heart and nerve and sinew to serve my turn long after they are gone and so hold on when there is nothing in me except the will which says to them: “Hold on”.... Mine is the earth and everything that’s in it and maybe I might be close to being half a man. I realise I’m breaching the melodramatic restrictions that I should strictly apply to this blog but lets just forget this last paragraph ever happened.

I think we all have a "useless" side to our characters, something that distracts us from getting close to our full potential. But we all have really good traits too. The trip has made me realise more than anything that I really need to get my act together. A leopard can’t change his spots but he can add definition, body, gloss and have less split ends by using a different type of hair product. I’ll see if my spots can be made better by the product of this trip. Is there an analogy doctor in the house .... it’s an emergency!

Without Struggle, There is No Progress ....

The title of this post is taken from a Ms Dynamite lyric (I am so down with the kids, its well bad, innit?). Taking the huge leap from her application of the line as representative of social and racial suppression and the communal struggle against this; Mr Blanche is using it for the progress of first generation farmers.

I have heard of many stories of struggle on the path of progress to a successful farm business. One man came from a difficult background, he had witnessed his mother trying to drown his father in the bath amongst other horrendous alcohol induced violence. He left school at 15 without being able to read or write. But he now sees these as the basis of his determination, and as such - an absolute positive. At one point he lasted 8 months on bread and cheese alone because he didn’t have enough money for anything else. He remembers at the end of this period he sat down for lunch with his work mate and started crying - his lunch didn’t consist of bread and cheese, he finally could afford something better.

Another guy would sleep for 10 months in a year in his swag as he mustered to save up enough cash to build his business. He too was challenged on the diet front due to lack of money on more than one occassion - eating nothing but fruit cake for a fortnight once. He started his first mustering business at the age of 17 and within 2 weeks he was bust due to non-payment for his first two jobs.

In the height of drought another would get up at 4 am, cut bush (so her stock could eat it) till 8.30, school her kids till 3pm then go out again to cut more bush to keep her animals alive.

A man now with equity of over 15 million had, on the way, had his equity halved twice. The key is he kept going. He didn’t give up. As the Brumbie runner says - giving up is easy, anyone can give up. Not giving up is the defining characteristic of the men and women I have met and who have made it.

To quote a less fashionable musician, Billy Ocean - “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. All street credibility safely destroyed ... phew!

Memoirs of the Unworthy ....

And so the end is near .....

I’m in Auckland and tomorrow I start the journey from end point back to the beginning. From Auckland to Methven in Perthshire is likely to take almost 40 hours but I suspect my thoughts will be delayed for much longer.

If I cast my mind back over the last six weeks the main things I take from it are that firstly there are other ways of doing things. There is a wider world out there both physically and in attitude. Much of what I’ve seen has made me question the barriers I, and no one else, have put in front of myself. I appreciate this is a cliche but sometimes cliches are true albeit unoriginal.

Secondly, has been the personal stories of first generation farmers. Without exception they have been exceptional people - special not in needs but in wants. Their determination, their ambition, their resilience make the ones that have made it in farming - without help, capital or gift - the best stories in agriculture. Assessment should be made of farmers not simply on the basis of where they are but where they are minus where they started. Judgement of individuals should be made not on what they are but who they are and the depth of their character. Those that have made it had depth, they had depth because all of them have dug deeper than most.

It was an honour to meet them all. I was probably an unworthy ambassador .... there is plenty digging ahead of me.