Stocken Farm Diary Part 3

JOAN’S DIARY FROM JANUARY 1997 to JUNE 2007 INCLUSIVE

JANUARY 1997

EXTRA LAND

We thought we were well up with the work in the autumn, but when we got the opportunity to rent some extra land, part of Culverton Farm, we were hard pushed to get things done before the winter set in.   Part of our contract is to control the rabbits.   There are hundreds of them and it has cost us hundreds as we have had to hire a company to do it, it not being our line.    It is true that they must have eaten everything that grew there, there are just so many.   There are also great flocks of pigeons on the crops.  There are probably no more than usual about, but after bumper crops of beech mast and acorns the previous year there was much less than last year and so the crops are taking the brunt of it.   A good blanket of snow would have helped, but all we have are frost and icy winds.

ICED WATER

We are certainly very aware of the cold at the farm.   The penetrating wind has even frozen water inside the barns and the cattle, particularly those giving milk, must have plenty of water.   To spend all day getting pipes thawed, only to know that next morning you will be back to square one can be pretty discouraging.    At least the animals are all inside and not out in the fields, that would be even worse.

SPOOKY or WHAT?

This house has quite a reputation for being cold, but we thought it was going a bit too far when the sitting room blew open one night.   A mirror fell off the wall.   The frame broke but not the glass I’m glad to say.    We put this down to the wind.    However, when the grandfather clock struck eleven on Christmas Day in the evening and it wasn’t even wound up we did have to wonder.    I guess there is a scientific explanation, but just in case, I always say “welcome”.    I hate the thought of some lonely little ghost trying to make themselves at home and being ignored and after three hundred years there just well could be.

OXFORD FARMING CONFERENCE

This year was the fifty first for the Oxford Farming Conference. There were many big issues under discussion.  Tuesday morning’s programme for example – “Feeding the world to 2020”, “ Living with the Asian tiger”, “ America going for the Market”.    In the afternoon, Brussels Bulletin, Brussels we admire you – but we need the world too, A farmer’s view of the Common Agricultural Policy, Life with the Euro- Opportunity or Nightmare. In the evening the main debate – Should Decisions on Food Safety be taken only on the basis of Good Science.    The following Day- Eastern European Promise- expansion or bust? Build on your strengths, Small farm to big business, Concentrating on what counts, Land ownership and Tenure the future, The Wiseman way, The Government view.

INTERVIEWED

After all that, John was interviewed for BBC 4 on the early farming programme in what must qualify for the shortest interview on record.   “Had you already read about the proposed selective cattle cull?”   John answered “Yes”.   At least you would think there wasn’t much there that could be taken out of context.   Not so, the enthusiastic comment made by a woman, who shall for obvious reasons remain nameless, “I recognised your husband in bed this morning”. Well, “good for her”, that’s all I can say.

MARCH 1997

A PARSNIP 41 INCHES LONG

All systems go as spring hits the farm.   It’s a bit difficult to write right now because I have the TV on to see the Grand National.   Seems strange watching it on a Monday, following Saturday’s postponement.   It’s difficult to write anyway, because the over-riding factor is one again the weather.   Drought this time, and I do feel a different subject would be in order.  However the weather, it has to be.  The extra land we have taken on has been planted and is desperate for rain, preferably a nice warm rain to get the crops growing. Elsewhere, the crops planted earlier are going back, in fact some look as if they are even dying.    John brought in from the vegetable garden a parsnip that is 41” long.    It is rather skinny so I suppose it just went down searching for water.   Pity the field crops can’t go down like that, though I doubt the tops would be very good.

GRASS

The cows are out from their winter quarters enjoying the spring sunshine, in fact it’s more like high summer.  A question that has come up several times is “are we growing crops in the grass fields?”   The answer is a definite “yes”. At least we are trying to, if only it would rain.   The grass is for the cows to graze and to grow taller to cut and cart for silage and some to be made into hay.   For that we need dry weather but the grass hasn’t grown tall enough to cut yet.

NO WAY ROLF

Perhaps you have been watching Rolf Harris in the veterinary programme taken with Hampden Vets.   One episode was concerning a cow who had a twisted fourth stomach.   She had to be rolled over to relieve the condition.   This is not that rare and we had a similar case about then.   John was asked if we were willing to take part in the programme.   John said “No way”, he was more concerned with getting the cow treated not waiting while a film crew was fetched and set up.   Even then it was too late because the cow died.   It very often is successful, unfortunately this time it wasn’t.

JUST CAN’T WIN

The paperwork in the office gets more and more, it is quite depressing.   At least there are four of us to share it out.   Some farmers are not so lucky, but we still find there is too much of it.   It’s just not what farming should be about.   That’s more like things like manure carting.    We took a lot down to Woodway to make a big heap to be used there later.   It does look a big heap and some didn’t think it looked attractive.   The self-same people who don’t like us using artificial fertilisers, some of them.    Just can’t win, it seems!   How would they suggest we dispose of it?    We certainly would be unpopular if we spread it straight from fresh because it really does “hum” then.    We delivered a trailer- load to a gardener, nicely rotted so it didn’t smell and she rang us up complaining that it would be no good because it didn’t smell.   I tell you there are times when I think we are just not meant to win anyway, but we do keep trying.

RAIN DANCE ANYONE?

If anyone knows a reliable rain dance please get dancing. A good rain before June would be ideal. I don’t want to be blamed for wishing a wet summer on us, so just enough to get things going please.

JULY 1997

A CLOSED HERD

For years we have bred our own dairy cows (a closed herd) so as not to “buy in trouble”.   Then BSE came along believed to have come through the feed.  Being home bred, we have all the breeding records so in theory the animals are pedigree.

B.S.E. REGS

Great lengths have been taken to get BSE eradicated quickly.   Contaminated food was taken off the market and all animals over 30 months old who might have eaten and a great many who wouldn’t have, are not allowed into the human food chain.  That left some far-reaching possibilities such as the mother-to-calf link.

SELECTIVE CULL

In a further attempt to speed up the process, if it did develop in an older animal all animals born within that year would be sent for immediate slaughter.   They are picking up about one in 200 by this route – it is another way of speeding things up, bearing in mind that these animals would not be for human consumption, anyway, being over 30 months old.   This was the selective cull agreed by John Major in Florence.

PEDIGREE

Compensation is paid for the animals killed and apart from actually bringing yourself to see your animals go, getting a valuation done is the difficult thing.   Over the last year the price to the farmers has dropped by at least 15%.   It’s pretty disheartening to keep an animal for another 12 months, only to find it is worth less.   We have compensated for it a bit by registering them as pedigree.   This won’t mean they are worth more for our dairy herd or that we will get more if we sell them at the local market, but it may mean that they are worth more in compensation if we get a case of BSE and volunteer to kill the cohorts (those born in same year).

WEIRD WORLD

Weird world, isn’t it?  But our cows have generations of home breeding in there; they mean a lot to us.   Long hours are put in working with them and if we are told “get rid of them” we have primed them to show how much we think they are worth.   We always knew we had a good commercial herd, now we have given it a pedigree status to confirm how much we think of them, even if we have done it for purely commercial reasons.   We don’t take on extra paperwork lightly!

ONGOING HARVEST

Time this lands on you doormat hopefully harvesting will be finished.

OCTOBER 1997

COHORTS MUST GO

Following on from my last article, when I mentioned that we were registering our cattle as pedigree in case we decided to enter some of them in a voluntary slaughter policy to hasten the eradication of BSE, we had to arrange for forty to go.   Cohorts, born the same year as one that had it.   We were advised to wash and clip them because they would look nicer.   It seemed the whole thing was getting out of hand, but in for a penny, in for a pound!

FIRST SIGNS

I have said before that the herdsmen are the first to detect any strange behaviour in an animal that might be developing it.   One that was being watched certainly didn’t take to being washed and clipped.    I heard the commotion from the house, as she broke free, dashed down the yard and jumped, pushing open a five barred gate, proceeded round the corner and up the drive, followed by about twenty others.

CRISIS AVERTED

The men quickly blocked gates and Richard dashed ahead to turn her back, but it was just as if she couldn’t see him.   At the last minute he jumped the hedge to get out of her way. Then in panic she jumped too.   At least she was in a field, not heading up the village.   The other animals were turned back and the ministry vet called in to look at the one that had bolted.   She thought it probably was the early stages of BSE and the cow was sent off for slaughter and testing, which proved it to be positive.

QUITE SICKENING

We subsequently sent forty cows away and very sad it was, for they were all home bred and in their prime, most carrying their fourth calf.   Quite, quite sickening.

UNCANNY

Maxine was standing at her door.   “Stand by for me to make a run for it”, I said, as I manned the drive gate when all the commotion was going on.  “Things are getting out of hand here”.   “Next thing we shall have the bull in the garden again”.   No sooner said than done. There was John driving the bull out of the orchard. It seemed uncanny.

WELCOME to CHARLOTTE

Whether it was all this excitement or just very clever of her, being early, but that night Maxine gave birth to a lovely daughter, Charlotte, which was wonderful news for all of us.

A LODGER

Now the harvest is all home. In fact, most of next year’s crops are planted.   Unfortunately, Guy broke his pelvis pulling down a large straw bale onto him when un-roping a trailer.   This was not only unfortunate for him but meant that we have had a contractor living with us, as his stand in.   Nobody else seems interested in having a lodger and we were obviously on the spot.  Not that he has been difficult, but they have been very busy with the cows.  There have been up to three calves born a day and the milking has been difficult because there is a new milking parlour being built while the old one is still in use.   Not an easy situation to work in.

GOOD LUCK OMEN

There is still too much paperwork, but it is not true that we are training the cows to help in the office.  It is true that a cow got in there.  A few hours earlier she had been down with milk fever.   It’s amazing what a shot of calcium will do.   Anyone who thought they saw a cow there was not imagining things, there she certainly was.   She didn’t like it any more than we did.   She came out and went up onto an 18” wall and platform of shrubs.   She pinned herself behind the lilac and the japonica.   We thought it would be safer if she turned rather than backed down over the wall, so the herdsmen talked to her while I tried to clear away the shrubs.   Whether they tickled her or she was just feeling relaxed, I don’t know but she lifted her tale and I did wish I wasn’t standing behind her.   I should be due the most amazing amount of good luck!!!

NEW PARLOUR for CHRISTMAS

It is mid-October now and will I suppose be mid-November before this is published.    It seems rather early to be saying “Happy Christmas”, but that will be coming up all too soon.   By then the new milking parlour should be up and running.    More calves should be born.   No turkeys now, and although we miss seeing the people, we don’t miss the work they made. Guy should be back in one piece and we should be without our lodger.  The cattle should be in and bedded down for the winter.  Will it be a hard one?   Who knows?  There are masses of lovely holly berries about.   Is this a sign?   Maybe it’s just a symbol to depict a seasonal Christmas of good cheer for man, beasts and birds.   Happy Christmas!

JANUARY 1998

PROBLEMS

As 1997 drew to a close, the position as far as the farm was concerned could be summed up fairly briefly.   The new milking parlour, which should have been finished months ago, was still not complete.    And the corn merchants who had contracts to take last summer’s grain were wriggling hard not to collect, as they couldn’t find a market for it.    Isn’t there something wrong somewhere?    What became of feeding the hungry?    And meantime we have a difficult time keeping the grain dry and clean.    Birds must be kept out of the barns. So okay, what next?    Want us to stop birds flying over the fields?    And what about the bats?   They roost in the barns and they are a protected species.   I asked an official on an environment stand at an agricultural show how it was suggested this should be resolved.   He said they hoped no one would ask.

THE “GOOD LIFE” ?

Life is getting a long way from nature, isn’t it?    Time was when most people kept a pig.   The pig ate the scraps and then the people ate the pig.    A call to the local slaughterer and none of these seventy mile journeys to an abattoir for the beasts.    We are getting so far away from the “good life”.    Home produced meat, eggs and milk, home grown vegetables and fruit, homemade cakes and pies.    All the old houses had to have a sizeable garden – now many are just a pocket-handkerchief and people just don’t have time to work in a garden anyway.

TOO CURVY BANANAS

I don’t think we are richer for it.   I love our fresh vegetables, and yes, I am prepared to deal with slugs and caterpillars.    I find it reassuring that they are alive on the vegetables.   Maybe things are too clean, too sterile, tasteless and flavourless.    If you don’t grow them you must buy, but I find it aggravating that little apples are no longer sold – they are just right for small children and don’t you resent someone in Brussels dictating how long, wide or curvy your banana has to be.   What have we come to that the public can’t make up their own minds anymore?

CONGRATULATIONS

We had quite a successful year in the Chiltern Hills Agricultural competitions, winning firsts for our oil seed rape and hay crops with a sprinkling of seconds and thirds.  Philip and Sandra Baker waltzed home with first prize for their garden.   This is no mean achievement even without two young children.   Children, farming and gardening are not an easy combination, so congratulations to them.

REPRIEVE DIET

The bull was booked to go for slaughter.    We had been treating him for a lame foot, so that he was able to travel.    It seemed a pity but he has got so heavy that you have to consider the cows.    Trying to get him into the cattle crush to hold him while his foot was treated was a joke.    He was tempted in with some nuts then he just flexed his muscles and burst free. Then his foot got better so he had a reprieve.    It doesn’t alter the fact that he is too heavy and on a diet, so the reprieve may be short lived.

GALES

I thought I had managed to write this without mentioning the weather when the gales struck. Perhaps it is so I don’t get withdrawal symptoms that it gave me something I felt I must mention.

PAIN IN THE BUTT

It has also been exceptionally mild and the crops are dangerously advanced.  We have had a flock of sheep going round the farm eating back the grass and a pain in the neck they have been.  A pain in the butt might have been more appropriate.   They even got in the tennis courts on the sports field.   Not being able to contact the man who owned them, John said I’d have to go to help, as I had a key.   Wearing a long skirt, I was hemming it at the time and not wanting to keep them waiting, I went in it, needle and all.   I got caught in a bramble and went full sprawl in the mud.   He was already well ahead. “Get up, what do you think you’re doing?” he eventually called back.   “I’m deciding if I’m supporting the landowner, the sheep owner or the Sports Club”, I replied as I sat there.    I might have had three proverbial hats on but I certainly hadn’t enough layers on anywhere else!    Once again, farmer’s wife bites the dust.    What do footballers see in the mud?    Whatever it is, it probably wasn’t from the angle I was getting it.

APRIL 1998

DOWN 40%

If you’ve been listening to reports about farming, you will know that farm incomes are down say 40%.    If you have not been listening I don’t suppose you want to know that anyway.

SAMARITANS & LIQUIDATORS BUSY

Put another way, it has put extra work in the way of the Samaritans, doctors and liquidators.   Any farmers that have been thinking of giving up, have, if they are wise, got out while the going was good.    I can only suggest that in order to understand, you imagine a cut in your income of 40% and all your expenses staying the same.   This is not big business, where you sit around the boardroom table and, with a stroke of a pen make “x” number redundant.   We sit around the breakfast table and try to work out the most cost effective way of carrying on.

THE GREEN POUND

One of the main problems is the farming monetary system.   Long before the Euro came on the scene, agriculture has been subject to the “green pound” and this we cannot change.   If you have been listening to farming reports, you will have heard the demand over and over again for a “level playing field” with Europe.   This we have not got.   The London marches have brought out an amazing number of people.   Many genuine farmers, who for everyone that goes has to leave someone at home to care for the farm.

COPY THE FRENCH PROTESTS

Farmers are fairly thin on the ground and don’t carry much political weight.   Now in France, say, where there are many more farmers, they have much more interesting ways of showing their displeasure.   We could learn a thing or two from them.   They filled the Champs Elysee with sheep, blocked the roads with cauliflowers, spread manure on the gendarmerie- much more exciting than our peaceful march.   The Welsh farmers did throw a load of beef burgers back into the sea by way of protest.   A lot of beef comes in via Ireland.  It could be from anywhere because it is sold as Irish once it’s in Ireland. The beef export market is closed so understandably they don’t want more brought in.   The beef producers are having a terrible time and Welsh beef, reared on the hills, is superb.   Our standards are so high and beef being sneaked in has no guarantee of home produced quality.    I’m surprised it was only the burgers that got thrown in.

LAND NEAR TERRICK

Changing the subject somewhat, twenty-six or seven years ago some fields were sold to us by what is now the Home of the Rest for Horses.   Then the air force compulsory purchased one of them to build houses.    Having got used to the extra land, we looked around to replace it and for a year nothing came on the market, meanwhile prices had doubled.   Eventually we bought a farm at Terrick with a big Elizabethan House and barn which we had to sell, the land we mortgaged linked with an endowment policy.   It had cost us an enormous amount more than we had to spend.

FARM TOUR AUSTRALIA

It turned out to be superb land, once we understood it, and has yielded excellent crops.  This year the mortgage has matured, twenty-five years gone, and the policy was in profit.   Having long since realised that money put into the farm is just gone.   We “blew” it on a trip to Australia (visiting farms, of course).    And if we think we have problems, we just don’t know we are born, compared with theirs.   Not that it improves things here, but it all makes for a wider understanding.

SMALL WORLD

One of the farmers on whose land we stayed had ancestors that came from Aylesbury.   One of the local Agricultural Training Board tutors has the same name.   He is interested in local history – maybe he should be looking at Australian history too.    Small world, isn’t it!

JULY 1998

MACHINE NOISES

Living where we do, all the machines going in and out go right past the farmhouse.   Because of the building nearby they can be heard before they can be seen, and as each has a distinctive sound, you know what you are going to see before it gets to you.   The most noticeable of all is the combine harvester, and usually by the time it has got to the house, whoever is around is lined up at the window to wave it on its way.   There is something about the combine that captures the imagination – it’s so big to start with, even without the header which is so wide has to be towed separately when on the road.

COMBINE ON ITS WAY

Mid-July and the roar of the combine going through the yard sent grandchildren hurrying out of its way, to stare in wonder as It went off up the drive.   It went to start on winter barley, to be followed by oilseed rape, wheat, linseed and maize.   The weather is a bit too showery, but the further outlook is much the same, so we will have to dry the grain and bale the straw whenever we can snatch a bit of dry weather.

PIPE DREAM

Both the combine and baler broke down even though they had been overhauled before the season began; of course they only break down when they are being used, and they are a few years old now.    John did a rough calculation with a view to updating our combine, and thought it would cost the equivalent of 1,140 tonnes of wheat to trade ours in.   That is the value of the crop, not the profit which is very low at present.   The land here, not being the best, will, if we are lucky produce 3 tonnes per acre, so it’s a bit daunting.    It seems a no-win situation, grain prices are very down and we need better weather to get better yields.   If we wait another year a new combine could well cost more, but each year that goes by our machine is worth less to trade in and meanwhile we are paying for repairs.   A new combine is a very tempting thought, there are so many refinements on them now.   They will even draw a plan of just how much each part of a field has yielded, and the cutter bar will adjust itself to the contours of the land, but at the moment it’s likely to remain a pipe dream.

SET ASIDE INCREASE

Since the land surveys were done 6 years ago, only those fields that had had an arable crop grown on them in 1986-90 were approved for growing arable crops now, which is very restrictive.   To add to this, “set-aside” was introduced, where 5% of the land was to be left uncultivated, however, this year it is 10% of arable land, so we have to cover our costs on 90%.   It is like Shylock and his pound of flesh, we will try to work out the 10% as near as possible, but it is very difficult.   All the fields are different sizes and shapes, so we might resort to taking just parts of the fields – and it’s no good thinking “they” won’t check up on it, because they will.

DO SOMETHING USEFUL !!!

Why can’t all those people who are checking up on all the restrictions imposed on us, be employed in getting any surpluses to those who are starving, or in bringing prices down in the shops?   Then they would be doing something really useful, and the farmers could be farmers not pen-pushers!

OCTOBER 1998

NOT A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

I had no sooner sent in my last offering than news broke of sows being shot because it was the cheapest way of getting out of pig farming; “Never mind”, I thought, “I’ll write about it next time”.   Then I thought, “No I won’t, it will be too dreary”, but since then the pig market has completely collapsed.    Big producers are literally losing thousands of pounds, many thousands, every month.   Smaller producers must be glad that that is just what they are losing x amount per pig makes you glad to be small, but it does not keep a roof over your head, there’s the rub.   What makes it even more galling is that in this country we have banned sow stalls and the tethering of animals, and yet much meat is imported from countries that do not observe these niceties – what is needed is that level playing field.   It would be nice also if our own countrymen who pressed for these regulations, supported our industries when we supply what they have asked for.

WAKE UP PIG PRODUCERS

British farmers are not very good at making their voices heard, it is not in their nature.   They abide by the rule book, produce a good product and think that will suffice - well, you would think that it should, wouldn’t you?    Suddenly they have woken up to the fact that it won’t, and that they need to shout from the rooftops that their product is superbly produced, and that the consumer has been given what it asked for.   That every animal can be traced as farmers stand by them with confidence, so why not buy British?   1. We comply with all your requests confident that our quality cannot be bettered

2. Is it the cost?   There are three possible reasons on that score as far as I can see

(a) The strong pound - every industry seems to be blaming that, so perhaps there is something in it.

(b) Dumped imports from countries that are not abiding by the exacting standards demanded here.

(c) Supermarket mark-ups. One pig-producing friend was getting only 30p per lb. for his pigs, others as low as 20p, so how much do you pay for pork?

WAKE UP CALF PRODUCERS

But it’s just not pigs, there are problems all round.    Should we sell out surplus calves as usual?    Its temping to take them to market s and pop them into someone else’s transport, (which has been known to be happening), as it saves paying the commission of selling and halves the cost of transport, for we don’t want to bring spare calves home. Of course, if too many get the same idea it just becomes a pantomime, but if the price doesn’t cover the costs, what do you do?

COFFIN LED MARCH

Up to 10,000 farmers went to Blackpool at the beginning of the Labour Party Conference, the procession being led by a coffin carried to the Minister of Agriculture.    I assume that it implied the death of the industry, not a personal hint to the Minister.

MIDLAND BANK TRAINING

n a personal note, we produce milk, a small amount of beef and over half the farm is in arable.   Midland Bank use our farm for teaching their trainee managers about farm costings.   This is because most of them know nothing about farming and as most famers are borrowed up to the hilt, they need to get the picture, and it helps us because we get twenty or thirty assessments of our business.   This year they said they would be prepared to lend to us even though we expect to make a loss this year, but they would hold the part of the farm we own against borrowing.   In other words they could always take the farm if we defaulted.   We are not happy about the way things are going, and are still looking for ways to cut the costs still further.

SHEEP TO RSPCA

Some friends are selling up, and some have mortgaged their pensions.   I have heard of a flock of sheep being left with the RSPCA – do you think they would like a couple of hundred of cows, not to mention a bull?   We could throw in a stick of Blackpool rock, it’s only been half eaten by young Charlotte, what’s not stuck on the settee that is.

JANUARY 1999

SERIOUS RESOLUTIONS

1999. Another new year.   Time for resolutions.   I made just one easy one so that it wouldn’t be too hard to keep.  Taking stock of life, as I do try to do all the time, I realised a long time ago that there were things I just had to do, then things I ought to do and after that came things I would like to do.  Sometimes things fall into more than one category, but when nothing in the “like to do” list is being done then life wants seriously sorting out.   It is very easy in business to just keep working because there is always something that wants doing.    It is impossible to have everything done, but my three ‘things’ still apply.

MAY BE LEFT UNDONE

Some things have to be done - the cows must be milked, fed, bedded up, and cleaned out. Then there are the “ought to do” things, such as maintenance of buildings, fences, and servicing machinery.   There are also things which make the farm comfortable, smart, attractive, such as up-dated machines, concreted yards and trees in the hedges, a good environment for humans, as well as wildlife.    These things cost and are the first to be dropped when times are tight.   Over the years we have planted dozens of trees, but will we plant any this year?    We may, but we are thinking long and hard about it first.

WHY USE SINK NUMBER 4 ?

When it comes to the farm encroaching on the house,   I have long since stopped trying to get, and keep it, perfect.   On rare occasions, such as a wedding here, we have got near it but only after something like a military campaign and I certainly couldn’t keep it up – men, dogs and wellington boots just guarantee a mess.    From the back door by the office there is an outside toilet, boot room inside with sink, inside toilet before hall and kitchen.  The sink in the kitchen is the fourth place to which they can come to wash their hands, and I make this as difficult as possible, in the hope they will use one of the other places first.  What a hope!

STILL LIFE 9.45 a.m.

Take last Thursday; 9:30 a.m. and the kitchen is pristine. By 9.45 two sessions of making coffee and I have a ‘still-life’ of an open mug cupboard, electric kettle, milk jug, biscuit crumbs, spilt coffee, sugar and sweeteners, wet spoons and a pair of John’s glasses with the daily paper.   As the glasses are lying amongst this scene (glasses could make a whole article of their own) I say to John’s departing back, just as a little hint “Do you need your glasses?” “No” he replies “I’ve got another pair in the office”    There is another ‘still-life’ scene in there, I guess.

SCENE CHANGE 10.15 a.m.

By 10 a.m. all is straight again, just in time for two buckets of milk to be brought in to be warmed up for the calves, and as I stand over it, finger poised to test for that perfect blood temperature – Well I’m not going to stick my elbow in it – the phone rings and the milk gets too hot, I just knew it, it’s impossible to win and John will ask “What were you thinking of?”   Why does a phone always ring when it is least convenient?

ROSE BOWL TROPHY in MEMORY of DICK WEST

It was a difficult autumn, one way and another, the autumn cultivations were never finished, Phil was off for seven weeks, although he did manage to win first prize for the best farm staff garden again.   This particularly pleased us as John had given the Association a rose bowl for this class in memory of his father.

RICHARD OFF WORK

Richard, after endless trouble with his back eventually had it operated on, which meant eight weeks off work for him – a frustrating time.   John has had to do things he had been glad to hand over to Richard, not least the nightly round of the cows.   For his sake we hope to have him back to full health again soon, and for John to have a bit more of that precious “like to” time again.

28 FOR LUNCH

We had a big party here for Christmas which was lovely, and as everyone did lots to help it wasn’t too much work.   It was quite a squeeze around the table with twenty eight sitting down to lunch!

THE SECRET RESOLUTION

And what was that New Year resolution?    I’m not saying, it’s hard enough to keep them anyway, but so far, so good.

APRIL 1999

FARM AGENDA

Over and above everyday decisions, several major items have been high on the farm agenda. Put simply, it amounted to getting the farm back into profit, so….

1. How to maximise income from the grain and milk.

2. How to minimise expenses.

So what’s new?   You might well ask, for it sounds a familiar story, but never has it been so difficult, and it is not quite as simple as it sounds.

REDUNDANT

After much heart-searching and much advice, it was decided that someone had to be made redundant as we had to run a tighter ship.   But we know, and work, with our staff.   It was a very painful procedure and we could only go by the book and hope that in the end it would all work out well.   Most of the men live in the farm houses and that complicated matters.   As the position was being made redundant at least we were able to let “whoever” stay in his house rather than be uprooted.   It has all been most uncomfortable and now of course we have to manage with one man fewer, but we can’t pay wages out from nothing.   It was the most difficult decision we ever made - and over the years there have been many, but before it never involved the men the way this has.

FARM ASSURED

As for maximising our income from the grain and milk, it’s more a question of maintaining what we have.  We have always done things to the best standard we could, but now at considerable cost we need to become registered as Dairy Farm Assured and Cereal Farms Assured.   To get the relevant certification, all that we do has to be recorded by us and inspected.   However much we hate the paperwork, if it will help sell our produce then we have to do it.   The next move may well be that those not certified – sorry I should say registered – just won’t be able to sell their produce.   I wonder why I keep writing “certified” perhaps my pen knows what I’m thinking – maybe it is them or us – well, we don’t intend it to be us, if that’s the case.    I do think, more and more frequently, that somebody needs certifying, that “body” being bureaucratic rather that a person.   If the bowler hat fits – wear it.

ROBERT WILLIAM

It has just started to rain – an April shower – and we do need it, everywhere is very dry, so for that we are glad.   We are delighted to have another grandchild, Robert William, a son for Maxine and Richard.    With our families around us we are so lucky – we don’t ask for more - but a little less pressure would be nice.

JULY 1999

OLD AGE PENSION

I had this letter saying “you are approaching retirement.    How do you want to receive your pension?    Or do you want to postpone it?”    What a laugh!    I replied, “Start sending it as soon as possible.”

WAITING MY CHANCE

I had been waiting for this day.  Some years ago I had gone to Risborough Post Office on pension’s day and what happened?   After twenty minutes I was further away from the counter than when I went in.    It’s like a club, the pensioners all know each other and join their friends in front.  Not only did I feel left out, I nearly was out of the door, backwards.

BANK PLEASE

Resisting my desire to join them, I arranged for it to be sent to the bank, and since then it’s been so hectic I haven’t had time to see if they have started paying it.    I said I’d put the first payment towards the President’s day at the Sports Club and as I’ve not checked it I had to borrow from the farm account – I didn’t want to run into overdraft if they hadn’t actually paid it, but when I’ve done this I really must check it out.

PRESIDENT’S DAY

As I said it’s been so hectic, as the previous Hallmark was going to press, we were completing the refurbishment of the Sports Clubhouse.    It was planned to be finished by the 1^st of May, but on President’s Day 13^th June we were still hanging curtains and getting the new chairs and tables in situ.    We were blessed with the most glorious day and my friends rallied yet again to get me out of the mess I had got myself into – why don’t I learn my lesson!    I was thankful that a new Sports Club Committee had been voted in and I could resign my Chairmanship and go back to pestering them as President.

BATEMAN FAMILY

Dr. Alistair Bateman (who now owns the ground) came with his family and I completely blotted my copybook by not recognising him at first, but fortunately he gently reminded me and spared my blushes.    A week later we had the pleasure of meeting Lady Bateman, Paddy and Robert, and it was good to remember when our children were young and we were working with them for the St. John’s Association, with such high hopes for the school.   They were interested to hear how well it is doing, and it was an opportunity to tell Lady Bateman that all she did for both Lacey Green and Speen schools had enabled them to go from strength to strength.    For those who are new to the village, it was her generosity thirty to forty years ago that set them up to become what they now are, and she also bought the Sports Ground to lease to Lacey Green and Loosley Row on a peppercorn rent.   She also helped people privately; she never talked about what she did, but if we “old-timers” didn’t tell you, you would never know.

FARM WALK,  100 + PEOPLE

The Wednesday after the Sports Club day the Buckinghamshire Grassland and Bucks Farmer’s Club annual farm walk and pig roast was held here, with over 100 people. The pig was roasted professionally so we only had to do the rest, as Richard is on the Committee we provided plates and cutlery. I do hate paper plates, so over the years I have acquired a large “harlequin” collection of china plates from charity shops for such events.

FARM TOUR in NOVA SCOTIA

Immediately after that John and I hopped on a flight to Nova Scotia, hired a car and had six days free, but even then we looked round the farms.    John was so curious, we stopped to watch some people silage making; they wondered what we were up to, came over and before we knew it we were in the cowshed.  Well, I guess it was very interesting.   So was whale watching, which we did on the last morning, the fin-back whale we saw was estimated at 50 feet long, and they can grow to 70 feet.   It came along both sides and went under the boat.    We were glad it didn’t try to surface from beneath us!     We got home just in time for Richard to have a break before harvest.

GARDEN CONSERVATION AREA

Having been away our garden was overgrown and John, heaven knows why, had entered it for the “Best Farm Garden” competition.    There are usually about four entries and we usually come fourth.    John’s vegetable garden is superb and makes up for the conservation areas of stinging nettles in the flower garden.    All our grandchildren are adept at finding dock leaves to counteract the stings of the nettles – there is much to be said for these old fashioned remedies and the belief that the remedy can be found near the source of the problem, ie. The “conservation” area of our garden.

KEEP OUT

They have been busy on the farm fitting doors to keep the birds out of the barns. Too bad that they have been encouraging owl nesting boxes in barns, have put a protection order on bats and that after their thousands of miles back in the spring the swallows, swifts and house martins won’t be able to get in. Have we gone completely mad?   Should we try to stop birds flying over our crops too?   Where will it end?   I asked at the conservation stand at the Royal Agricultural Show how we could reconcile these things.   They said they were hoping no-one would ask.

STILL CLOUD-CUCKOOLAND

Today, just as we have leased in extra milk quota at 6p per litre, our adviser has told us that the best return for milk of any producer he knows is just 5p per litre.   So we could lease out our quota and make more than producing milk for it – so where will it end?    Things can’t continue in this cloud - cuckoo land.

BIG ESTATES LET OUT THEIR LAND

We have just heard that Dashwood Estate has put up its farms for renting, several farms totalling 2000 acres.   Strangely enough at the turn of the century when farming was really bad, Dashwoods rented out their farms then and John’s grandfather took one of them. When he died they took it back in hand and wouldn’t let John’s uncle carry on there.  Now, as times get hard and only the family farmer is likely to continue, the big estates are getting out again.  They are able to calculate in a less personal way, which the small farmer is reluctant to do; he is more likely to carry on until he is working so hard he is unable to see the wood for the trees.   There isn’t much money to spare for big barn doors, but without them the time may not be far off when you cannot sell your grain without them. Another “no win” situation really.

OCTOBER 1999

SICKEST JOKE YET

Autumn 1999. We are in the worst farming recession for decades.    As I write the Labour Party conference is next week and a protest has been planned; today like a sprat to catch a mackerel, a £500 million aid package has been announced.    Am I cynical or what?   Boosting the package is £380 million compensation from the EU, half of which is paid by the commission in lieu of the green (agricultural) pound rate freeze of previous years.   The £150 million balance is not money to be paid out, but a deferment of charges which were to have been imposed in order to pay the cost of new regulations.   The hill farmer’s support will be retained, which leaves £1 million for marketing support, which spread over the number of animals is a sick joke – better to take them down to Bournemouth and turn them loose.    If you were a lamb producer, what would you think about the thousands being imported from Spain, just another insult added to injury?

INTERESTING POSSIBILITIES

There are interesting lights on the horizon, which may be keeping the Agriculture Minister from his sleep. One is the new Welsh Assembly and the other the new Scottish Parliament, both of which are threatening to go it alone for the farmers, if Westminster does not wake up.

NEW CROP IDEAS

Two other things of current interest are organic crops, and genetically modified crops.   Truly organic crops should be excellent to eat but can look pretty awful, and most people have become used to their produce looking perfect.    Genetically modified crops could, for example be bred to resist diseases in order that fungicides would not be needed, which seems to me sound technology, and I do not think it should be written off untried.

MY THOUGHTS

I believe farming is at a watershed, or turning point; it will be hard to weather all this and the sad thing is that small farmers will be the first to go.    I envisage that we will be left with big farms.   Well regulated, commercial and highly mechanised.    I deplore stockpiling surpluses, and I hope that attention will be paid to distributing them.   It’s a small world now, a very small world; this country can produce more than we need, others cannot produce enough, is equating it beyond the wit of mankind?

BEST LARGE FARM

This year in the Chiltern Hills Agricultural Association we have won first prize for the Best Large Farm.    It is encouraging to know you are good at what you do, but where will we be in the future?   Will we be a small “big farm”, or will we be one of the last family farms hanging in there?    I hope Stocken Farm will keep going without losing its heart.    Only time will tell.

JANUARY 2000

NOW LESS THAN 20 YEARS AGO

I have started this article several times now, as I feel it is important to paint a true picture, but each time it turns into such a depressing tale, and I’m sure that’s not what you want to read.    I got quite absorbed dipping into Farmers Weekly magazines of twenty years ago – like turning out the attic or an old cupboard.    It was very interesting but rather appalling to find out how much less our products fetch now - and that just about sums it up in one sentence.   So far, a number of people we know have sold up or given up, their land being absorbed by other farms where the policy has been to enlarge in the hope of spreading overheads further.

OXFORD FARMING CONFERENCE

Every January there is a two day National Farming Conference held at Oxford, where top international speakers take the platform. The speaker at the pre-conference dinner was the Chief Scientific adviser, the topics on day one headed “Global Policies” and on day two “Business Perspectives”.    Farming has become such a serious business – now it is very professional and one must try to keep up.

PUBLIC DEMAND

With today’s communications we should be able to know what the public wants, it is no longer any good saying that this is what we produce, so that is what you will get!   Habits are changing and we must make sure that our products meet the requirements, bearing in mind that all the world is just an air-flight away.  Look at it from your side of the fence- do you cook as you did twenty years ago?   Or how your mother or grandmother did?   Do you think all the TV cookery programmes are aimed at “hobby” cooking, assuming that people didn’t learn to cook “at Mother’s knee”, so have to be taught how to crack an egg, and also how to use those foreign ingredients we have come to like when eating out, or on foreign holidays.   The farmers must produce what is wanted.

MILK

On this farm we produce milk, some beef, and cereal crops.   The milk required by the public is much less rich, skimmed and semi-skimmed being the order of the day, so we no longer have to try to get creamy milk.

COOKING OIL

The oilseed crops have come into their own for cooking oil, hence the yellow oil seed rape and blue linseed.

MEAT = SHAMEFUL IMPORTS

The beef wanted is lean, as is pork, bacon and lamb, so the animals are bred to that end.   It does seem a great shame that just as the pig industry has succeeded in producing exactly what the public wants, under conditions the most humane in Europe, that imports coming from countries where sow stalls and tethered cows are still the order of the day, are allowed to come in, be re-packaged here and so labelled as “UK Produce” and sold cheaper than the genuine UK article.    Pity the UK pig farmer – if you can still find one!

APRIL 2000

RIDICULOUS SCREW TURNING

Farming is in a straight-jacket; a few years ago all the fields and their acreages, according to the Ordnance Survey maps, had to be registered.   It was an enormous job, and it fixed the land and what it could be used for.   It was like a modern Domesday Book and it made it difficult to rotate the crops properly.   This year a couple more ideas were dreamed up to torment us and one caused such an uproar that it has been delayed so there’s just a chance that it will not be implemented.    This is it -   All fields must be cropped to two metres of the boundary.   Now on our fields we have literally miles of hedges.   Some of them are very old.   We leave a verge and some also have footpaths beside them.   The boundary is the middle of hedge where the quicks were planted.   In order to cultivate to two metres from the centre and leave a footpath the hedge is going to have to be cut back really hard.   This won’t hurt the hedge, in fact it will thicken it up, but the verge and path will be very tight.   We also have several ponds and some of our friends have made new ponds in fields, simply for the pleasure of the wildlife they bring.   So, does one fill them in, in order to cultivate back to this two metre line?   Farmers are making no profit now, if they are going to be penalised for a bit of conservation, what is this world coming to? – and how tight can the screw be turned?

200 TREES

We are very aware that very few people are in the privileged position of being able to enhance the countryside by planting hardwood trees – they just do not have the room.   We do what we can and over the years have planted something like two hundred trees around the farm.   We have been doing it for a long time and some of them are quite sizeable now, but they do need room and they do not count as a crop.

UNANSWERABLE

Why do we need to cultivate every scrap of land to two metres from the centre of a hedge?    Especially when every year we are told there is a surplus of this or that and to set so much land aside and not use it.

SOME HELP LINE !!!

All this has to be monitored and it is certainly the world of ‘Big Brother is Watching You’.   It must make a terrific lot of ‘jobs for the ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ of course.   The wrong number was put on a form.   The Ministry helpline, on which there are 50 phone lines, said they would ring us back - they didn’t - they just sent a bill for £50 – what a helpline!

HEARTACHE

The other torment is the ridiculous advice to diversify.  There is nothing agricultural that is profitable, so to invest sideways would be crazy.   That does leave a few things  – caravan parks, holiday cottages, leisure pursuits such as banger racing, clay pigeon shooting, or golf courses.  Not here of course, we are in an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’, not to mention the ‘Green Belt’.   In any case, would you want any of those on your doorstep?   We have the audacity to think that you would rather have us as we are.   B & B?  Yes possible, in fact lots of farmhouses already do B & B which is keeping their farming going.   Several friends have sold up and bought elsewhere to do only that.   But that is not diversifying, it is giving up.  Small traditional farmers are still being forced out.   A farmer in Devon advertised for herdsman some years ago and had difficulty in finding one.   Recently when that men left, 20 men came after the position without the farmer even advertising.   All those 20 were farmers who had thrown in the towel and were looking for work for themselves.   It speaks for itself and if you can imagine it, there is a lot of heartache in these few lines.

BE EFFICIENT THEN SQUEEZE

Meanwhile the remaining farms get bigger and input costs are being pared to the bone.   When you think there is nothing left to squeeze you still have to cut back yet again.  Things are not always done the best way and the luxury of conservation has long gone, it’s just not part of this drive for efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.

JULY 2000

ST. SWITHIN’S

Village Day fell on St. Swithin’s Day this year, so not only were we watching the weather on behalf of the village but also with a view to knowing the weather for the next forty days.  Forty days of rain could mean disaster with the harvest just coming to ripening, whilst forty days of dry weather could make things easier in every way.   And where weather is concerned we are simply in the hands of the Almighty.  When it started to drizzle early that day I feared that rain might set in, but it managed to stop and give us a dry, albeit cold, day.

FULL MOON

Do we believe these old sayings?  If it doesn’t suit us we say it is absolute nonsense.   If it does, we keep our fingers crossed, touch wood and have every belief in it.  Not that it makes any difference I’m sure, but not to tempt providence so to speak!   More to the point, it was a full moon and that without doubt can mark a change in the weather.  This year we certainly did need it, the preceding month having been so grey and gloomy, so here’s hoping.

DOG FOOD FOR CATS

Talking of old sayings, another one is that black cats are lucky.   If that is true we should be overwhelmed with good luck.   About three years ago I wrote about the farm cats and what a grand job they were doing in keeping down the vermin and of their ongoing feud with the dogs.   Since then they had multiplied to, John says “twenty three”, although I thought it was twenty five, but when there are so many it’s a job to count.   John supplements the rodent diet with two tins of dog food every night between them, and when it gets to mid-evening they start following him as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

KITTENS

This spring another generation of kittens was born.   They seem to rear one kitten to a good size then dump it on our doorstep.   We found homes for about ten and decided that some action was necessary.   The RSPCA lent us a cat trap, then two by two they have taken them and operated on them.  So far sixteen have been caught, which in itself is quite an achievement with these feral cats.   That leaves at least seven that have not been caught, but now we keep catching the same ones, so the odds of catching one in seven are much longer.   Most of these cats are black or black with white markings, and of an evening they block our path en-masse.   Having been fed they are not so wary and some are getting very cheeky and will come into the house if we are not paying attention.   I have been asked why we don’t have a house cat.   Well, I don’t see how it would be right to have one indoors and not the others and I’m certainly not having that lot indoors.

MY DOG MEGAN

About six weeks ago my dog died.  I have to say she was getting old and had not been ill.   She just fell asleep.  It was such a shock as we had no warning.   She had been like my shadow, always there, often pre-judging my movements and then getting there before me.   I have to agree with everyone who says “It was a good way to go”, but I do miss her.

CATS AT BAY

Also six weeks ago our daughter’s collie had nine puppies.   They are quite delightful and I have my eye on one, the excuse being that it will be in memory of Megan.   Not that I need  that excuse, but we do need another collie to keep Kate, the farm collie, company for she too misses Meg and needs help keeping the cats at bay if nothing else.  I wouldn’t forget Meg anyway.  Just to prove my point a cat has just dashed past me with Kate in hot pursuit, in the back door and out the front. A warm day with the doors open and walking in our hall is as bad as trying to cross Lacey Green Main Road, it’s just cats instead of cars.

OCTOBER 2000

SELLING GRAIN

I have often thought that our weather here is not as extreme as elsewhere – it is as if the worst or the best of it has gone before it gets to us.   All I can say is that other places must have had a bad time this year, well we all know they have, having seen the flooding on TV and in the papers.   We got the harvest home, catching the days here and there as they were suitable, but we have had to dry a lot of grain.  The price is half what it was five years ago even if a home can be found for it, but it is not easy to find a buyer.

SELLING UP

People are selling up all over, especially the milk producers, because it is even worse for them.   A year ago dairy farms were losing money.   Then we were getting 18.4p per litre.   Now we get 15.7p (9p per pint), which is cheaper than bottled water.   There is talk of a rise in the milk price of 2p a litre but that is only for liquid milk, not for that going for processing for butter and cheese.   That does not count but it accounts for about 50% of milk produced.

GETTING THIN ON THE GROUND

I do not know of any farmer that is not depressed and wondering what on earth to do; it is not so much a question of “Do I get out?” as “When do I get out?” and if we keep trying do our assets devalue even more so that in the end they are not worth selling even if a buyer can be found.   Twenty to thirty years ago we were making profits and being self-employed we were wisely advised to buy pension policies.   These are beginning to mature and are coming in very useful, but for the next generation they have not had a chance yet.  They will come out of this hopefully as extremely good farmers, albeit running very tight ships, but what a hard school in which to learn.   We are very lucky that Richard and Maxine are in this with us, but very few farmers’ children are following in their footsteps and you cannot blame them, such a hard commitment with no foreseeable sign of any return can hardly appeal.  The farmers left are getting very thin on the ground.

PLAYGROUND FOR LONDON

About 15 years ago John went to a meeting where the speaker predicted that the Chilterns would become simply the playground for London – he was known to be provocative so we did not take it too seriously at the time, but now we recall what he said and we wonder.

SUPERMARKET OWNERS

This year it has been predicted that given twenty years all the land will be owned by the supermarkets and the farmers will simply manage it for them.   It may not be as far-fetched as it sounds – already some crops are grown like that, peas for freezing for example are planted, sprayed and harvested on the days specified by the factory and have been for years.   Would working for them be such a big step?

LIFE GOING ON

Meanwhile life goes on.   We are trying to sell enough grain so that the cattle can come in from the mud into the yards.   One barn is full of calves.   We desperately need to plant next year’s seed corn but it has been too wet to get on the land and it is getting very late.   The grain from this year that has not gone must be kept dry, which like everything else is easier said than done and if you think this has not been very cheerful I’m afraid you are quite right.  That just could not be done I simply have not got a good enough imagination.

JANUARY 2001

DAZZLING

After months and months of record breaking rain, then several weeks of living in a mist, it was absolute magic to open up the curtains to brilliant sunshine on dazzling snow.   It made working more difficult but it looked simply gorgeous.

APPRECIATION

The whole agricultural industry has been so depressed financially that if you were to ask what it is that keeps a farmer doing a job that dictates such long hours with no guarantee of reward, he would try to explain that it is a way of life.  The animals and the land are a personal concern.   Of course they cannot talk but they might just as well be able to because he can read them like a book.   When things go wrong you feel you have let them down.   It is also part of that way of life that we can stop to appreciate the wonderful world around us when a magical morning like that snowy one appears.

LEAKS

Last autumn it was so wet that not all the fields were planted.   It’s true that we didn’t get flooded, at 700 feet how likely is that?   However the fields were so wet we dare not take a machine onto them.   If the soil gets compacted it causes terrible problems with the structure of the soil.   Lots of people we know did not get their planting done, as the soil could just not absorb any more water.   To add insult to injury we had endless water leaks both to fields and farmyard, and enough correspondence with the “If we’ve said it then its right” Thames Water, that it would easily make an article on its own.   It would have been laughable if it had not been so infuriating.

MUD

It was so depressing day after day, trying to get things done.  The house was a sea of mud brought in by the dogs, wet coats and boots.  The path, doorsteps and doormats just couldn’t keep it at bay.   When we did eventually get to pressure hosing the steps and path it was almost a feeling of being liberated.

REDWINGS

Then this brilliantly snowy morning with wonderful sunshine, blue skies, no wind, just such a perfect day that it feels good to be alive.   A farmer can stand and drink in the beauty of it all.   Not profitable but very therapeutic.   There was even a flock of redwings in the cotoneaster tree.   The tree was loaded with red berries and there must have been as least ten birds eating and sunning themselves.   I think they must have been getting short of other berries because I don’t think cotoneaster is a favourite of theirs, but there they were enjoying the sunshine too.

£8 a CALF

Throughout the winter over 200 calves have been born here.   About one quarter will be females to keep as replacements for the dairy herd.   We rear a few for beef but most have to be sold.  There is the cost of breeding, keeping the cow in calf for nine months, rearing the calf, labour, food and bedding, registration, transport to market, commission fees, only to find that after all that, that the unneeded female calves have been selling for as little as eight pounds.   You feel like bringing them home again, but what would you do with them?   We would be overrun with calves.   It is so sad.   It would be cheaper to have them shot, but as I said “They’re personal”!  They get given names, you have chosen the father, may have helped the mother with the birth, - you just can’t bring yourself to do that.   You can push your calf into someone else’s trailer at the market and let them take it home.   It’s been done more than once when the transport and commission is more than you would get for the calf.

NEW LEASE OF LIFE

On a personal note, John has got a new knee and I have got a new dog.   I must say that getting the dog through her puppyhood has been challenging, especially in all that wet weather.   Our other collie now quite elderly, has been given a new lease of life and the two collies have been practising rounding up the horses that are kept here.   It is something we must stop but it is amazing how they are working together all of their own accord – a natural gift.   I suppose John’s new knee does not class as a natural gift, but what a blessing those operations are, and how wonderful that they can be done.  Unfortunately he could not face the risk of having both done at once, so he’s one done, one to go.

APRIL 2001

FOOT & MOUTH

This copy goes to Hallmark in Easter week, and we are still under siege with the foot and mouth epidemic still raging.   Whatever they tell us about getting it under control, ten new cases in Gloucestershire bring it ever nearer to home, and the total of new cases yesterday was forty, so it hardly seems we are winning.

DISINFECTING

Most people have been very helpful, leaving us in our lonely isolation, and the lorries that we must have in, the prime example being the milk tanker, putting up with being sprayed with disinfectant every day and people dipping their boots and walking on disinfected mats.   If it does not get to Bucks, we shall perhaps think what an effort for nothing - but if it does we shall know we’ve done what we can.

NO GRAZING ?

There are some difficult decisions to make coming up.  So far all the cattle have been kept inside, but with the spring they must go out.  The dairy cows will as usual be kept within twice a day range of the milking parlour.   But the calves, heifers and steers are usually put in off lying fields.   Do we want to do that?   Even if we can get licences to move them.   Assuming that other farms are in the same boat is it going to start hopping all over the place in the cattle as it has been doing with the sheep if we turn them out?   So far this has been going on while they have been inside and the disease has travelled primarily by sheep.   Should we try to keep them housed and conserve their grazing grass as hay or silage?  That would be a huge task but we are considering it and in some “way off” fields we may be forced to.

CANCELLED EVENTS

Already events have been cancelled right up into July.  Princes Risborough Horse Show is scheduled for 15^th July; held on land we farm down at Culverton, it is time their programme, with all its supporting advertisements and sponsors was going to print and circulation.   However it has grown into a very popular event and horses travel long distances to come to it.   Should the show go on?   Foot and mouth may be all over by then, but they need to make adecision now.   A crystal ball would be useful.

CARRIED ON CLOTHES

The way this disease spreads should not be underestimated.   A women who could no longer stand what was happening went to escape from it with relations thirty miles away, but it went with her, it is thought carried on her clothes somehow.

LURKING in the PUB

Twelve farmers met in a pub in Devon early on in the outbreak for a drink.   All their farms were later confirmed infected at the same time - they don’t know how but somewhere in the pub the virus was lurking.

COLLIE KATE THE TEACHER

Our old collie has died.   We knew she was going downhill so it wasn’t unexpected.   It was if she hung on until she had taught the young one all the tricks of the trade that she could think of.

COLLIE KATE THE TENNIS SUPPORTER

As with so many of our problems we have the public to thank for their vigilance and Kate caused many a phone call.   It was just because she was so adept at playing with a ball.   She adored football and tennis in particular.  The tennis players would ring saying this dog had run up and down following the ball so long that they feared she must be exhausted, but Kate could keep it up all day.

COLLIE KATE THE FOOTBALLER

Get her onto a football pitch and she would join in for hours.   We were once called by some children because she had got the ball stuck on her teeth and they couldn’t get it off.    As it turned out they had succeeded before I got to her.   She was a good mascot, worked hard for her team and if nothing else, must certainly have put the opposition off, which must have come in useful.

COLLIE KATE and THE HORSES

She was still trying to round up the horses within days of her death, we just could not stop her and she took her collie instincts with her to the grave.

COLLIE KATE SURVEYS THE LAND

She still loved to ride round in the land rover as if she ruled the roost, but at the end Richard had to lift her in and out.

COLLIE KATE.   GENTLE GONE

On the day that John went to have his second knee done, Kate had wandered onto the lawn and having misjudged her strength could not get back.   She lay there whimpering.   John carried her in and I sat with her until she died.   She went so gently I had a job to tell when she had finally gone.

JUST LIKE A COLLIE

Meanwhile John was given a second new knee and was home again in no time - six days I think it was.  He is persevering with his exercises but still very impatient, cross with himself for not improving quicker, feeling guilty if he gets tired.   Driving after four weeks, I say he’s racing ahead, but can you tell him?    No.  But then he’s a farmer isn’t he?  Like that collie his instincts don’t want to let him lie down.

JULY 2001

DRY FORECAST

Mid-summer 2001 – in time honoured fashion we watched the ash and oak trees to see which came into leaf first.   This year the oaks were way ahead so we are expecting a dry year.   Logic makes me think it must be most to do with the amount of previous cold or rain, but time alone will tell if the trees are really able to predict the weather.

BOMBED FROM THE TREETOPS

Looking around the farm some things have definitely changed.  The flock of starlings which lived in the huge ash tree near the house for years have moved on to treetops new.   This is a great relief as they are messy birds and getting to the car park was like running the gauntlet, especially during the autumn when the cars, and the people if they were unlucky, or lucky if you were superstitious enough to think it brings you luck, would be covered in purple from the elderberries which the starlings had eaten.

CUPBOARD LOVE

The feral cats are still here although I think we are down to about seventeen.  They love to sit on a warm car bonnet so there are still often paw prints on the vehicles.  They are looking very fit now they are not having loads of kittens, and they do a first class job of keeping down the vermin.   They are also getting much tamer and will come into the house, driving the dog to distraction, even rubbing round our ankles trying to get food and getting under our feet enough to trip you up, yet if you try to touch them they will claw.

SURVIVAL of the FITTEST

Maybe the reason for the drop in cat numbers is that there is a pair of foxes with cubs, now nearly fully grown, living down the yard.  It makes it the survival of the fittest.   There are mallard ducks breeding on the back pond, and a pair of pheasants helping themselves off the silage clamp.    Even the badgers which have a sett down the field come up to the house at times, and the foxes saunter across our garden as if they own the place.

WILD ROUTES

The cats seem to follow laid down routes across the garden and buildings and it seems the foxes follow these ways too.   This is something I have noticed for years, particularly on the road between Parslows Hillock and Hampden.   It goes through woodland all the way, but if an animal crosses the road it is invariably at the same particular place, and we now slow in anticipation.   We enjoy all the wildlife and probably favour the small things, but we don’t interfere with the balance, they have to sort it out for themselves.

MAGPIES

There is a huge increase in the number of magpies and it seems they mate for life.   For this reason old custom dictates that a lone magpie be saluted for remaining so faithful.   They are very aggressive and will attack the smaller birds.   They don’t always win though, and on one memorable occasion the tables were completely turned.

A MEMORABLE OCCASION

Hearing a commotion outside the kitchen I saw a wagtail being attacked by a magpie.   Its mate was flapping around making all the noise it could, trying to frighten off the predator.   Not a hope you might think.   The racket attracted a cat who stalked up on the magpie imagining perhaps ‘dinner’ and maybe ‘dessert’ too, handed to it on a plate.   The magpie dropped the wagtail and the little pair made it to the garden hedge, a scattering of tail feathers left in their wake.   The magpie and the cat were fair adversaries but the dog had also heard and anticipating some good sport dashed up to join in.   Cat and bird hurriedly made off, the magpie complaining from the oak tree above, whilst the wagtails had got away.   If the mate of the caught wagtail had not been so courageous, and made such a noise, enough to attract a cat and a dog, both potential enemies, they would never have survived.   That morning my salute was to the little female wagtail not the magpie, if I had not seen it I could never have imagined it.

NOT JUST CARRION

Birds that I thought were only carrion eaters are the red kites that are multiplying in the Chilterns, courtesy of Mr. Paul Getty.   They are massive graceful birds with a distinctive forked tail.   One flew really low over the garden which I thought was wonderful.    On mentioning this to farming friends I was told that they had witnessed a kite snatch a live duckling, so maybe they are not just carrion eaters.   I knew they do eat small prey such as worms, and up to seven or eight have been seen following a plough or cultivator in the fields.   I have thought it dramatic to see seagulls doing this, but a flock of red kites must be really amazing and something to look out for.

FROG PATROL

The frogs came back to the pond as usual to breed in the spring.  They are very one track minded and that seems to mostly take them across our drive.  In order to go in or out at that time someone has to walk ahead and give them a fast track lift across.   It may look stupid but it is a worthwhile exercise as there is nothing more pathetic than a squashed flat frog on the tarmac.  I have to skirt past these if it happens and several squashed frogs would surely stop me walking up the drive.

NO BIRDS IN BARNS REGS.

The regulations ensuring that birds cannot get in the grain barns are probably the main reason we don’t have as many house sparrows.  There are still tree sparrows and dunnocks in the hedges, but maybe they are not the same.

BIRDS IN THE FIELDS ??

No doubt keeping the grain very clean is a very commendable idea, but there are many birds (pigeons, crows and rooks spring to mind being somewhat larger) that live in the fields both on the corn and the oilseed rape plants, whose habits we certainly have no control over.  Will we get another regulation regarding these?   It already seems at times that we are living in cloud–cuckoo-land, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

BATS BEFORE GRAIN

There are still bats living in the old barn but there is a conservation order on bats so we have had to stop using that barn for grain as we mustn’t shut the bats out.   We never see any evidence of them except to see them flying around in the evening.   To be really corny I could say “Living in cloud–cuckoo-land is enough to drive you bats-in-the-belfry”.

NO STOCK MOVEMENT

More seriously, restrictions are still partially in place regarding movement of livestock.   We are now hearing of farmers who have erected barns to house these animals they are not allowed to move at the cost of many thousands of pounds.   We have had to rear at least forty calves that we would normally sell, which means finding more fields and providing more conserved fodder at the expense of out corn crops, some of which have been made into silage.   The calf rearers have not been able to buy calves.   They have also not been able to sell their reared calves, and have had to keep them on for fattening for beef.   These are the people that have had to build barns to house them.   They are small specialised farms that look as if they are going to be broken by it all.  They certainly have courage to keep hanging on. Perhaps like that wagtail, with help they will survive with only their tail feathers ruffled, but it will be nothing short of another miracle.

OCTOBER  2001

TOWN FARM

There are some houses about to be built on the site of Town Farm buildings in Princes Risborough, off the road down to the church.  It should be a handy place to live as it is right in the town centre.   The farm used to have one hundred and forty acres, some of the land behind the farm buildings where Jasmine Crescent now is.  The daughter was called Jasmine so that figures, but most of the land was out of the town up towards Kop Hill.   After WW2 everyone that came back, bombed out of their homes was promised a house and the land of Town Farm was compulsory purchased on which to build houses.   Those houses were streets ahead of what people had before and when you realise that at that time no provision was made for owning a car you realise how things have moved on.

LIKE A TARDIS

The land running up to Kop Hill is very poor with hardly any top soil before you are down to chalk.   The most it could have provided for was one cow to three acres, maybe less.   The indigenous grasses that grow on the Chilterns are very short, two to three inches at most and not particularly nutritious.   There is a well known old postcard  of a few cows walking up the High Street going from Town Farm out to graze for the day, from whence they came back to be milked in the evening.   After the land was taken they must have been kept in or on the land of what is now Jasmine Crescent, for that was built later.   That land would have been more fertile but was probably very wet, for Risborough was notoriously prone to springs.   The farm finally packed up in the early nineteen eighties.   In the Bucks Free Press, Bob Stupples  from the surveyors who sold the site, is quoted as saying “It`s like a Tardis, a flash back to bygone days”   Well all I can say is that I can remember those cows walking up the High Street and it doesn`t seem  so many days ‘bygone’.   “Tardis indeed!!??”

L.R.  GILLINWATER

My father had a market garden and two acres of glasshouses.    Most of the produce was sold through our shop in the middle of Risborough High Street.  After the war Risborough with all those new houses grew many times over.   That produce coming from my father`s was, and I can say it hand on heart, superb.   He was a perfectionist which didn`t make life that easy, but did give his produce a good reputation.   The shop was run by my mother.

RATION BOOKS

My earliest recollections are of coupons from ration books and trying to make displays of parsnips cabbages and marrows and salad vegetables.   Nothing imported. After the war things improved and so did peoples’ standard of living.

ANNUAL BEDDING PLANTS

People moved into those new houses on that barren land and wanted to make them attractive.    They wanted a quick fix at a good price so bedding plants were added to the things produced at the nursery.    We charged for a tray of forty eight plants four shillings.   That is twenty pence in decimal.   By1956 I was driving and in the season drove our fifteen cwt van, fitted for four layers of shelves, all day to and  from the nursery to the shop full of trays of plants, in an effort  to keep it stocked, but even then couldn’t keep up with the sales.    Many people bought straight from the nursery.

44,000 BOXES

By the time I got married in 1961 the sales had reached somewhere around forty-four thousand boxes, give or take a thousand or two.    They were the answer while people learnt about shrubs and perennials, which was the next step and garden centres were born.   It was unfortunate that much of the profit, and there was a profit despite the cheap price, was ploughed back into more glasshouses, for the world had become a small place and subsidised fuel in Holland killed the prices for glasshouse crops in England.

TOMATO WAS KING

But just going further back again to the early 1950s in our shop the tomato was king.   We were selling two tons a week through that shop.   The windows were completely dressed, three times a week, with tomatoes, with maybe some cucumbers, which were cut twice a day, so fast do they grow, and were beautifully fresh.   We still sold all the other things you would expect of a greengrocers.

IMAGINE THIS

Now, you have to imagine no supermarkets, very few cars, a good bus service and a good train service not only to London but all the towns around.   On Saturday mornings we had five assistants each with a schoolchild weighing for them. The queue moved very fast but embarrassingly it stretched half the length of the High Street.  The buses stopped not only at their stops but also outside the shop and the drivers came with shopping lists for people in Watlington, Wycombe and Aylesbury.   It was crazy.   We certainly worked hard and the customers in their different ways were treated personally.   That made it worthwhile for us and hopefully they forgave us the wait and went home smiling.

POSTCARD

If you ever see postcards of the cows walking up the street they either show our shop or were taken from our shop.   Town Farm like other small farms has gone.   Farms have either grown or died.  

NOW 1,400 ACRES

We have just rented another three hundred acres taking us up to 1400 acres.   But we are still clinging on to the small end of family farms.   Figures just published say that a family farm of 500 acres made on average last year £2,500, which was better that expected.   Bearing in mind that most family farms would be two generations with little or no relief, that is not enough to live on nor can it be called “a good life”.

RUBY WEDDING

What was “good” was a lunch we had with family and friends to celebrate our ruby wedding anniversary.  Wherever have forty years gone?

JANUARY 2002

ROLE OF FARMER’S WIFE

In 1948, when I hasten to add I was still at school, a survey was done asking “what was the role of a farmer’s wife”.   If I had seen it would I have married a farmer, or would by 1961 when I did marry, I have assumed that it was no longer relevant?  And is it relevant now in 2002?

SURVEY FINDINGS

The result of this survey was: -

1.      To help

2.      To make tea

3.      To give sympathy and understanding

4.      To have equanimity in emergency

5.      To do the housekeeping including any decorating

6.      To raise children

7.      To be glamorous

8.      And to make meals at all times

It does not say in what order of importance these roles stood.

I ADD

Knowing what I know now I would add the proviso that it is essential that a farmer’s wife must: -

1.       like a challenge in fair weather or foul

2.       Have a large dose of a quirky sense of humour

3.       Not be too house proud

4.       Have the patience of a saint, bearing in mind that one sees one’s husband much more than most wives.

MY EXAMPLES

No.1. TO HELP.

a.      This means drop everything and go get the cows out of the corn, someone’s garden, even the graveyard-but run.   At this point ignore the phone for it will only be some kind villager telling you just how far they have travelled, and the trail will be only too obvious.

b.      Or – just pop down to the vets with this pig.  The vet is supposed to know about it, but he has not been given the message.    The pig is in the back of the Land Rover and is about six feet long.   Going into the waiting room where people are sitting with their cats and dogs I wonder what the next move is.    I hesitantly say “I have a young pig outside”.  “Bring him in then”.  The receptionist is deaf and thinks I have said “peke”.   This episode all got rather confusing but we got there in the end, by which time their assistant had gone home and I had to “help” by sitting on the pig while the vet attended to its rupture.    Such practicalities would not be allowed now I guess thirty years on.

c.       A difficult Calving at night (don’t like to disturb the men after a busy day!).   I did jib at this when I reached fifty, by which time I had well ruined my back.   And I always seemed to get the mucky part of it while John did the interesting bit, and as the calf finally plopped out there was I in the line of fire.   I could write a book on “helping”, but let’s say that it is usually something out of the ordinary.

No.2. MAKE TEA

This is something always wanted, although sometimes it’s coffee.    And while lorry drivers hang around waiting to be unloaded, well, a mug would be nice for them too.    Before moving into the farmhouse we lived in one of the cottages in Kiln Lane.   In those days reps used to call from the different companies.    This practice is something that is no longer viable, but then, John, who didn’t want to spend time on them and knew them as friends used to send them round to our house and I would open the door to some man saying he had been sent by my husband for a cup of tea!!

No.3. GIVE SYMPATHY

This can mean a whole range of disasters from a splinter to a major drop in corn prices, or an outbreak of some disease leading to sleepless nights, or it might just be a cold in the head.   In order to decide how much sympathy is warranted it is necessary to have a good knowledge of what makes your farmer’s world go round and what makes the man tick.    As with “helping” a whole book could be filled about “sympathy and understanding” covering all sorts, from the weather to the E.U.

No.4. BOOK KEEPING

Paper work, especially accounts, are not the farmer’s forte.   It is not part of their calling, but is essential for their businesses.   I know of very few farmers who do their own book-keeping, but I know a lot of farmers’ wives who do. Pushing accounts onto wives might not have looked pretty but it was probably better than making the house look as if a hurricane has passed through it every morning.  We do have a huge rubbish bin in our office which is filled most days.   There is also a lot of official bumph which we would dearly love to consign to it but just dare not.    Shame!

No.5. HAVING EQUANIMITY IN EMERGENCY

True emergencies are much worse than when your help or sympathy are needed.   They usually call for first aid and do require a cool head and maybe transfer to hospital.   They include accidents, for a farm is a dangerous place, though they can be of a more minor nature.

BRUISES

On one occasion the vet had performed a caesarean operation on a cow.   It is usually straightforward but needs a couple of people to lift out the calf.  This had gone well and the cow and calf were made comfortable, when it was realised that one of the men was missing.  He was found on the cobbles outside where he had fainted.    A bag of frozen peas on such bumps works wonders I find.

CRUSHES

I did have to send a man to hospital with a bag of frozen blackcurrants on his crushed foot, being right out of peas.   RED KNICKERS

Overhanging loads on the backs of trailers have to  carry a red warning cloth and when the men rush in saying a red cloth wanted, preferably yesterday if not before, something has to be quickly produced, even if it is a pair of the children’s knickers that comes to hand.    Always buy the children red knickers.

No.6. HOUSEKEEPING AND DECORATING

These are obvious and keeping the farm at bay is a no-win situation, but one tries.   You will have to do any decorating, for if there is any money to spend it will surely be the cows, pigs or sheep that have first call.

No.7. RAISING A FAMILY

Also obvious and needing lots of supervision.

No 8. BE GLAMOROUS

The farming fraternity are a gregarious lot and there are numerous organisations having educational and social programmes.   Late nights and early mornings are hard to handle so one seldom looks glamorous next day even if you have made an effort the night before.

No 9.  MAKE MEALS AT ALL TIMES

With breakfast, lunch, tea and supper at four hourly intervals you know when these are due and prepare accordingly.  Simple.   Unfortunately this routine comes second to any little hold-up that occurs, so there is no telling when an appearance will be made to eat them.  And if you have a baby that requires feeding at four hourly intervals that alternate with the father’s, heaven help you.

NO CHANGE

I showed this list to several generations of farmers’ wives and every single one said “Just goes to show that farming men have not changed one little bit”.

APRIL 2002

ONLY A NOSEBAG

One of the organisations with which we have been involved is the Chiltern Hills Agricultural Association.    John is on the committee and later for a dozen years or so he ran the bar and I did the catering at their ploughing match.   Some such organisations have very smart occasions, inviting judges and members to a luncheon, and as a guest judge John had been invited at times.   The ploughmen, who are the really the essence of the occasion would be handed a “nosebag” through a flap in the marquee.   I didn’t think much of it.

PLOUGHMEN DIGUSTED

Meanwhile our own association ploughing match had been at a pretty low ebb, so we set about trying to turn its fortunes round.  Firstly, the competitors’ food. They had been pretty disgusted with the packed lunch they were given before we took over.

BUFFET LUNCH

We made it an occasion when there would be a buffet lunch and bar.   We hoped to sell enough to the farmers to cover the cost of the competitors.  We took proper plates and cutlery, (men just can’t seem to cope with paper plates and plastic cutlery) although it made a lot of washing up.

I cooked big joints of meat with hot peas and jacket potatoes if it was very cold; salads, bread and butter, “old fashioned” puddings with custard kept hot in flasks, and cream.   It was definitely NOT what the doctor would have ordered, unless you chose a salad sandwich, for we made sandwiches to order with deep fillings.  If you are in tent in a field in October, the appetite is quite different from that at home.   The men were also able to choose their meat as fatty as they liked, and some of the “old boys” certainly did like -“but don’t tell the missus”.  The ploughmen were given a lunch voucher, but we got to know them and had only to look at their oily hands in any case.

GREATEST COMPLIMENT

It was one of the greatest compliments of my life when one year, when the weather was atrocious and in the end even the tractors were having to be towed out, that a ploughman told me that normally he wouldn’t take his tractor out on such a day, but he knew we would be there, and if we could make it, he could too.

SOCIAL OCCASION

Eventually entrants were coming long distances, because they said it was such a good social occasion.   Of course we got to know many new people and it was good to recognise them each year.   The year it was held at Bradenham it was a glorious autumn day, and when the work was done the ploughman and spectators were lazing in the sun, while the judges worked out their figures and the children were playing round about.   It was great to see the people come and in no rush to get home, staying all for the art of a good deep furrow.

HORSE PLOUGHING

The Chiltern Hills Agricultural Association is 150 years old this year - it started with horse ploughing for teams of three, two or one horse.   It was hard work to plough all day walking behind the horse, although different it’s just as skilful nowadays.

SPECIAL AWARDS

Growing crops are judged and there are also competitions for best farm garden, we did win that once, (I’ve no doubt that John’s fabulous vegetable garden had a big influence), best employee’s garden which Phil Baker has won several times and longevity of employment, this last won by Gerald Bedford many times.

LIZ BARTLETT

The new tradition for food at the ploughing match goes on with Liz Bartlett from Promised Land Farm doing the catering, with another committee member running the bar.

JULY 2002

THIS ENGLAND

Seldom have I sat before a blank sheet, with an equally blank mind, but now it has happened and this copy for Hallmark is due.   I know we have been so busy that there must be much that I could tell, but we have just had a glorious weekend and that still seems uppermost in my mind, with Village Day on Saturday and the farewell services and picnic lunch for Father Richard Caink and Jenny on Sunday, I imagine some people can hardly have gone home at all, and so many people worked so hard to make it all happen.   From beginning to end the sun shone – could this possibly be England, especially after the deluges of the previous fortnight? – Of course it could.

CANCELLATION

It was only a week previously that it was decided to cancel Risborough Horse Show.   This was to have been held in the last field on the right as you go into Risborough.   These fields can get notoriously wet with the whole area prone to flooding.   When they used to take the dairy herd across to Culverton Farm twice a day the sloppy mud often came up to the tops of their legs.    Naphill Riding Club had a little horse show in one of the fields along towards The Whip; they hit a wet day and turned the field into a mud bath.   After that for days we were deluged until the ground could hold no more.   These last few days have dried things out a bit but it is still very wet underneath.   Consolidating the ground causes problems for crops for years ahead.  Did we do right to cancel the Risborough show?   It remains to be seen, or perhaps we shall never know.

ATTITUDE TO LAUGH AT

During the past month we have had so much extra on our plate.   We at last got round to putting new double glazed windows in two of the farm cottages.  Three firms came to quote, the first - a national company - gave such an enormous figure that we nearly rolled around laughing, except that they were wasting so much of our time.   When we wouldn’t agree, the rep offered to halve the figure if we would sign that day.   We repeated that we intended getting three quotes and his was only the first.   In the end they were all much the same, but we preferred the attitude of the others.

JOB ADVERTISED

The relief herdsman left and his position was advertised.  At first we had about a dozen replies from which we shortlisted five to come for interview.   Later more applications came in from Romania, Georgia, two from Zimbabwe, Italy and more from the UK - what a small place the world has become.   It is a big responsibility choosing someone for a herdsman’s job.   The family will be uprooted, children will change schools, they will almost certainly have to move house, because if you’re going to have to start work very early you need to live nearby.    Some only apply because they want a house.   One man had worked for us before and had lived in the same house fifteen years ago.   I suppose we should take it as a compliment that he wanted to come back to us and Lacey Green.

FIVE CAME

All five that came to see us and look round were here the best part of a morning and were all prepared to take the job.   Ian and Sue Thorne very kindly let them look round their house, which was very helpful as we virtually had to refurbish the other one from top to bottom, we certainly didn’t want to take people in until we had.   The carpenter and decorator were there for days and days.

ZIMBABWE

John, Richard, Maxine and myself had been at all the interviews and independently had a hunch that a man and wife with three children from Zimbabwe might best fit the bill.   It was a big gamble because we have only spoken to him on the phone and communicated by fax and email.    His wife and a friend came to see us - he dare not leave his home and children, for they have been ordered to stop farming and be out of the house by the 6^th of August - they have tickets to fly here on the 20^th of August.

THEIR STORY

We hope this is going to be a success from our point of view of course, and we fervently hope it will work out for them.   They had built up their farm for ten years and have had it all taken away, and have to go right back to square one, but they have three young children which makes them able to face this new challenge in Lacey Green.   We are confident they will be made welcome here, what a pity they weren’t here last weekend to see the village and fete.

OCTOBER 2002

CHERRY, WAYNE & FAMILY WELCOMED

Three months since I last wrote and plenty has happened during that time.   Cherry and Wayne arrived safely from Zimbabwe with their three children, and were overwhelmed by the generous practical welcome extended to them by the village.

LESS THAN COST OF PRODUCTION

The corn is harvested and the ground is being prepared for next year’s crops.  The prices are at rock bottom, at less than the cost of production.   It is a big question of how long one can continue and farmers are giving up left, right and centre.   We do have a dairy herd as a second string to our bow, but it is unlikely we will make any profit from that this year.  There is talk of a slight increase in the milk price, but we get less than 10p a pint, so there is a long way to go to get above the cost of production.

MINISTRY RECORDS

To add to this there is an ever increasing burden of paperwork.   Unfortunately no common sense is applied to the interpretation of figures sent to the Ministry departments.   Certainly computers will throw up discrepancies, but computers only work on the figures put into them and if two figures for the same animal do not match, the ministry say the animal does not exist, so it cannot be sold.   As an example every animal in the UK has UK in front of its number.   If this is not typed correctly the animal does not exist.   This alone gives ample opportunity for errors, and believe me the errors are not all on our side, but the penalties are……

BABY CALVES

This year’s calves are starting to be born, so calf rearing will be a full time job for one man throughout this autumn.

MARCH FOR LIBERTY & LIVELIHOOD

On 22^nd September the March for Liberty and Livelihood took place in London.   Over 400,000 converged to be counted, not to mention the thousands who could not go but signed their support.   It was impressively peaceful.  There were only four arrests, and they were anti-hunt protesters which may or may not be significant, read into it what you will.

FOX HUNTING

Personally I thought it was a pity the two things, liberty and livelihood got lumped together.   Liberty is the sort of freedom that here in Britain is, if not perfect, pretty good.   On this occasion it all began with a proposed ban on fox hunting.   I imagine if you go fox hunting you would be pretty annoyed, and if you thought shooting and fishing would be next, and they were your sports, you would protest too.   I would certainly see that fair codes of practice prevailed.   I wouldn’t ban hunting but I would have very strict guidelines that gave the fox a fair chance to get home safely.  There is a fox living in the farmyard, and they do have nasty killing habits but that is their nature and we let it be.

LIVELIHOOD

But marching for your livelihood is a completely different kettle of fish, and I’m sorry it got side-tracked with the debate on foxhunting, which to me is a completely different matter.   It was a huge protest and it was peaceful, but it was ignored.   Farmers came from all over Britain, some of whom had never left their home counties in all their lives, because they felt so strongly about it.   The countrymen and women are now mentally up in arms; the yeomen of England are made of sterner stuff, and are unlikely to take it lying down indefinitely.

FRENCH EXAMPLE

The French have been better at protesting than us in the past, and even have some fun with it.   Sheep up the Champs Elysees, cabbages blocking the roads, manure over the town halls, police stations and the like, milk poured down the streets…...anything that does not fetch a respectable price is brought to the public’s notice there.

MARGRET BECKET - IDIOT

Here we don’t even have a Minister for Agriculture any more.  There is DEFRA which includes the environment of which Margret Beckett is the Minister and she, after we have fought for six years to get the French to lift their illegal ban on importing British beef, went to a food fair in Paris and refused to eat it.

STRENGTH

Give us strength, but don’t let us be tempted to use it..… (a few ideas do spring to mind through).

JANUARY 2003

INDEBTED

We are indebted to Ted Janes who sent us this Hallmark cover from 1976, together with Rosemary Oliver’s poem which was originally written for the Village poetry competition.  This poetry competition was organised in 1968 by Maurice (Mosh) Saunders who also drew the tree for the magazine cover in 1976.   We are also indebted to Dennis Claydon who has sent us the following note (as well as a copy of Rosemary’s poem!) -

NOTE from DENNIS

“Many of the lifelong residents of Lacey Green and Loosley Row have remarked, with sadness, on the passing from the Village scene of the horse chestnut tree(s) at the entrance to Stocken Farm.   In fact, the two trees had to be felled due to storm damage but it is thought the older and larger tree probably dated from the Enclosure of Princes Risborough Parish in 1823.   One of the oldest members of the community in Loosley Row, Connie Baker, recalls this tree when she was a small girl, and has been contemplating how many times she has passed beneath its branches during her lifetime.   For generations of Village lads and lassies it has been a never failing source for conkers.”

FORCE OF NATURE

Fortunately, this much-loved feature of the landscape did not succumb to ‘cruel suburbia’s axe’, as in Rosemary’s poem but to the forces of nature, split down through its vast trunk in a storm. ‘To everything there is a season’.”

POEM

Triumphal arch that spans the road, and reaches to the sky,

What secrets could you now unfold, to him who passes by?

How changed the Village, since the days when you were small and young.

You dream of what the future holds, of all that is to come.

And he who stands beneath your boughs and looks across the years,

Shall see the thrifty cottager, a hundred years ago,

Ride forth on sturdy horse and cart, to plough and reap and sow,

And by the cottage door, his wife sits patient at her lace,

While round her feet small children run, all growing up apace,

Alas, those children soon will leave, to fight across the sea,

And many never will return beneath the chestnut tree.

You stand firm and immovable, which splendid supple grace,

Your friendly branches cover us as in a warm embrace,

Oh may you never humbled be by suburbia’s cruel axe.

But stand erect and tall and proud and still by all be seen,

A symbol of the passing years in the Village of Lacey Green.

APRIL 2003

FARMLAND BIRD PROJECT

In 2002 the Chilterns Area of Natural Beauty farmland bird project, a partnership between the R.S.P.B. and the Chilterns Conservation Board conducted a breeding bird survey in the Chilterns A.O.N.B. (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty)

The objectives of the survey were

1.      To provide baseline data on bird populations in the Chilterns.

2.       To ascertain the importance of the AONB for farmland birds.

3.       To provide an effective advocacy tool for the future targeting of agri-environment                                                     schemes within the AONB, in order to make a significant contribution to halting the declines of a number of wildlife species.

4.       To identify farmland bird `hotspots`, (sites with populations of species of high conservation concern), as potential sites for subsequent practical measures on farmland.

5.       To contribute to the delivery of the Chilterns AONB Management Plan and UK and local Biodiversity Action Plans.

In the last 30 years over the whole UK, population trends of priority farmland bird species have declined.   The seven worst hit being the tree sparrow, the corn bunting, the grey partridge, the turtle dove, the yellowhammer, the skylark and the linnet.

SURVEY REPORT

I have just received the report on this survey.   The Chilterns makes up 0.33% of the UK and 30 species were above 0.33% of the bird population, six of them being above 1%.

POINTS TO ATTENTION

Seventy-eight species were recorded in the survey, with density estimates calculated for 32 of these.

Of the 32, 24 had populations above what would have been expected to occur by chance.   Those with above average populations include: -

Corn bunting.  Skylark.   Yellowhammer and Linnet.   All species of high conservation concern.

Skylark and yellowhammers are widely distributed throughout the Chilterns.

Corn bunting, grey partridge and lapwing tend to overlap in their distribution in what have been called ‘hotspots’.

Grey partridge (a species in danger) and lapwing (a species of concern) have poor distributions and low populations.   It is likely that without targeted conservation work the lapwing population in the Chilterns will be unable to recover significantly.

CONCLUSIONS

The Chilterns AONB  is very important for a wide range of farmland species, including several that are in danger or of concern.

The corn bunting has 4.79% of the British population found in this AONB.

The linnet has more than 1% of the British population in this AONB.

Skylark, yellowhammer and linnet, (species in danger) all show widespread distributions.

Grey partridge have a below average population in the Chilterns.  Their range is restricted and appears to be contracting.

Lapwing have a below average population compared to British figures, and a patchy distribution.   We have a pair courting on this farm, and do we always look out for their nests on the ground.

The areas around South Stoke/Ipsden, Ashridge/Ivinghoe and Pegsdon Hills are the hotspots holding the strongest populations of priority farmland birds.

STOCKEN FARM IN DEPTH SURVEY

We are privileged that the RSPB under the auspices of the RSPB Volunteer and Farmer Alliance are actually doing another in depth survey for us at Stocken Farm in Lacey Green.

RESULTS GIVEN AT MAIZE MAZE

The results of the bird survey we should be able to publish later this summer, at a farming and countryside centre we are setting up to be open to the public from mid-July to mid-September, in conjunction with a maze cut in a crop of maize.   So do come along and we will do our best to show you what makes the farming world tick, to answer any questions you have, demonstrate rural activities, explain how to enjoy the countryside in safety, or just send the kids into the maze while you have a cup of tea in peace, or if you too like a challenge the maze will be there for all who are young at heart.

MALLARDS

The wild mallard ducks have done us the privilege of nesting here again.  The ducks have their work cut out keeping their inquisitive ducklings out of trouble.  It is a joy to see them paddling along behind mum in a flottilla on the pond.

PIGEONS

The only bird that is a menace to us is the pigeon that can completely decimate our crops.   We went away for the weekend and low and behold there was a pigeon nesting on the balcony outside that door.   Did we put it in the pot?   Of course we didn`t, we crept in and out  so as not to disturb her and two weeks later there were one pigeon and two chicks outside our door, which were not house trained whatsoever.

SUNBATHING

One final thing just for the record.   I know I have said that I will not keep on about the weather but the past month has been so extraordinary.    People out sunbathing, temperatures in the seventies.    Seeds planted in the fields showing no sign of life because it was so dry.  People working in offices longing to get outside.

ARCTIC WIND

Then came Easter Saturday, a drop of 30 degrees and a wind straight from the Arctic.   What did we do?    We went to the local point-to-point races at Kimble.   I cannot remember ever having felt so cold.   We desperately need some warm April showers to get the crops growing and having had a quick check with the forecast, which we think is pretty accurate, it looks as if we might get some now.

EDITOR’S NOTE

“The spring edition of Hallmark featured the sad demise of the two horse chestnut trees which stood at the entrance of Stocken Farm, one of which was estimated to be at least 150 years old.  A selection of poems written by the pupils of St. John’s School mourned their passing, and therefore John and Joan West kindly invited the authors, plus Headteacher Steve Coleman, to join them when the replacement trees were planted on March 25^th.    A photograph taken by Mr.Coleman together with a brief article to commemorate the occasion appeared in the local mid-week paper, and featured the girls (yes, they were all written by girls!) Georgina Robinson, Verity Beswick, Charlotte Heeley, Kathleen Bartlett, Olivia Blackburn and Samantha Brain, plus John West on this happy occasion.   Let us hope that these new trees enjoy a long and distinguished life!”

JULY 2003

A CRAFTY MOVE

The idea began with a glass paperweight.   I wanted to go Christmas shopping at Langham Glass factory in Norfolk, which runs a maize maze in association with it.   In order to create a diversionary tactic that gave John something to do, while I indulged myself, I asked him to find out about the maze.   There was not much left to see, it being November and the crop having been harvested, but there was enough for a farmer to go on.   On the way home I was saying “We could do that”.   And he, stalling, said “See if Richard likes the idea”.  By coincidence the same weekend our daughter came home with the same idea and talked to Maxine and Richard.  Richard probably said “Well if Dad was keen”, and so the buck was neatly passed round the family.   Taking this as approval and July seeming a long way away, the seeds of an idea had been sown.

MAIZE MAZE

All of a sudden it was April and the maize was sown.   We then proceeded to have a drought.   It was then so dry that nothing grew.   John tried to find some maize that had germinated and it seemed he had dug up half the field before he found one.   The Bucks Free Press said they would come for a photo shot when it was about two inches high.    It rained.   I must say there was no sign of rain in the photograph which only goes to show how we can be deceived.  The Bucks Herald also came but they had nice weather, and the Bucks Free Press came again and this time it was lovely.

TO DO LIST

We made a list of things to do and all seemed reasonably straightforward.

1.      Design a maze.

2.      Arrange for a tea shop, with a supply of electricity and water.

3.      Order a supply of ice cream.

4.      Order sand for a large sand pit.

5.      Get a tent for a display about farming and the countryside and relevant information.

6.      Take out the necessary insurance.

7.      Do a health and safety assessment.

8.      Take on and train extra staff.

9.      Organize tractor and trailer rides.

10.  Make scarecrows for signposts.

11.  Make a cow that could be milked.

12.  Hire toilets.

MAZE DESIGN

We made numerous false starts.   First the design.   Each person said the other’s was too easy.   Eventually we decided on the windmill shape and when we came to mark it out even then we made it more difficult.   Having done that we had a terrible job trying to make a plan of what we had actually done we had changed it so often.

TOILETS

We thought we should organize the toilet hire in good time, and that proved to be as well because we couldn`t get what we had wanted.   We eventually booked individual toilets which look like a Tardis, but they are quite well appointed each with their own wash basin.  How ones horizons broaden.   In fact it is becoming such a learning curve I think we could meet ourselves coming backwards.

ICE CREAM

Also getting well organised we arranged for a supply of ice cream from Beechdean Dairies for the summer.   Unfortunately there was a mix up in the dates and it was delivered a month early.  Not only was there no electricity at that point, there was not even a tea shop.

TEA SHOP

There was not a tea shop because the firm that was making it had rung to say it was ready but we had not got the base for it ready.   After lots of apologies they agreed to keep it for us.  We duly rang a few days later but they had by then got in a spot of bother themselves and had borrowed part of it to finish another one.   But eventually it was delivered and duly erected.

SANDPIT

We thought that a sandpit for the little children could be fun, but didn`t know how big it should be.   We asked for lots of advice and eventually thought 5 tonnes would be about right, but to be on the safe side we ordered 6 tonnes.   It still didn`t look very big so we rang to increase the order.   It was as well we did because they had lost the order.  Their accounts department had not though and sent us a bill for sand delivered in June.  It was booked for delivery 15^th July and on 13^th July they rang and said that they couldn`t deliver until the 17^th July, also that it would be loose not in one tonne bags as first arranged.    As it is now the 14^th July we can but wait and see.

SCHOOL PREVIEW

We had been working for an opening date of Saturday July 19^th, but when St. John`s School asked if they could all come on Wednesday July 16^th we said we would open just for them on that one day.   Now that has really got us focussed.

IN THE MAZE

It seemed that for every step forward we took two backwards.   And that of course is just how you will feel in the maze.  We have built into it some quick exit routes for the faint-hearted but those who stick it to the end will have done well indeed.

EXTRA EVENTS

Throughout the summer we hope to provide promotional events all to do with farming and the countryside.   Vintage tractors, archery, lace making, spinning and weaving, German Short Haired Pointer Dog Demonstration, Falcon Flying, Hot air balloons.

DAILY

Every day Tractor and Trailer rides, Blackboard games for the children,  a ‘cow’ to milk, and a sand pit for the little ones.  

READY TO GO

We are aiming to put together a summer of fun for our visitors, and when we get to our opening on 19th July all will be welcome to come to not only try the maze, but milk “Daisy”, have a tractor ride, watch the red kites and most weeks extra attractions are booked.   The car park is free so is the sand pit and milking Daisy.   You are welcome to bring your own picnic.   If you have goods to sell or crafts to display get in touch, 01844 275591.   We aim to make this a village event where everyone can be represented.   We can make room for all, the more the merrier.  At least one evening opening will be on Wednesday 27^th August.

HOPE TO SEE YOU

Are we completely mad?    If you think we may be now, just wait until mid - September after it is over.   Hope to be seeing you, you know where to find us.

OCTOBER 2003

SUPORT APPRECIATED

October now and the summer seems far behind us.  But it was a glorious summer.  We were extra lucky for our tourist attraction of the maize maze was so much better with good weather.   There were three wet days and two when it was just too hot.   Now in England that just seems unbelievable.   People came from far and wide but the local support was brilliant and for that we are very appreciative.

LOVELY CHILTERNS

Obviously we hoped people would enjoy the maze but it was lovely when people came and stayed and realised how beautiful the Chilterns are.

SWALLOWS

The swallows did us proud.   Hundreds putting on an overhead display for us.  It was perhaps unfortunate for Dave and Ann next door that a number of pairs took to nesting in their garage.  And a testament to them that they rose with the dawn chorus to let the birds out.

SUMMING UP

The bills are still coming in but we think we shall make a profit on it.

BACK AT THE FARM

The sad thing is that this was just a diversification when our main enterprise is farming for which we are hard pushed to make any profit at all.  This is not because we have high rents to pay for we only own half the farm or because we are not good farmers, this summer we won more awards for our crops than ever before, but because the prices are just not viable for the standards to which we adhere.

PICKETING in SANDALS

At long last the dairy farmers, what few of them are left, have been picketing the milk depots.   This has been going on intermittently for some weeks and last week approximately five hundred people turned out at Nuneaton.   The depots receive the tankers late evening and into the night, so it is a great effort for someone having to milk cows early in the morning to stay on picket duty into the early hours, in fact some did arrange to stay all night.   John has gone a couple of times.  Taking flasks of coffee, beer and snacks, getting home about 2.30 a.m.   He felt a bit conspicuous having had a toenail removed thus having to wear his sandals on the cold nights when everyone else was dressed the part in boots and wellies.   But all for the cause!

SMALLEST LOCAL FARM

Every week more herds are being sold up.   They will be bought by those farms hoping to hang on by getting bigger.   There are no small dairy farms left.   We are the smallest around here with 250 cows.  Beechdean Farm, of ice cream fame, at North Dean with about 370 and Holly Green Farm at Bledlow with 400. These are family run farms with generations of farmers behind them.

WORRYINGLY DRY

Continental Europe had a drier summer than us, amounting to drought and poor crops.   Here it was only on the sandy land that they really suffered.  The harvest was finished in record time    It was maybe significant though that when the land was cultivated it blew up such a dust.   The seeds for next years crops were drilled as usual, but lack of moisture has prevented them from growing properly.  It has been worryingly dry all autumn and things are now critical.

COWS LOVE SUN

The cows are enjoying the sunshine, they just love it.   The herd is at its peak calving time.    Seven born today by 9.30am.   It’s a good job that the maize is now made into silage for them to eat.   There is certainly little grass, but they don’t know that.   They just sit there chewing the cud and thinking all will be well.   I just hope we too can think so.   Until it rains that is all we can do.

JANUARY 2004

WORLD HARVESTS

Last summer the British Isles had better grain harvests than many places in the world.   It`s quite usual for some places to do better from year to year.   Having said that, last season was exceptional.   The Ukraine which is normally an exporter of grain had, I understand, a very severe winter, which culminated in their having to import instead.  Australia also usually exports but their earlier season had bad crops and they were buying U.K. farm assured grain rather than from the Baltic ports which they suspected were contaminated with D.D.T. and Europe suffered drought conditions.   There is world grain stored in reserves, but recent years’ production has been less than consumption so reserves are getting less.

SELLING GRAIN

When selling the normal thing would be for farm prices to go up if there are storage facilities to keep it till after the rush of selling at harvest.  The prices are quoted for each month ahead for forward contracts.   Or it can be sold on the day at ‘spot’ price.   Those with the confidence that they can store it well and sell right at the end before the next season could in theory get the best price of all.  That is the theory, but it is a small world and usually importing is so easy it doesn’t always work out.

WORLD TRADE TARIFFS

There are huge prairies in America and Canada.   We are told they have no subsidies to support them, but we don’t know how they fit in with world trade tariffs.   There is an arrangement that no grain is exported out of the Common Market above a certain price in order to keep stock feed prices down.   By September last year prices had risen and knowing there had been a good harvest in the U.K. so there would be a lot about we sold at £78 a tonne and thought it was a good price.   As all these other factors have kicked in the price has gone up and up till it is now £120 tonne.

JUST A ONE OFF

Oh wouldn`t a crystal ball have been nice!   It is unlikely this set of circumstances will happen again, so it`s going to be just a one off experience.

BELT UP in NEW ZEALAND

Another experience also proving what a small world we now live in started in New Zealand.   In a party of farmers we were touring New Zealand looking at farms and fitting in as many tourist attractions as we could.   We all went on a flight to circle the summit of Mount Cook.   It was very beautiful and we were very close to the mountain.   It was disconcerting when the pilot asked us to return to our seats and belt up as he had to shut down one of the engines.   We belted up and shut up.   Never have I known a group of farmers so quiet before.

GLAD FOR TWO ENGINES

The pilot managed to land at a different airfield the other side of the mountain.   Immediately there was a burst of relieved chatter, and thankfulness that we had one of the planes that had two engines.

SMALL WORLD SURPRISE

Some years later a student from New Zealand was helping out on a water buffalo farm in Wales.   The student`s father came to the U.K. on a short trip and naturally called to see his son.  The farmers are daughter and son-in-law of a farmer from Bucks who was also visiting them.   He invited the New Zealander, who also had a small farm, to visit him here in Bucks and invited us too to make up the party.   We told him of our adventure round Mount Cook.   He told us he knew of the incident because it had only happened once and that he had been the pilot.   He said that he had got told off for going closer to the mountain than he should have, but that being a farmer himself he wanted to give us an extra thrill.   He certainly succeeded.

SET ASIDE CHANGE – TOO LATE

One footnote on growing corn.   For years there has been a strictly enforced policy of setting land out of production, for some years now bring 10%.    In the autumn our crops were planted for next year’s harvest.   We were then told in January, that this year it must be only 5%.    Just where can we get that crystal ball?                                                            

APRIL 2004

BLACKTHORN WINTER

Didn`t the blackthorn come into flower early this year?   We were expecting the proverbial “blackthorn winter”- but it didn`t happen.   It is now weeks on and it is still in beautiful white blossom.  Meanwhile the hawthorn, beech and chestnuts are coming into leaf and the spring garden shrubs are in colourful display.

FARMER CHURCHGOERS

The mention of chestnuts brings me to one of my main thoughts for the day.   I`m sure that the great harvest hymn “We plough the fields and scatter” rings deeply true for all countrymen, and many farmers that we know are actively committed to their churches whatever the denomination.   Having been talking to some of them I hasten to say that though no doubt they include a little prayer for themselves it is because so many amazing things happen over which we have no control.   Things we can only accept, cannot explain and certainly cannot take credit for.

THE NEW CHESTNUTS

Late last winter St.John`s school came and helped plant two new chestnut trees to replace those that were damaged in the gales.   Through the summer we kept them watered but it was exceptionally hot, they dropped their leaves very early and we were assured by those who thought they knew it all, that they were dead.   I am happy to announce that they are now reassuringly in leaf.   We don`t expect them to have conkers this year, that really would be amazing but four others we planted twenty years ago have fruited well for several years now.   One of those has some white and some pink flowers - now there`s a funny thing.

DEAD?  WHO SAYS?

Strange also that when the big tree was felled, because we didn`t want a stump that might encourage jumping off it near the road we asked the tree surgeons to destroy the roots.   But that tree just won`t be beaten, within a year a large circle of shoots was growing strongly around the baseline of the old tree.

OIL SEED RAPE

Now to farming.   Last autumn was so dry locally that oil seed rape crops never got going.  Many were replanted.   We “Um`d” and “Ah`d” over what we should do our crop looked so hopeless.   February was the very latest for replacing it so we continued to deliberate, and at the very last moment the plants began to green up so it does look as if we shall get some crop off it.   At least it will save the cost and effort of planting something else.

GENETICALLY MODIFIED

Genetically modified crops have been in the news again.   Maize for cattle food was given the go ahead, but the crops are improving so rapidly that the seed producers don`t want to market it only to find that it has been superseded before it comes onto the market.

IMPORTED

What never seems to be said is that G.M. oil seed rape, maize and soya bean is grown in at least the U.S.A., Brazil, India and China; e.g. the greatest crop exporting countries of the world, so whatever is said and done here, it is already coming into the country by the back door so to say.   So if maize for cattle food here was given the go ahead for next year, then why I wonder have we had to sign to confirm that our oil seed rape crop planted is not genetically modified!

MONSTER

If this has left you feeling bewildered, rest assured the maize crop grown for our maze this year will not be G.M.    This year the maze will be designed in the shape of a monster.   Not a monstrous size, but big enough for family fun that might just leave you bothered and bewildered and for those who come on one of the party evenings with luck you might even be bewitched as well.

JULY 2004

OLD PHOTOS

I was trying to sort out a mass of photographs for a display representing the farm to go in the Village Hall on village day.  There were so many.   It seemed impossible to choose.   But it was one of those fascinating dilemmas that gets more and more interesting and confusing the deeper you delve into it.   Many had been left here in the farmhouse when John’s parents moved out in 1978.   We kind of knew they were there on the attic landing but had never got round to going through them.

1934 FARM PHOTOS

It was in 1934 when Hilda and Dick got married, taking the farm at Michaelmas.  Hilda had recently been given a Brownie Box camera.   In their first year here she had taken photographs of him doing all the different work on the farm, both with animals and crops, leaving us a comprehensive record of farming here seventy years ago – and we didn’t know we had it until a month ago.

WW2 BILLETTED FAMILIES

John was born in 1937 and Hilda’s photographic interests turned from farming to family and friends.  Then in 1939 came WW2 and the photos revealed a series of people billeted in the house.   One room per family, people who remained friends all their lives.

STOCKEN AIRFIELD

It was 1944 when D Day was being planned that it was decided that “Bomber” Harris at Bomber Command, Walters Ash, should have a plane to enable him to get quickly to Northholt to confer with General Dwight Eisenhower.   Within hours all the flat land was commandeered and the hedges pushed out.  Two photos turned up showing the hanger where the plane was kept.   We didn’t get the land back until 1948 and in the meantime had rented the land of Notley Abbey, near Thame, then the home of Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, who they remembered as being charming people.

REPLACED HEDGE LAYED

In the following years the hedges were gradually replaced and it wasn’t until fifteen years ago that the last was planted.  This spring we started laying that hedge.   It can be seen from the site of the maze.  It would have been interesting to see the laying actually being done when the maze was open, but that it not possible because hedge laying must be done before the sap starts to rise in the spring.  We plan to get the whole length done over the next few years.   It was considered a day’s work to do one chain length.   That is 22 yards or 20.3 metres for the metrically minded, or you could take 22 long steps.   Coming home after a day’s work saying you have completed 20.3 metres just doesn’t describe the justified satisfaction in achieving another ‘chain’ of this skilful, attractive and practical craft.    Thus the laid hedges are thick and stockproof, nice for nests and something to look out for on long car journeys.  For what more could you ask?

OCTOBER 2004.

NEXT YEAR’S CROPS

Mid October and work for next seasons crops is well under way, although ideally we would have preferred it to have been finished by now.   The finish of the busy harvest time is followed by the urgent need to prepare the land and plant for next year.  There is a very narrow window of time in which to do this especially up on the hills.

In May

The first crop to be harvested is grass in late May which is made into silage for winter stock feed, if possible.  That is if the grass grows enough.   We take three cuts altogether, in rare years four.

In July

Oil seed rape is harvested late in July, followed by barley, oats and wheat and this year spring rape.   We don`t reckon to grow spring rape,  but this year we had to replant some land as the autumn sown crop never got going due to the dry weather.   Spring rape doesn`t yield as much, and there was the cost of redrilling,  added to which it is very late to ripen and holds up the next years cultivations so the whole exercise was somewhat dubious, but one does what seems best at the time.

In October

The last crop to harvest is the maize which is made into silage for winter cattle food.   Altogether we grew 126 acres of maize and it was only in one little field of 17 acres that we had the maize maze.  I am glad to report that no-one was discovered in it when it was harvested and if someone stops now and asks where the maize maze is, as someone recently did, having arranged to meet her friend there, it is all in the silage clamp unless the cows have already converted it into milk and it’s gone to London.

250 COWS TO CALVE

There is a terrific job throughout the autumn rearing calves as most of the 250 cows calve at that season.   When the weather gets colder the cows at first sleep in at night then are kept in by day as well right through until the spring.   The work then falls into a routine of milking, feeding, changing the bedding and continuing to bring up the calves.    Life should be much more straightforward.     But this year it isn`t.

GRIMM’S DITCH

The building in which the herd was housed had been patched and bodged up until we could patch no more so a planning application was made to replace the building.  This was turned down by the county archaeologist due to the proximity to Grimms ditch, which was about 100 metres away.  Now a survey must be done by the county archaeological team.    Yes, I am interested in local history, but I don`t think that casting a blight over the area 100 metres either side of Grimms ditch is the way to make friends and influence people.   There are properties much closer to Grimms ditch than us, whose stories would make interesting reading.    Perhaps the editor might have a series of “Life with Grimm`s Ditch”   They would be much more interesting than ours, which having paid sixteen hundred pounds for the survey luckily found nothing, so the county archaeologist ticked his little box on the planning application.   This wasn`t the end of it though:-

REAPPLICATION

The planners made us go all through the planning process again which added another two months, the result being that the animals still have no shelter as the building is now only half built.   And it then has to be fitted out with cubicles and mattresses for each cow to sleep on.

STEEL ORDER GAMBLE

We were getting desperately worried and took an enormous gamble that it would get approval by ordering the steel and so on before we got the go ahead.  We were even told that steel was getting like gold dust because so much is being used by China.   Now I guess we would have been satisfied if those architects had found a hoard of gold and forgiven them all the headaches they caused, but that it seems was not what they hoped to find.    At best they were hoping to find pollen grains, and those probably twelve feet down.   Heaven knows what would have been the outcome if they had found any.   And our straightforward winter routine is still something to look forward to.

JANUARY 2005

THE SEASONS

A new year.   When you get your Hallmark sometime next month it will still be winter, but if you don`t like winter, with the short days and sometimes miserable weather at least spring is on its way and summer is not far behind, not to mention glorious autumn as a tonic before we face winter again and then that isn`t always so bad.   So that will be another year gone by, full of infinite variety.   Lucky, aren’t we?   Our seasons, to my mind are something that make the British Isles unique.  Do I see you raise your eyes to the ceiling in disbelief to hear a farmer says she likes the British weather?  Well, I definitely do like having our seasons, so there.

CHRISTMAS

After an autumn of extreme frustration and pressure of work the new barn for the dairy herd was finished and the animals introduced to it on Christmas Eve.   There were still things to do to get the farm settled down into a winter routine.  Also it is quite difficult to arrange the work over Christmas and New Year so everyone gets some time off.  The animals expect us to go on working as usual.   However it is now mid-January and “fingers crossed” we are getting there.   The cows like their new quarters and each one has taken to her own cubicle complete with  mattress – great for them and a huge relief for us.

TSUNAMI

We had a busy but lovely Christmas then came the news of the Tsunami on Boxing Day.   It completely stopped our celebrations.   The Christmas lights seemed out of place.   We felt we must watch the news and although it made us feel sad and useless we felt we must try to empathise with the enormity of it all.   You may think that putting that is out of my brief, but I`ve never really been given a brief so you get whatever springs to mind.   I felt this tragedy too big not to mention.

FORCAST MYTH

Farmers and gardeners know only too well that you cannot dictate to nature, you just have to do the best you can with what you are given.   “But you farmers are always complaining about the weather”.   I`ve had that said to me more times than I could number.   Of course we do, the weather makes such a difference to us.   We do rely on the weather forecast which we find very reliable, so there is another myth shattered for you.

MIXED NEEDS

There is one insurmountable problem though.   We are a mixed farm growing both grass and corn and frequently we need rain on the grass and sun on the corn which can be in adjacent fields - now that is a tricky one.

HABITAT LOST

Not only in human terms is the tsunami a disaster, the countries affected are turning more and more to tourism, quite understandably.  We have been lucky enough to go to some of them and of course we always have to study their agriculture and countryside, they are more important to us as the beaches.   Where trees have been uprooted and land swamped with salt water it will take many years to put right, which probably means never, tourism will be more important.  I hope they can get to prosperity quickly, but I fear the countryside will not have the charm it had before.

LOVELY U.K.

Thank goodness for our changeable, frustrating, beautiful seasons that make the British Isles the delight they are.   In our book it`s great to travel the world but always a joy to come home.

APRIL 2005                                                                                                                                                               

BATHED IN MILK

Cleopatra was apparently one of the most beautiful women in the world, ever.   Her reputation has stood the test of time since the days of the Roman Empire, therefore she must have been extremely attractive.  She moved in very high flying circles with a position to maintain so she needed to impress.    So what was her secret beauty therapy?   No secret any more of course; she bathed in milk.  You all knew that didn`t you?    Even John came up with that when I asked him what he knew about her.  Milk is the most amazing stuff.   Tis true that her`s was asses’ milk but there was probably more access to asses’ milk, cows being a bit thin on the ground in those days

MILK DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

I was reminded of this when a report from The Milk Development Council fell on my desk.   Actually it fell on the kitchen table to which I had retreated to grab a coffee so there was the opportunity to look at it more closely.   I was interested to know what they had been doing as we were beginning to wonder if they were doing anything at all.

ADVERTISING

Every producer is charged a levy for promoting milk and milk products.   We will have paid nearly fourteen hundred pounds this year.   Apparently nothing will sell these days unless it is advertised and promoted.    I would like to think this was not so, but companies would not spend all that money unless it paid off, so I suppose it is necessary.   There had been a campaign which recommended “3-a-day” of milk, yogurt or cheese.   A good one had been “Have you got the bottle”.    I loved the one where the milk bottles danced along behind the milkman promoting door step deliveries, but that is having an uphill struggle as life styles change.   Still a wonderful service for some though.   They had “Are you made of the white stuff?” for strong bones, which was a good point but didn`t pack a punch for me.   Then the MDC had put together a promotion aimed at sportsmen and women and in particular teenage lads.   It was done in cartoon form and featured four footballers.    It looked promising.    George Best, one of the men used, who had just made a come - back, and had been on “This is your life”.   But his life fell apart again and if your saw any of this promotion it`s more than we did.

NEW PROMOTION

Now a new campaign is to be launched.   Extensive research has been done on how best to communicate with teenagers in general, girls in particular.   They have been asked to help develop a marketing strategy, and the concept that consistently appealed was a desire to look good involving `a bit of science`.   Well good for them, what a sensible approach, not to just accept things just at face value.   The campaign will be called `Naturally Beautiful`   If they want science,  milk is a complete form of protein, contains necessary amino acids, and lovely skin, shiny hair, strong nails, teeth and bones come from the calcium, vitamins and minerals in milk.   But it is presented with a light hearted twist—

“Yogurt is great for covering your blemishes.   Try eating it you won`t have so many to hide.”

“Don`t slap it on your face put a spoon in it”

“Shower with milk for beautiful hair and skin?   Better drink it rather than bathe in it”.

BATHING SOUNDED GOOOD

I wonder if Cleopatra knew that.   I bet she did – just sounded more exotic saying she bathed in it.   After all she was keeping up appearances for a Roman and they were very keen on their baths.   I guess she was not just a pretty face and saying she bathed in asses’ milk was a bit of one-upmanship.

FLAVOURED MILK

As an exception to the advertising theory I have not seen a big promotion for flavoured milk, but sales of that have increased enormously.   We found this to be so at our maze the last two years so we will see if it continues this year, and the supermarkets and service stations are giving it more and more shelf space.   Perhaps the public are wiser than they are given credit for.

MYSTERY

Here is a mystery with which to finish.    If milk has gone up to the consumer 2p or 3p a pint, why has our return only gone up 0.3p for a litre (2.5 pints)???

JULY 2005

NOT SO LITTLE WORLD

One of my earliest recollections is of what was such a rare occurrence that it has stayed vividly in my mind.   We lived in an isolated valley where I could freely roam on my father`s land.   But this was a plane roaring down the valley and flying so low that it sent me diving for the ground.   It was gone in a few seconds but it was the first time I realised that all might not be as usual in my secure little world.

BOMB

Then I learned that a bomb had dropped in the next valley where the WW2 food depot was.   My uncle was a watchman there so I didn’t think having a food depot was strange, but the bomb blew a hole in a field and I thought that was an odd thing to do.   I heard people saying it was probably a mistake and should have been for a town in the Midlands.  

GERMAN PRISONERS OF WAR

It was just beyond that field, part way up Smalldean Lane that the prisoner-of-war camp was.   My father didn’t have p-o-w`s working for him but I remember the land army girls.   Some stayed on and married local men after the war so we kept in touch with them.   John`s parents Dick and Hilda were farming Stocken Farm and the prisoners-of-war were brought to work and picked up at five o`clock or so.   They brought their packed lunches which consisted of mouldy bread, literally blue.  They would ask to work overtime, having got to know that Hilda would cook them some supper.   Then Dick would take them back in his car.

P.O.W. COST

Farmers had a small allocation of petrol which made this possible.   It was his first car, a Vauxhall, which he had bought second hand for £140.   At first the p-o-w`s cost the farmers nothing.   There was a bit of an uproar when later they had to pay the government something for them.   John doesn’t know if the men got anything.

HOLEY SACKS

They were pleased to be given any old hessian sacks which they pulled the threads apart and plaited them up into attractive sandles/slippers to sell.   They were well made and a lot of people bought them.   A useful commodity when shoes were on ration.   They also made wooden toys, decorating them with burnt match patterns, pecking hens and swinging acrobats, all quite beautiful.  They could get cigarettes, maybe at the camp, but they were not allowed to buy food.

FRESH BREAD

What they most wanted was fresh bread.    Sidney Janes was still at the bakehouse on the corner of Goodacres Lane, so daily loaves were to be had by one and all.  All except the p-o-w`s.   They would give a bit of the money they had from their sales to John, then about eight or nine, who would buy some for them.

RATIONING

It seems a strange thing that bread was not rationed during the war when so many things were virtually unobtainable and then it came on ration after the war.   It may be forgotten what a long time after the war that rationing continued.    I remember counting ration coupons at my parents` greengrocer and fruiterer`s shop in the early 1950’s, cutting them out of the books as customers did what shopping they could.

ITALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR

A party of Italian p-o-w`s was brought to Wood`s Wood down Highwood Bottom to cut trees for timber.   They wanted the boys to get them a pump for a football so they could have a game.   As they cooked chips the most enticing smell clinched the matter, a deal was struck, a pump was acquired and the boys shared the most fantastic chips ever cooked.  None have ever tasted better.

MEALS AT SCHOOL

Food figures highly on John`s memory list.   The continuous spam and fruit cocktail served up at school.   He probably never realised how difficult it was to come by.

PORK

Farmers were allowed to kill two pigs a year rather than the general one.   Presumably the powers that be realised that they probably would, permit or not, so they might as well look good by giving a concession.   The result was that these pigs were raised just as most households did for centuries past.   They were killed when they were very big and fat then shared out.   There were no deep freezes and maybe the skill of preserving them well had been lost but John just recalls “rancid and horrible” and he would not eat it.   But the farm was lucky.  They had eggs and milk and a big vegetable garden and you can go a long way on those.    

RAF VEGETABLES

The RAF farmed the fields either side of the road beyond the Speen/Smalldean Lane crossroads.    The righthand side has now got a water reservoir under it and is considerably higher, but then vegetables were grown there.   The land army girls and WAAFS were to be seen on their knees weeding by hand.

NOT SO HELPFUL

Farmers were exempt from call up, for home-grown food was absolutely vital but they could go voluntarily.   All sorts of people wanted to do their bit.   A party of bank managers from London wanted to help doing ‘war work’.   Stuck for a suitable job Dick set them to clean out an old dew pond.   They damaged the clay cap and it has never held water since!   They meant well!

DICK’S STAFF

Dick employed three men.   The work was much more labour intensive and at haymaking and harvest locals would come at a minutes notice to make up the necessary gangs.   They were not all good team workers, but they knew the work and many would be especially skilful at certain jobs.  The others?   Well characters make life interesting and they were there when they were needed, they were all part of the village tradition.   It was a time before the combine harvester.   Corn was cut and tied into sheaves by a binder pulled by a horse.  These were propped up to dry in shocks (or stooks).   Oats were cut while still quite green and had to shocked up for a minimum of three church bells.   Thus the stems could dry as useful fodder while the heads ripened for grain.  After pitching them up onto a wagon they were taken home and built into ricks.

THRESHING

When it was time to sell, the threshing contractor came.   During the war this man took to employing land army girls to make up his gang.  The village boys loved the threshing.  The ministry insisted that wire netting was put round the ricks to stop the rats escaping so they could be killed - great sport apparently.

100 ACRE AIRFIELD

It was just before D-Day that about a hundred acres was taken for an airfield for “Bomber”Harris.  This was to enable him to get quickly to Northholt to meet with Eisenhower who was at Ruislip.  The RAF had billitted officer’s families in the farmhouse.   One family per room.   Embarrassing for them to find their farmer host had lost the best part of his farm overnight.   It says much for all concerned that they kept in touch long after the war ended.

END of WW2

This afternoon we watched the commemorative celebration of sixty years since the end of world war two.   Made us realise these years were part of our lifetime.   So this is a little offering to share with those who were not here during the war, of what our farm and village life was like.  And it really doesn’t seem all that long ago.

OCTOBER 2005

SHOPPING DAYS

Mid-October.  How many shopping days to Christmas?  Not many, by the time you get this, then soon another year will have flown by.

USEFUL GAP in 1961

Because so many crops overlap, the farming year never totally ends.   You could say after the cereal crops are harvested.   At that time it is all systems go to cultivate the fields in order to plant next year’s crops.   But that could well have been started already.   We had to get married at that time.   In 1961 there was a gap then so we were able to go on honeymoon and even then John got a letter from his Dad telling him how the drilling was getting on.

NO GAP NOW

New crops have come on the scene since then and the seasons are getting earlier.   Oil seed rape is the earliest, together with barley, followed by oats and wheat – all in the summer.   Even earlier in May the grass is harvested for silage, in June the hay, then in October the maize is harvested for silage.   In between we are always ploughing, cultivating or planting.  So now there is never truly an end to the farming year.

ROTATION BACK ON

Many changes are coming in farming regulations.   We are totally confused, but a few chinks of light are making things more clear.   For some years arable fields had to be arable, likewise grass fields had to be grass.   Someone has woken up and realised that this made good rotational practice impossible.   It has been abolished.   A bit of common sense at last!

1.5 METRE HEDGES

Management of hedges has been constantly changing.   The latest is that they should be cut at 1.5 metres high.   It can’t be simply for the birds.   They have more hedges, trees and shrubs than ever before.   Perhaps it is to stop the farmers keeping an eye on their neighbours whilst driving along.  And certainly if you also enjoy looking at our beautiful countryside you won’t be able to see much of it either.

BEAUTIFUL

Here is just one word on the countryside in general “beautiful”.   We are so busy in the summer, then in September we tidy the fields and when we go out are always surprised that everyone else has been busy doing the same and how neat and tidy and cared  for everywhere looks.

NOXIOUS WEEDS on VERGES

Only one thing is getting out of hand, mostly on verges but encroaching into farmland – ragwort.   This is a very noxious, notifiable weed.   It has a yellow daisy-like head and the councils are not getting rid of it.  It seems especially bad down the motorways.   In our fields it has to be pulled up individually and destroyed.    Mowing it off just will not do.   When dead should it get into hay or silage it is very toxic.

MAIZE MAZE REPORT

Once again the maize maze was blessed with nice weather with lots of visitors, some of whom have been every year.    We much appreciate your support for this enterprise.   99.9 % of the people are so nice.   Of the 0.1% who spoil things it is some consolation that others come and tell us if damage is being done and point out the offenders to us – so we can look out for them.   If when you read this and if the cap fits, remember “we have that little list”.  Luckily it is only a little list for which we are grateful.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

How about that shopping list for Christmas?  Now that is not a little list but isn’t Christmas shopping enjoyable?   Such a lovely time to be giving, at such a lovely time of the year.   Merry Christmas.

JANUARY 2006

FIREWORKS

Although this edition will drop on your mat in February I am writing it the first week of January.  The firework season of Guy Fawkes, Christmas and the New Year is behind us.   I know fireworks are brilliant but on behalf of the animals I hate them, how can they possibly understand?

FIREWORK PRODUCTION

In fact fireworks nearly prevented John becoming a farmer.   To help him grasp chemistry at school he started doing a little chemistry at home.  Quite a normal thing to do you might think.   Just doing experiments became quite tame until he began to make fireworks.  Things soon progressed until he had a couple of friends helping to mass produce them in the farm kitchen.   The whole enterprise was not without incident but that would take best part of another article.

GROTTY FARM JOBS

However John now loved chemistry and as his father encouraged him to work on the farm by giving him only the grotty jobs to do, to prevent him getting machinery mad, he was at the same time prevented from developing a love of farming.   But tradition dies hard and a place at agricultural college was taken.   Soon farming had taken over from chemistry.   Now, if we see fireworks I will be thinking  ‘How spectacular’,  but John still mutters recipes as he runs through the ingredients needed to make them.

PROGRESS

I would say that we do farm very traditionally but within that framework things do change, partly at the dictate of government, partly as husbandry and nutrition is better understood, machinery improves and then occasionally when the scientists make a breakthrough that is really significant.    Probably what should have the most far reaching effect but the U.K. is very slow to develop, is fuel from crops    Is it the government that is holding this back?    There is land in set-aside doing nothing.   That is to prevent overproduction of grain.    But it could be put to good use.    Watch this space.

ONLY DAIRY & ARABLE

Over the years tradition said ”Don`t put all your eggs in one basket”.   Still true to a point, but now to do them properly every enterprise needs enormous capital therefore gradually our business has been streamlined to concentrate on the dairy herd and the arable.   Gone are the sheep, the pigs, the chickens and the turkeys.   We do now have the maze in the summer but that is run separately from the farm.

ARABLE

The arable side is fairly straightforward – grow the best quality crops that you can, store them well and sell at the optimum time.  No problem.   Well it sounds simple!

DAIRY

The dairy herd has the most difficulties.  Assuming that the animals are comfortable, in a healthy environment and have perfect nutrition and are milked regularly then your husbandry should be O.K.   But here is the biggest snag.   What to do with the calves.   In order to produce milk a cow has to have a calf annually.   We do need female calves as herd replacements.    We mate our best cows with top dairy bulls and hope for a heifer calf (female).

BULL CALVES

Of course half of them will be bull calves.    Dairy bulls do not make good beef.    So what do we do with them?    The quality of the animals has improved out of all recognition over the last fifty years since artificial insemination (A.I.) was started.    Now sexed semen is available.   It is expensive but it has to be an option.

APRIL 2006

REFORM of the COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY

The reform of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union is making farming management change.   Not wanting to end up like the Tolpuddle Martyrs – transported to Australia, we are going to have to try to go along with it.   The objectives present a dilemma.   They are –

1        Better environmental care

2        Halting the decline of smaller farms

3        International competitiveness.    

WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION

The EU is a member of The World Trade Organisation, so will move into line with world prices.   To be competitive costs must be pared right down and expansion is the only way to cover the overheads further.   The small farms are very unlikely to have any spare money for expansion, modernisation and certainly not to invest in conservation.    Their exodus is quite simple – they cannot make a living.

SMALL FARMS

All very well saying “Halt the decline of smaller farms”   I guess every farmer despairs of the situation the industry is trapped in.   Three objectives to halt the decline of the smaller farms would be simple enough.   Enable all the industry to make a profit.  Then small farms wouldn’t need to sell up and the bigger farms wouldn’t need to get bigger.

COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

All attempts to achieve the three criteria laid down would appear to be counterproductive.   But time will tell, for that is what we have all got to aim for.  We have known that this was on the cards for a long time now.   So can any changes be seen locally?

AROUND HERE

Certainly more dairy farms have sold or are selling up.  These are not small farms, they have already long gone around here, but substantial herds.   The news has reverberated round the grapevine like an electric shock.    Farmers might talk about the weather – its important for all they do – but unlike popular belief rarely complain.   Perhaps it is because the weather plays them up so much that another adversity is just one more and not worth mentioning.    It is very easy when you are working every hour that was made to soldier- on until it is too late and the rug has been pulled from under your feet.

DIVERSIFICATION

“Diversify” is the buzz word.    B & B holiday lets and offices in barns, that is what is common for many.    The farm propped up by these while farmers continue doing what they were trained for – producing food and maintaining the countryside for everyone to enjoy, not realising what it is that is keeping them afloat.

OUR FARM SUMMARY

Briefly to put our farm in the picture.   Four family partners, 1200 acres, 280 milking cows, grass, arable and maize.   700 ft. up in the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.   Flat land on the top with steep valley sides.   The soil is thin, the fields not large, some small.   It is not easy to farm.   It is very beautiful.

FARM ROOTS

Why don’t we sell and move to somewhere easier?   Well this is where our roots are.   The fields we have sown, the cows we have bred – the trees we have planted, the old farmhouse, the corn when it waves in the sun – it is all part of us.

TYPICAL

So are we typical farmers?  We hope we are aware of the difficulties and so we shall do our best to achieve the new goals and as long as we can keep above the deluge of paper thrown at us, we shall farm.   Yes, I guess we’re typical – of those of us that are left.

JULY 2006

CLIMATE CHANGE

Mid-July and we’re having a heatwave.   I have escaped the sun into the shade wondering where to pitch this article.   This weekend on “any questions?” it was stated that the average temperature rise was only 0.2% in 50 years.   It was said so quickly that I may not be accurate but it was something like that.  I don’t want to open up a can of worms about climate change but for those who are new here, here are few facts from the 1960s – deduce what you will.

SNOW BARRIERS

Every year the council erected fences in the fields parallel to the roads to slow up the driving snow so that it dropped over these fences into the fields rather than dropping it in the road often blocking it.  They haven’t needed to do it for years now.   Prior to that the New Road to Walters Ash and the Pink Road were regularly blocked with snow.   Gerald, who lived at Naphill then, would go home on the tractor and dig a way back through in the morning, helping any stuck cars as he came to work on the farm.  Lanes like Slad lane could be totally full of snow to the tops of the hedges.    Thawing pipes to cattle troughs could take all day, then freezing night and back to square one in the morning.   These things haven’t happened for years.

TRAFFIC CHANGE

There has been a major change in the traffic.   We had a flock of sheep then and would bring them from Walters Ash along the New Road.   We would tell drivers they could divert round Slad Lane if the flock was filling the road, but most would choose to watch the sheepdog bring the sheep past.  I suspect it would not be so now.  We also used to take the cows across the field and down Kiln Lane to graze in the fields either side of the lane. That was a daily routine.

SATELLITE NAVIGATION

Recently we had to collect some steel from the midlands from an industrial estate.   They sent us directions using satellite navigation sending us up Smalldean Lane as we came back – totally unsuitable with our heavy load sliding backwards in our hatchback car.   Another local lane used as a through road is Highwood Bottom.   This lane is not adopted by the council – the land owners having to keep it in repair.   However, big lorries are being sent along it from Lacey Green to Speen, many getting stuck.  The Chilterns is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.   Such directions are ruinous.   Maybe you have heard of other instances.   Sat. Nav. needs to get its act together, then I’m sure it could be really useful.

NO FARM

So much has changed.  An estate agent had a couple looking for a house in a country village.   Their only criteria was that there was not a farm in it.   One could feel quite unloved!

OCTOBER 2006

APPRECIATED

I very much appreciated the letter from Ted Janes (editor) printed in the last edition of Hallmark, remarking that I was always bemoaning the demise of the dairy industry.   It doesn`t seem thirty years ago that he suggested that I write in it, reporting life on the farm.    Knowing that farmers rarely find time to communicate with the public – ultimately their customers – it seemed an opportunity to redress this a little.  That is what I`m trying to do and still will until you say “enough” that is.

FACTS

To prove Ted is absolutely correct in saying that I keep writing about it, here is a bit more for this month.   These are a few figures so you can make your own judgement.

1.         There have been four dispersal sales of large herds in this area this autumn, and today I learned of one booked for the spring.

2.         I cannot think of any small herds that are left at all.   Our nearest neighbours are at Bledlow and at North Dean, both large.

3.         It really is not surprising when you consider that in 1996 producers were getting 26.5p per litre (15p per pint) and ten years later we receive 17.6p per litre (10p per pint).

In an attempt to counterbalance this we have increased our cow numbers to spread our overheads further.

6,000 LITRES A DAY

Producing up to 6,000 litres a day this is not an amount to sell at the farmers` market.    We are in the hands of the dairies and they are in the hands of the supermarkets.   This autumn the dairy announced that due to their increased fuel costs they would pay us 0.25p per litre less.   Approximately £100 a week less.   The fact that all our suppliers increased their charges to us and we had increased fuel costs of our own was just too bad.    Is there anything else where increased costs are not passed on to the consumer?

WHEAT

Well there might just well be.   During the last 30 years the price of wheat went down in a similar way until the amount grown was substantially reduced.    There was a good store in the world reserves but now I understand there is only about enough for a few weeks supply.   Not a lot.   After going down and down, last year the price turned a corner and this year it has gone back up some more.    Since we sold ours it has continued to rise but one is not to know that when a deal is done.

REASONS

There were a number of contributing factors.

1.          A lot of the wheat land has been given over to crops for oil production, oil seed rape, soya in the U.S.A.  Brazil and Argentina, great exporting countries, sunflowers in Europe.

2.          Add to that the fact that this year Argentina had drought conditions, likewise Australia.

3.          The standard of living in many Asian countries is rising with the consumption of meat increasing.

4.         India is now a net importer of grain and if the consumption of meat increases it is not just grazing but concentrated feed, i.e cereal that will be needed.

The droughts may just be a one off, that we cannot tell, but less saturated fats and more oils look here to stay.

BIO – FUELS

One of the most important things that is happening is the change from producing crops for food to bio-fuels.    It is already happening in a big way in some countries.  As far as I can tell we are way behind in this field.    I have a load of information to get to grips with this but I haven`t had time to research it properly.   I just know it is important.   Next time I hope.

JUST COULDN’T RESIST

Anyway Ted I couldn`t resist another ‘moan’.   I hope you will forgive me.

JANUARY 2007

OXFORD FARMING CONFERENCE

Every January for the past 61 years a two day farming conference, with morning, afternoon and evening sessions has been held at Oxford.   It costs £200 per ticket, takes 650 delegates and is oversubscribed.   The speakers this year represented farming, marketing, development commissions, land and business associations, meteorology, biochemistry, rural energy, heat and power generation and members of parliament.   They were all highly qualified in their various fields.

2007 TOPICS

The topics this year were chosen to find answers to: -

1.      Changing Times

2.      Changing Roles

3.      New Opportunities.

First the speakers, then a debate on the “Case for Commercial Farming” and also panel discussions at the close of both days.

John attended and came home with a sheaf of papers an inch thick – all the facts and the speeches.

SO MUCH INFORMATION

I find these very interesting and they gave me so much information that I could have written extensively on Irish farming, UK farming and the environment, retail marketing, global warming, biogas and ethanol in the UK, biomass in the future and generating heat and power from crops.

GLOBAL WARMING

I did actually start writing about global warming – unashamedly cribbing from the address given by Sir John Houghton.   Sir John has been professor of atmospheric physics at Oxford University and chief executive of the UK meteorological office.  His particular research has been into humanly induced climate change.   He chaired the scientific assessment on the new intergovernmental panel on climate change from 1992 to 2002.   On retiring from the met. Office he became chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 1992-1998.   He lectures on climate change and its challenge to human communities.  He has been awarded many international prizes and medals.   I found it absolutely absorbing, then realised that I was moving outside my brief to write about our farm, although global warming would make a difference to everyone including us and Sir John is convinced it is happening.

BIO – FUELS

Bio-fuels are still on the agenda – I have gleaned an enormous amount of extra information, but this is an ongoing subject, which is constantly changing and is only in its infancy.   At last some support for this is being shown in the UK.  Planning permission has been granted for the first plant to make this in Somerset from feed wheat (wheat for cattle food).   The EU is way ahead of us, with these already up and running, also with wind farms, and there are many other options.

FARM STUDY TOUR PARAGUAY

A personal highlight in our lives was the opportunity to study agriculture in Paraguay.   For six days we were taken to collectives, co-operatives and ranches which have all been established for decades.   We spent a morning at the agricultural university, being taken to the different faculties, looking at horticulture, forestry and agriculture, livestock and their national bird, snake and insect collection.   We had an appointment with the principal, where we hoped we came up with some intelligent questions.   We covered beef, for which they are famous, dairy, pigs, sheep and poultry.   We asked what major changes there had been in research and development with crops.  Quite simply he said there was an explosion in the production of soya beans in the east of the country.   We travelled that way and counted 28 storage silos.   Most of the crop is exported, being taken by road down through Brazil to the sea.

ANOTHER HERD DISPERSED

Back home came the shock of hearing that a 200 cow herd at Stokenchurch is being dispersed.   Only last August this herd was cited as a prime example of good management.   The latest figures that I have are that only eleven herds will remain in the whole of the Bucks Chilterns after that.

LAVENHAM HERD GOES

Even more of a shock came the news that the Lavenham herd is to be dispersed.   This famous herd is admired as the flagship of dairy herds.  It was established in the 1890s and became a cornerstone of the industry.   The sale is expected to draw record crowds.   570 head in two days coming under the hammer and a chance to obtain some bloodlines from this herd we have all so admired will be irresistible to some and of immense interest to all in the industry.   It will be the end of an era.

APRIL 2007

WEATHER UPDATE

I think it`s about time I did a little update on how the weather is affecting the farm.   Of course you know how it has been here.  It has been such a very mild winter that there are still masses of berries on the trees and shrubs, more than the birds could eat.   The first five or six days of March were wetter than it usually is in all the month but there have been some lovely sunny days since.   The hawthorn is already bursting into leaf, the blackthorn is in full flower and the hazel catkins are already going over.  Yes, spring definitely came early.   There is still time to get frost but it does tend to roll down into the valleys so although we have colder weather up on the top of the Chilterns, it`s the valleys that usually get the late frosts.  Obvious, if you know it, but a snippet of information if you don`t.

SHEEP

Did you notice the sheep rooting around for the turnips.    Not our sheep, but in the field on the left as you went down Woodway. Also on the far bank as you went down through Bradenham.    It looks primative, but the sheep love snuffling them out of the ground and eating them.

MILDER FURTHER SOUTH

We have just got back from our annual trip to visit a retired farmer at Okehampton in Devon.   The day was bright and the countryside beautiful.   We had travelled along the south coast from Chichester.  There is certainly not the urgency to get things done further south.   We have noticed it before.   It`s not that much further south than Bucks, but the winters are milder and shorter.  There isn`t the pressure to get the land work done in the autumn or as soon as possible in the spring.   Up here time is of the essence.   Cultivations for the following year start as soon as the fields are cleared of harvest.

CHANGE OF RATION

Our farm has been feeling the effects of the weather last summer.   It is our practice to make most of the fodder for the animals.   Mostly in the form of silage, about 50% with maize the rest with grass.   We sometimes make a little hay.   Last year the maize, planted in April just stayed cold and waterlogged throughout May and just didn`t grow.   Then June, July and August were too dry and the crop was extremely short.   The grass was cut late, by which time it was past its best and not so nutritious.   Come mid-February and calculations revealed that we were going to be very short of fodder to see us through to next season.   The only solution was to change the ration which has to be done gradually.  The cows are now very happily eating a mixture of cereals, brewers grains, (after extracting the malt for beer), soya bean meal, rape seed meal, distillers grains, (a by-product of making whisky) and pressed apple juice pulp from Coppella, no less, - only the best!   The cows love it but it comes at a cost.   So much for the weather.

HIGHER HEDGES

Now the hedges are coming out in leaf, have you noticed how much higher they are?   This is the latest government directive regarding hedges which now states that they must be five feet high.   We find journeys quite boring when there is no view to look at.   And the roads in the West Country quite claustrophobic in places.   We find it a pity when our country is so beautiful and we can`t see it, but I suppose not everybody will think the same.   Anyway that’s how it’s got to be.

JULY 2007

W.I. GREAT MILK DEBATE

Congratulations to the W.I. for staging countrywide “The great milk debate”.   The nearest to us so far was at Speen on 26^th April.    Consumers, producers and retailers were invited to attend.

The promotion for these read:-

DID YOU KNOW?

1  The total turnover of the British dairy industry is £6,000,000 per annum.

2  Every year UK dairy farmers produce 10 billion pints of milk, over 400,000 tonnes of cheese and 135,000 tonnes of butter.

3  In the UK there are 50,000 dairy farm workers and 34,000 people that work in the milk industry driving tankers, pasteurising milk, etc.

4  The hedgerows created to divide pastures are important to the diversity of wildlife and create an ideal habitat for farmland birds.

5  British dairy products are produced to world-leading standards of animal health, welfare and food safety.

6  Milk and dairy products play a crucial role in a balanced diet, providing a rich source of calcium.

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS?

The decline of the dairy farming industry is a result of a number of factors, but particularly the low price of milk paid to farmers in contrast to rising retail prices.    Last year over 900 dairy farmers left milk production, almost three every day.

WHAT CAN CONSUMERS DO TO CHANGE THE SITUATION?

1  Continue to drink milk and eat dairy products.   Whole milk is only 3.5% fat, ie 96.5% fat free!

2  Buy British dairy products.   Remember the world-leading standards of British cheese and butter.

3  Ask your local supermarket what it is doing to help secure the future of Britain`s dairy farmers.

CONGRATULATIONS

The debate at Speen was lively.   Well done the W.I.

Stocken Farm Diary Part 3
Construction Era
Type of Property	House, Farm, Cottage, Land, Pond
Use of Property	Residential, Business, Charity, Shop
Locations	Lacey Green