They say to start out without debt.
They say to start out when you’re young.
They say to start out buying bare land. Ideally, buy it in the 1970s.
But if you are 40, or 50, or 60, and you are in debt, and your income isn’t going to buy land, and, inconveniently, you don’t have a time machine, and cannot just pop back to 1975 for a little land grab, then none of this advice is much use to you.
All I can say is we just started by starting. If I could turn back time, (you just sang that, didn’t you?) there are things I would change, but then I can’t guarantee the outcomes would have been better, or even different. For me, the doing of the thing - learning of skills, practising of physical tasks, learning of seasons, gathering of knowledge - is the most valuable, most precious possession, and it takes time. Time, therefore, is to be administered with wisdom. If it will take ten years to be out of debt, and if I’m already not young, then I will manage my debt to the best of my ability, but in the end, I want to know how to spin fleece, grow carrots and milk a goat, and I am not waiting ten years for that to happen.
If you are an older woman, and the land calls, listen. You may have to shut out the competing voices of security, learned expectations, and the much promoted ‘road map’. You may have to go off piste. It may not look at all like you were expecting, but listen. Ideally, listen with your hands in the soil.
(Just a reminder, I made an e-book about getting into farming without owning land!)
The sheep are now shorn. The heat was so intense, and our old shearer so affected by it, that it was a game of two halves, but they are now all done. We had two or three cases of flystrike. It’s been a terrible year for it, and we have had to use more preventative/treatment chemicals than we really like to, but in some years, it’s just not avoidable.
They are still for sale, but as the year progresses, the way they are offered changes, it’s really past time to wean the lambs, when mothers will no longer be ‘with lamb at foot’ and a whole, new complicated arrangement begins.
We qualified to apply for the Sustainable Farming Incentive programme in the first window, being a small farm with no existing agreement. I felt as if we should do it, having been among those who campaigned for the inclusion of small farms and growers. I’m uneasy about the amount of paperwork, accountability, and control, but on balance, wanted to stand on ground that we had helped prepare.
In a very stressful week or so, we had to amend maps and land covers, align land uses, and make some decisions about what we could, and couldn’t do. Ultimately we decided to enter the horticultural area into Organic Conversion, even though we don’t really at the moment have a commercial operation running on it. The discipline and recording, though an extra burden, will be a good process to follow, and, should we eventually come out of this little slump fighting, we will be through conversion and able to trade with organic labels.
While all this was taking place, the Government’s Farming Blog periodically updated us that 25% of the budget was gone, and then 50%. Finally, after a slightly fierce northern lady called Michelle just lost the will to live and picked up the phone, we got it all sorted out, and the application in - it was lacking the Organic Conversion (Horticulture) bit because of the conflicting land cover but Michelle assured me it would be beaten into submission.
So now we wait, to see what’s been approved, and what not. For scale, should you be interested, we stand to gain the princely sum of about £2,000 - and much of that will be absorbed in maintaining the measures required, although a lot of what we signed up for is just good practice, and as long standing regenerative farmers, we do it already.
For the last two seasons I have been absolutely plagued by the inability to grow any kind of salad leaves. I just don’t know what’s going on. When we ran the box scheme, I provided endless bags of mixed leaves for thirty weeks per year. They were my absolute staple. Last year, I failed to grow anything.
This year, early lettuces were ok, though they bolted quickly with the untypically early and intense heatwave, but since them once again, mixed leaves have disappeared without trace. As the solstice passed, I sowed trays of Orientals and rocket for their late summer prospering properties. I created a shade nursery for these new sowings because, once again, it was hot, and I covered them with horticultural fleece to keep out the smallest of predators. Nevertheless their seed leaves were peppered with flea beetle bites, and then, after a weekend of truly weird hot winds, they all just gave up the ghost, and died.
I shall begin again, but not until it cools down.
We were looking down the very smoky barrel of having to replace my faithful truck as MOT time rolled around. She is 23 years old, and she’s earned every birthday card. For the last two years, the cost of getting her through the MOT was only justifiable because we couldn’t replace her for that money. (Arguably with both years’ bills and the service we gifted her, we could have done, but that’s not how it works.)
I have had the most frustrating season ever so far. We’ve had
Too wet
Too many blokes planting hedges
Too hot and no shade
Too hot and affordable gazebo shade destroyed by wind
Too many giant machines destroying land and building fences
Too ill
Really, really, really too hot. Lying in a darkened room too hot.
Return of the hedge blokes to strim round their feet
Sirocco arriving and nearly destroying expensive gazebo shade
Rhonda the Honda in the dock
So today, Rhonda returning with a relatively small bill, including two new tyres, causes me to whoop with joy, pray for just a little bit of rain, hope this blasted wind doesn’t finally do for the overpriced gazebo, and almost glimpse the opportunity of getting some work done.
The biggest worry is this weird atypical wind, probably something to do with the Super El Nino? Neil arrived at the field the other day to find half a dozen Black Copper Marans homeless and their house blown into the hedgerow!
Good on ya, Rhonda, you beauty! (Yes, I know Hondas are Japanese, but this one’s named after an Australian!)
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