Going, going, gone...

It is a measure of how closely interwoven country folk are that a farm equipment auction can draw a huge crowd from many miles around. Retirement sales are rare and it is often everyone's last chance to say a proper goodbye before the retiring farmer pulls down his sheds and moves to sheltered accommodation within easy reach of the A30.

The retirement of a farmer always feels like the loss of a respected comrade, or a particularly well-loved shire horse. To begin with it is rare. Usually, you die on the job in some hideous accident, or you spend your twilight years interfering with how your son/nephew/grandson wants to run the farm, spending all your time letting them know how it was done in your day. I have always found it difficult to imagine that retirement existed for farmers as a group - my own grandfather was buying and selling bullocks almost to his dying day and had to a have a hip replacement at 82 years old after being trampled over by a frightened heifer. The option of a long and happy retirement is, therefore, a relatively new phenomenon in the countryside thanks to the near-doubling of land values in the past 10 years that has allowed retiring farmers the real option of the good life on a foreign beach.

Brushing sentiment aside, a farm sale can occasionally be a fantastic source of bargains if you want to mend/fix/renovate/restore your tractor/quad/water pipes/galvanised sheds, so I fired up the Isuzu, put on my best tweed and went to look for bargains in Tedburn St Mary.

The experience was both invigorating and rather surreal. Builders scavenged for cheap timber, while hobbyists paid way over the odds for knackered out old calf feeders and sheep races. The lots included some antique chamber pots (sold as a job lot, the auctioneer told us) and some fine cider jars and demi-johns, which I snapped up for £40, alongside an eclectic collection of chainsaws, tools, sinks and tractors. The detritus of an entre career on the land illustrated that it is impossible to throw anything away on a farm as it might just come in handy one day. No doubt other sales will come up and much of the same stuff will end up back on the market, which also proves the point of the Yorkshire saying: "Buy cheap, buy two..." A good friend of mine from Bradford had to explain to me that this meant that quality told in the end. I explained that a similar saying doesn't exist in German as quality is taken as a given in the Fatherland. In the end, you'll get what you pay for, but it was a nice day out, nonetheless, and the cider jars look nice on the mantelpiece.    

The long road ahead

A busy summer has left little time for blogging as us farmers gear up for winter busily gathering in the last of the hay and generally looking forward to several months of relative quiet. The natural break that nature takes between November and February is a good time to take stock of where the farm is going and what still needs to be done to get the business on its feet.

So, here is a balance sheet of what has been achieved:

1) The herd is in place and has settled in well.

Apart from an outbreak of new forest fly (a rather nasty weeping eye disease that can cause blindness if left untreated) the cows have adapted quickly to the moor-like ground that dominates around here. Luckily Aberdeen Angus are tough hill cattle and can cope easily with varying grass quality and rapid changes in temperature. They have spent most of the summer in the lower flood meadows eating wild garlic and testing the quality of the fences.

2) The books are in order.

If mostly showing red at the moment, the "Teach Yourself Book Keeping" course has paid off and I never realised the joy of a perfectly balanced account ledger. It is liberating. Try it one day.

3) There is plenty of food for the winter.

There is absolutely no danger of running out of hay this year. The grass yield was up 50 per cent on this time last year and we have more bales than we know what to do with. However, the old country saying goes "If it grows, then winter knows," in other words, a dry, cold winter more often than not follows a good growing season so you'll be glad of the surplus.  

3) Prince Charles is paying me.

Well, not directly, but through sponsored courses on "Holistic Grassland Management" at Bicton College. I am not sure whether this involves reading poetry to the pasture, but Brian's contribution is much appreciated and more than justifies the civil list and centuries of unearned privilege, in my view.  

As in any balance sheet, there are equaling negatives:

1) I need more fencing than East Germany.

Though not in bad nick, the cattle are going to test our 25 year fence posts eventually, witness the day of the rampaging bullock ("Close Encounters of the Herd Kind"). This has got to be paid for somehow and it looks like my reparation payment from Germany's taxpayers has already been spent well before Christmas.

2) The Beef price is going through the floor.

Commodities are getting cheaper and farming is not unaffected. Deadweight beef retails at 350p a kilo, down from 380p/kilo since the start of the year, not helped by the supermarkets tearing each other to pieces. This doesn't affect me directly as I have nothing yet to sell, but a glut of beef has come on the market this year and pushed prices down. On the other hand, the cost of inputs has fallen too - petrol, diesel, corn, barley are all moving downwards which means farm margins are starting to improve despite the price slump.

3) I spend most of my time wearing check shirts.

I used to do this when I was a journalist as a way of getting out of wearing suits, but nowadays it is more like a uniform or badge of office. I occasionally wear a pin stripe suit on trips to Exeter just for a change.

Overall, things aren't looking too bad as we enter the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. We just have to get over the contrived awfulness of Harvest Festival, which these days is usually a fund-raising lecture for Wateraid, and then it'll be mulled wine and scaring the spirits out of the apple orchard. 

Life lessons from a deer stalker

In some ways talking to people exclusively about one subject is a liberating experience. We have all been to parties where hipsters spout off about the latest pop-up restaurants in Dalston, or world traveller types insist on telling you at length about their encounters with pygmies (I like to think they have secretly eaten one) all of which leaves you feeling inadequate and open to drinking too much as an escape from the conversation.

The greatest difference I have found between the countryside and the city is even though the countryside contains far fewer people, your friends and acquaintances fall into strictly defined categories. There are the people you bond with over machinery, hay making, whist down the pub, or traditional country pursuits like shooting and fishing, but the essentially solitary nature of the work means there is hardly any crossover. Instead, in a city like London, where there are a thousand different professions, a common appreciation of the rituals of office life acts like a social glue that binds everyone together in shared frustration. 

By contrast I spent a happy evening chatting to Bob. Bob is a self-confessed stalker but you would only be in danger if you were a deer, a fox or rabbit. He is a crack shot, one of the best in Devon, and knows an awful lot about guns. This is what we always talk about when leaning on the fence as the sun goes down on the valley. I secretly covet his superb collection of custom-made rifles, with their Second World War-era Mauser bolt actions and Swarovski scopes.

The evening had gone just like any other. I watched in awe as Bob unleashed a fusillade of near constant shots into the vegetation targeting the critters that had been devastating my mum's peas. He never misses and we had just finished paunching the 18 rabbits he had bagged that evening when, much to my surprise, he asked me about my own relationship, and not with firearms: 

"It finished just after Christmas rather messily," I said.

 "I am sorry to hear that. I have always found women to be such strange creatures," (presumably because they aren't really into shooting deer, I thought) "They never seem happy to let you go off on your own and do things." It is always awkward when someone bears part of their soul to you over a basin full of rabbit guts, so I asked whether what sort of .22 ammunition he likes to use in order to bring us back to safer ground.

Thinking about it later, though, it seemed the most profound statement about the human condition I had heard in a long long time...

"Miss Potter, you say?" 

Close encounters of the herd kind

Some friends from the Southeast down on a visit recently asked me whether I had any regrets about dropping journalism, and a busy life in London, in exchange for chasing after cattle and mending fences in the blazing (for Devon) midday heat. As we sat under umbrellas on the front lawn drinking chilled Meantime Lager enjoying a pleasant salad Nicoise lunch the obvious answer was no. The answer to that question is still no, though we are all prone to self doubt occasionally. 

I thought of that conversation after a particularly close encounter with an angry Limousin bullock the other day. In fact four thoughts, in consecutive order, in the form of rhetorical questions flashed through my mind as I stared at a seething mountain of angry steak:

1) Was investment writing really so tedious? Yes it was. 

2) Can I sprint 400m to the nearest gate in wellies? No. 

3) Why did I choose a red T-shirt this morning? Oh dear.

4) I can't see any, so it must have been done? I hope. 

It is somewhat irrational to think of your career at moments of extreme peril, but I suppose there is never really an ideal time to question the choices you have taken in life, particularly if a mad bullock decides that going through you is the shortest route to the exit.  What had happened was that a cow belonging to my neighbour Martin had decided that my land was the equivalent of paradise and had trashed three of my fences in a quasi-jihadist frenzy in order to reach it. It chased my placid, sweet-natured Aberdeen Angus cattle around the field and smashed up all of the electric fencing. In short, it was wild, well, at the very least livid. 

I'd like to say that I wrestled it to the ground like they showed us at Bicton college. The technique is to stick your fingers in its nose in order to trigger a pacifying response, then twist it the ground. However, when the opportunity to try this out presented itself, I chickened out and legged it instead. Martin eventually came around with a team to herd it back to its doubtless worried family. 

This illustrates a serious farming point, and a lesson well learned: don't be conditioned by the behaviour of your own animals when dealing with other people's. 

Temperament is difficult to explain, but you know it when you see it. Angus cattle have been bred specifically for easy handling as it saves time and allows the cows to be left outside more. Limousin are selected for size, and not much else, which means they have a tendency to run amok if given the chance. This obviously reflects their tempestuous Gallic heritage. It is like having a particularly moody French girlfriend, with the one positive that you have the option of barbecuing her at some point. 

Anyway, I survived long enough to write this entry, but next time I won't walk the lower ten acres without my trusty stick. 

Raw hide comes to The Valley

I have been asked why the posts dried up rather in May after a flurry of writing. The simple answer is that in farming there are times of year when there really isn't much to do. The animals are out enjoying the sunshine and eating fresh grass, most of the land clearance work has been done and hay making is still a few weeks away. In short, you tend to see more men wearing check patterned shirts in Exeter looking slightly lost in an urban environment. Rather, us country dwellers have been gearing up for the summer, with the sound of tractors being serviced, gates oiled and the often vicious annual arguments with contractors over who gets their hay cut first... 

In short, there has been a lull when I have been tending my mother's several dozen hectares of flower beds and reflecting on whether that philosophy degree was really worth it. The good news, though, is that I have finally bought my cows (!) after an enjoyable trip to Brixham to see some Aberdeen Angus cattle at Waddeton, which we can add to the growing list of places in Devon that I have never even got close to visiting. 

As you can see from the photos, they are indeed fine beasts, with impeccable pedigrees and a very quiet temperament. Aberdeen's are perfect for what I want to do at the farm. They can live out all year, thrive on a pure grass diet and the meat is second to none. The thing to look for is a straight back which indicates the potential to grow to a good size when mature. These are barely 1 year old heifers and require at least another season before they can be put the to the bull. 

The other choice would been to for a continental breed like Limousin or Charolais, which are the staple of commercial cattle operations. They are huge cows and pack a lot of lean meat, however, they are also decidedly vicious, mostly, my NFU contact tells me, because when British buyers first imported them from France in the 1950s, canny French farmers sold them their most awkward and troublesome animals and the genetics have stayed in the herd ever since. Also, I find it hard to rate the meat they produce as Charolais, for example, were bred as cart hauling animals, rather than for flavour. 

With half a dozen Aberdeens to begin with, it is hardly an episode of "Bonanza", but remember that herds can double in size every year and within five years there should be enough animals here to make it worth the effort. 

Now I just have to finish that book on tending grass-fed cattle which I have put off in favour of the latest Bernie Gunther story...

Notes on a scandal

I never thought it possible that the horizon could be filled with the fire of burning animals.

The recent death former president of the National Farmers Union (NFU) Sir Ben Gill, who died aged just 64, triggered a lot of surprisingly bitter debate about the tenure of a man who will forever associated with some of the most turbulent and difficult times in modern farming. Sir Ben can count himself almost singularly unlucky that both Mad Cow disease, which resulted in an export ban on a British beef that lasted almost 15 years, and the foot and mouth crisis both occurred on his watch. In short, he had to take some tough decisions at a time when the Labour government knew next to nothing about rural issues; in the interests of balance, the Conservatives are scarcely better as the rural wing actually represents the Barbour jacket types more than actual farmers, which is why you see a lot of UKIP posters around here. It was therefore no exaggeration to say that he became the most powerful man in Britain, after the prime minister, during the time of the foot and mouth crisis in 2001.

On the face of it, Mad Cow disease and foot and mouth (a virus which can be passed to humans) bear little in common. One is naturally occurring, usually through poor animal husbandry - in this case the under-heating of pigswill - while the other resulted from poorly treated animal-based protein being introduced back into the food chain. It was very much the result of grievous human error after some hefty lobbying by the feed industry lowered the safety standards for protein recycling in the late 1980s. What both crises illustrated, however, is that the notion of farming as a seamless industrial enterprise that could be managed in much the same way as car manufacturing turned out to be acomplete fallacy. 

It is difficult to remember quite how grim agri-business was in the 1970s and 1980's. A deliberate policy of centralising animal slaughter and distribution networks meant many local slaughter houses closed.The one in our area was next to the riding school, which was a bit hairy as the horses would sometimes bolt if they got a whiff of dead meat. That too was eventually closed down which meant that animals had to be transport at least 20 miles to be killed. The upshot was that more animals were having to go longer distances, with hauliers being the only real beneficiaries; hauliers are the real aristocracy in country areas as they get paid for transporting animals no matter how bad the prices are at market. Therefore, with the stage set, the onset of foot and mouth in 2001 was far worse than any previous outbreak as animal transport played a much bigger role in spreading the disease in the initial phases.

Which brings us into whether the policy of culling 10 million otherwise healthy animals was justified. The rationale for the cull, which the NFU supported, was based on statistical research carried out by hitherto unknown academics at Imperial College called Roy Anderson and Neil Ferguson. It was controversial at the time  as neither had any real expertise in the specific field of animal disease. Private Eye published a special report in 2002 that rubbished most of the computer modelling that Imperial College used, drawing the conclusion that it was primarily used because it predicted an end to foot and mouth that coincided with the date that Tony Blair had chosen that year's delayed general election. The end result was that the cull was probably 10 times larger than should ever have been the case.

Let's not understate the damage this caused to the rural economy. There are few people in the Devon countryside that didn't know someone who was traumatised by the experience. Not only did it destroy livelihoods and end generations of farming in some areas, it also caused bitter divisions between the traditional big landed farming interests, who benefited the most from subsequent compensation payments, and the small-scale family businesses that are still apparent, and the question of whether farmers' leadership failed comprehensively is still open to debate. 

La Vita e Bella

"So, you have decided to become a peasant?" Was the first reaction of Italian cousins to news that I had decided to switch over to beef farming from journalism. I was in Italy for Easter after hitching a ride with my parents and I was trying to explain the complex rationale behind the decision, while at the same time trying to work out what 'life change' might be in Italian without referring inadvertently to some sort of painful transformative operation. 

"In England we call it becoming a gentleman farmer," I said.

"But you still have to shovel crap?," my cousin replied.

"Well, yes."

"So you are a peasant."

I gave up explaining at that point. There are few words more loaded with meaning in Italian than 'contadino' (peasant) and it tends to be used exclusively in a pejorative sense i.e. He is such a contadino, meaning uncouth, ignorant and unrefined. This is in many ways the ultimate insult to an Italian as the majority of the population are perhaps only one or two generations, at most, from the land and can't the bear the possibility of returning to their roots. In their eyes, they had the good sense to disappear years ago into the heart of urban Italy where jobs are better paid and the possibility of escaping your mother is greater. This is why Tuscany, Le Marche, Puglia and Sicily are full of the empty farm houses that British buyers love to renovate, and which are then burgled by organised Albanian gangs.  

It is understandable then why in the industrial north, where my family come from, that the notion of willingly returning to a less profitable and harder working way of life makes little sense. However, there maybe a slowly changing attitude driven by Italy's almost interminable economic crisis. To visit the country is to realise how lucky we are to have never entered the Euro. The entire place is littered with half completed building projects and unused apartments - Veneto alone is estimated to have 220,000 empty industrial and residential properties for which there are no buyers at all. The negative flip side to this is that youth unemployment is hovering at 40 per cent, while farming is starting to look attractive as a source of possible employment. Italian farms benefit from higher subsidies because of their smaller size, while at the same time growing highly commercial cash crops like soya and grapes. Also there is no currency risk as subsidies are paid in Euros. It is unsurprising, then, that young entrepreneurs have come out of university and gone back to revitalise the long abandoned family plot with agri tourism ventures or brand-new wine production facilities.

Grape growing in particular seems to have taken off to an extent that was unimaginable 20 years ago. The reason for this is that international food supply chains have grown longer and longer. Italian grape surpluses are often shipped to regions in Europe where there is a shortage and the same is true of grapes from Georgia and increasingly Armenia. The key point is that grapes are then fermented and bottled in the nominal country of origin, which is why producers can say "made in France/Germany/Italy" on their wares. However, like everything else, our food and drink is subject to the inevitable market force that home production cannot meet international demand, so must be bulked out somehow. For the most part, the system works well, until you find a horse in your lasagne. Pass the Barolo....

Asolo, also known as the jewel of Veneto, or the city of a 100 beautiful views. Hemingway got drunk here once.