So, Waitrose want to sell milk in bags. What goes around, comes around.
I remember that in the 1970s, milk came in bags. You were given a special plastic jug to stick your milk bag in, cut off the corner with a pair of scissors, and simply poured. As long as you were nifty with the scissors the pouring was drip free. Too small a hole, and it took aeons to fill a glass; too big and the whole lot came out in a tidal wave totally flooding out your breakfast cereal. Milk speedily moved on to tetrapak and we now have the hard plastic bottles.
Interestingly, Canada stuck with milk bags, and now sells 60% of its milk that way. We could save 100,000 tonnes of waste plastic bottles if all the UK milk came in bags.
I think this time round though, you are supposed to empty the whole bag into the jug.
We have had no rain to speak of for quite a while, and have been stuck in a rather cool east wind for weeks, although the sun has been shining for the most part. The crops are badly in need of water, and the fields are very crunchy when you walk over them.
We had a simply stunning bank holiday weekend with dawn to dusk sunshine, while the south of the UK had very wet and windy miserable weather. This time of year, the sunsets swing right round to the north-west, and Monday evening this week had a really stunning sunset.
However, it was our turn for the rain today, and very welcome it is. Everything smells fresh again, and there are no more clouds of dust flying out from behind traffic on the farm road. It has to remember to stop of course. Farmers are never happy with the weather.
Having just filled up at the local pumps, this fuel price business is getting out of hand. Diesel at £1.24 a litre here today, and I know it is more in other places, and lots more in far flung places like the Western Isles. No wonder the lorry drivers are upset.
Interestingly, the hauliers are not united in protest, with the bigger players like Eddie Stobart notably staying well back from the demonstrations.
On the farm, tractor diesel (like heating oil) has now more than doubled in price in 12 months, and nitrogen fertilizer has also doubled. Compound fertilizer (N:P:K mix) has gone up even more than 100%. Certainly, cereal prices are better than they were, but it looks as if we are going to need all of this to make any sense of the job financially.
I am hoping for a dry harvest, as the grain drier runs on tractor diesel.
It is going to mean some tough decisions for next year though.
Farms are interesting places. On the face of it, we farmers all do a similar job to one another, and fields of sheep or wheat look much the same to the onlooker. But look closer, and every farmer has their own way of doing things - customs and atttitudes which are often passed down the generations. There are tidy farms and scruffy farms; there are farms with gleaming new machinery and farms making do with older kit. Farmers are rulers of their own small worlds - the family and others who may be living on the farm and staff they employ. The isolation of farming only adds to the impenetrability and misunderstanding from outsiders.
The vast majority of farmers get along with eachother as they are in the same business, and often work with one another helping out. They meet at the market to catch up on news and chat. Sometimes things do go wrong, and the effects can be felt for generations. I have worked on a farm where one brother ran the livestock and the other brother ran the cereals - both had their own separate staff and separate machinery ……….. and the brothers talked to eachother as little as possible. It was genuinely difficult. I also know another farm where the son in his 50s was not entrusted to write a cheque, as his father in his 70s wanted to retain financial control. And another farm where a son was bullied by his father way into adulthood and who eventually took his own life. Fortunately though, most farms are happy but hard working places.
When we look at human relationships, we always say that one never knows what goes on behind the bedroom door. For farming, the equivalent is what goes on behind the farm gate.
And this is where Drawer Boy starts. Michael Healey has based this three hander play on a theatrical exercise in Canada in the 1970s, where urban drama students visited farms and returned to college and used their material to produce “The Farming Show”. In Drawer Boy, Miles , a theatre student played by Brian Ferguson is visiting a farm in Ontario to get some first hand experience to take back to his college to produce a piece on what living on farms is all about. So we are on a very isolated farm, run by friends Angus and Morgan where things are done just so. Angus, played outstandingly by Brian Pettifer, is clearly very simple, and Morgan (Benny Young) is obviously in charge of all the day-to-day work, as well as caring for Angus. Like quite a few farms, it is a strange, yet stable working and living relationship. Miles’ presence slowly builds up trust between he and the two men and gradually the background to the odd living arrangements is revealed. Angus starts to remember the past more clearly. And we get to hear the story - the one about the tall girl and the taller girl.
For the most part, this is a gentle comedy, with much amusement as Miles, a rural ignorant, learns about farm life with much leg-pulling. But when the real story is revealed about why the two friends find themselves running an isolated farm, it is a completely shattering and moving revelation. It is powerful stuff, and the three top rate actors work brilliantly together against Hazel Blue’s attractive big sky and plain farmhouse kitchen set.
Drawer Boy was first performed in Toronto in 1999, and has won many awards, been translated into several languages and toured the world. It is new to Scotland and is incoming Tron director, Andy Arnolph’s choice of first play to do. He says that he wants to see modern challenging drama in Glasgow, and this is an auspicious start.
Drawer Boy is a strange story which takes us on a journey. It is haunting and beautiful. For me, this is definitely going to be a contender for best theatre of 2008.
Every year they come up, and every year they get removed - for future use.
This farm has been under cultivation for centuries. The modern tractor-drawn ploughs do go deeper than the old horse-drawn variery, and every year produces a crop of stones. Today was spent picking stones off the winter crops, or perhaps small boulders would be a more accurate term. All have been liftable by one person so far this year. Occasionally a real monster stone turns up needing a digger or forklift to shift it.
A visit to a garden centre shows how much these stones can be worth! Today’s stones went to fill in deep holes in a gateway, and deep ruts in a track. Dobbies will have to wait for another year.
Perthshire lowground is famous for tree lines within field boundary hedges. It is an attractive landscape feature. However, dutch elm disease killed off the elms over the years, and the existing trees - mainly ash, oak and sycamore are getting older. Each year, more are lost to storms, and bits blow off them. Farmers tend not to like these hedgerow trees as they shade crops and snag on the combine and tractors as they drive by, so they tend not to get replaced.
However, on balance I am prepared to put up with the inconveniences, and value special landscape features. So I am pleased to announce a planting of 35 new hedgerow trees this week - a mix of oak and ash. The local Farm and Forestry Wildlife Advisory Group have supplied trees, tubes and posts. It is rather a dynastical project, but hopefully these trees will be good for 100 years or so.
Interesting that the SNP are looking at a policy which will promote Scottish food. Scottish Food means less food miles of course, and will help our own farming industry.
But there will always be issues of seasonality, quality and price to get around. Sometimes Scottish food can actually be more expensive than food which has travelled miles to get here.
The policy in our house is to buy Scottish if possible, then British if possible, and only then, imported. But this decision is quality driven too.
Food is actually too cheap: the retail price index has risen 22% in the last 10 years, but the price of food has only risen 8.5% in that time.
But food ethics are complicated: if we buy more Scottish food, where does that leave our overseas suppliers, some of which may be poor countries who frankly need the cash.
The solution to the food debates is really in the hands of people buying food on a week in, week out basis: if Scottish stuff is snapped up, creating demand, then the industry will eventually adapt to fill that demand. Similarly, if we all bought more free range chicken and eggs, then supply and demand would be addressed by the industry. Consumers really are king.
It has been an interesting week on Channel 4 Chicken TV.
Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall tried to contact the poultry industry to let him film the intensive production, but not a single poultry producer would let him in. As a farmer, I find that quite appalling, as we have to be answerable to our final consumers. So HFW created his own intensive chicken house and matched it with a chicken house with free range. At the same time he persuaded local people from an estate in Axminster to run their own completely free range system.
It made reasonably good TV - if a little sensationalist, but it was saluatory to be able to show the different systems of chicken production.
HFW tried to speak to the supermarkets, and for the most part, they were not playing ball. Again, they should have been big enough to stand up and justify what they are doing.
I expect that we will be eating more free range birds as a nation, which I agree with completely. But the reality is that cheap chicken will always be popular simply because it is cheap.
Interestingly, a poultry organsation has complained that HFW’s intensive shed did not meet the ‘Red Tractor Symbol’ standard. Well guys, if you refused to discuss what you do as an industry, you have no absolutely right to complain. The program made it very clear that HFW had gone to a lot of time and trouble to create true commercial conditions.
And Jamie Oliver had another go at eggs and chicken on Friday - I think I rather prefer his style, and he was more successful at getting some of the stakeholders to take part.
Interesting issues raised. I only wish that they would occasionally show outdoor poultry in the rain and wind. There is nothing so miserable as a cold drenched hen, yet my dozen egg free-rangers choose to be outdoors unless the weather is particularly nasty.
Initial cup of tea went well. Cup of tea at breaktime was certainly neither tea nor coffee - it looked and tasted like a mixture. The flasky thing said “tea”. It was totally ghastly.
I have been watching the swallows over these past weeks. They have been leaving to go south in batches. They line up in great chattering rows on the phone wires in the mornings, and are suddenly gone. We still have a few left who have recently reared their last broods, but they too will be away soon. The place will be fairly quiet again, as the swallows make considerable noise as they swoop and screech, catching insects on the wing.
But just as one of nature’s timepieces reminds us of autumn, so another comes into play: I heard the first geese of the season today. We will expect considerable numbers in the next few weeks as birds pass on through in great V shaped skeins, but we will be left with a winter population.
Harvest was finished on 11th September, which is reasonably early for this farm. Now the race is on to get some winter crops in the ground before the weather closes in. It has been a really great three weeks of sunshine. And the combine did not break down.
