Damn, but I I love farmers

[British Red]

Lincolnshire is old fashioned, I get it. It's not for everyone. We don't have Uber or Deliveroo. The nearest pub is a 45 minute walk & the nearest bus stop a mile. When they run.

However today I got a phone call from a farmer friend. "Come round for some Christmas veg". Off I wander with game bag over shoulder...

A full veg stall is laid out in front of the Shepherds Hut

Christmas Veg Stall by English Countrylife, on Flickr


My (Extra Large) Game Bag is entirely inadequate. With it full, a stick of sprouts in each hand, a 1920s apple crate served to carry the rest

Christmas Veg by English Countrylife, on Flickr

I was pressed to an (excellent) beer whilst choosing my (completely free) veg. He announced the sack of potatoes & sack of onions would be left at my gate tomorrow.

We focus too much on the bad guys. They are vastly outnumbered by the good guys.

Merry Christmas all.

 

[Paul_B]

I grew up near Banks in Lancashiree on the main road into Southport from Preston. Market Garden territory with the blackest of soils in that area. This was a long time ago and it is possibly more professional now with prices to match. Anyway, there was this whole stretch of road with loads of farm shops. You could buy a 25kg or so sack of carrots or potatoes for the price of a small bag in Tescos now or even safeways back then which was our nearest supermarket. We never got our veg from supermarkets. Same with cheese, bought from a really good cheese shop. The old ones with the groceries still sold from the shelves st the back. Oh and people serving who would offer young kids a taste of a mature chedday profferred on a sharp cheese knife over the counter!!

Down our dead end road was a farn made up of greenhouses grrowing for supermarkets. Tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. The old guy who set it all up wass semi retired and he was known well down our street for leaving trays of stuff for local families with young kids. We would get up and leave for school and my mum would have to put the tray of tomatoes inside the house from the porch where it was left early in the morning. We never paid for tomatoes because the ones too ripe or misshapen could not be sold. So he would give them to worthy families. GReat guy and a real characeter (gossip). Still those tomatoes were a lot better than current supermarket ones, full of flavour. As I said, th ones we got we got were red becuase they picked when they were not fully ripe to ripen in transit. Any that were red were no good commercially but very good for taste and us.

I think this wass and in some places still is the country way with locals and farming communities. Cooperative. Harvest time was about working your farm and helping out at others. Not one local farm could really crop without help I reckon so it was great. You'd see traactors in the barley field in front of our house from farms across the village.

PS that was 70s and 80s. We moved away at the end of the 80s so things might be different now. I hope not!

 

[Glow_worm]

I've just returned from a calf-at-foot dairy, i.e. compassionate dairying where the calves stay with their mothers until mum gets fed up with them. They've just had a calf born and we're selling excess colostrum and I was after a bit for health reasons.

Stocked up on liver and heart too, and some pork. The cows are grass fed their entire lives, the pigs are fattened on waste milk and are soya free. The farm isn't certified organic but probably could be with little effort, they are transparent about everything they do and encourage you to watch the milking and chat/ask questions.

There is a pop-up veg stand just about within sensible distance run by a grower which supply supermarkets but sell the leftovers to the local public at a knockdown price in December/January. It's a mix of organic and conventional, I stock up on the former by the crate!

These places are out there, it's worth seeking them out.

 

[Woody girl]

When I lived in Gloucester, every Sunday we would get in the car and drive out into the countryside, stopping at various farm gates for fruit, veg, honey and eggs, all our weeks supplies.
ill always remember coming across a field of pick your own sweetcorn at 10p a cob!!! We had £2worth and feasted for days!
where I live now, despite being deep in the countryside....not a thing! A few scabby bruised apples left out for those desperate enough if you are lucky.
Even our farmers market only operates from April to September, and that is mainly craftwork not farming. If you are lucky a few stalls selling some form of meat, one selling cheese, and no veg at all. Even the fish man no longer comes. Used to regularly get a fresh crab and and stick in some free samphire and a few prawns for me if I rocked up towards the end of the day.
I miss those Sunday drives, ending up with a scramble up may hill with a flask of hot tea and a blanket to sit on with the dog running joyfully free, and watching the sun go down.

 

[British Red]

where I live now, despite being deep in the countryside....not a thing! A few scabby bruised apples left out for those desperate enough if you are lucky.

Rural Lincolnshire is of course the poorest county in England, which explains why the "yellow bellies" contempt for money is only exceeded by their complete disregard of Big Government and all the nonsense that spews from them. But I tell you what, old folk & young folk don't go hungry or cold here.

 

[Glow_worm]

@Woody girl That surpsises me, there seems to be increasing momentum in small scale vegetable growing and mixed farms supplying quality produce to locals.

Which is not surprising, considering all those I know of (and I am directly involved with a couple) turn a tidy profit and are free of the stresses and exploitation of being tied to supermarkets or wholesalers.


You have to do your research though. There are plenty of 'small farms'/'family farms' round here, consisting of feed crops grown in dead soil with poison sprays, fed to livestock kept in sheds. The sooner this type of farming falls on its backside the better. Funny how many farmers struggle to make a profit with many hundreds or thousands of acres. I could run a viable sustainable regenerative business on five. And two hundred maximum for a proper mixed farm!

I don't have any sympathy for farmers who poison their soils and produce and keep livestock in conditions utterly detached from what could be considered as natural. All I've heard from conventional farmers over the years is how difficult things are, how they rely on their subsidies, how there is no money in farming. Why do they carry on with such a stupid business model then? Narrow minds, and often 'Dad wouldn't have held with changing what we do'. The countryside is in the wrong hands, these places need carving up into smaller mixed farms marketing to locals and supporting a healthy community of employees enjoying the simple but rewarding work they do.

 

[bobnewboy]

I beat at a local shoot, so get free pheasant, partridge and the occasional brace of duck. In feather of course but it still tastes good, and the price is very much to my liking. I also get free spuds, so long as I glean them myself between harvest and the fields getting prepared for the next crop. We get fresh and very local (500 yards) grass fed half lamb for Christmas, but we have to pay for that! Fresh butchered local venison too, but again for a reasonable price.

We’ve made lots of friends in the 6 years we’ve been down here in Somerset. A lot of those friends are farmers and so we’re happy to help out when we can, and vice versa

 

[Woody girl]

I beat at a local shoot, so get free pheasant, partridge and the occasional brace of duck. In feather of course but it still tastes good, and the price is very much to my liking. I also get free spuds, so long as I glean them myself between harvest and the fields getting prepared for the next crop. We get fresh and very local (500 yards) grass fed half lamb for Christmas, but we have to pay for that! Fresh butchered local venison too, but again for a reasonable price.

We’ve made lots of friends in the 6 years we’ve been down here in Somerset. A lot of those friends are farmers and so we’re happy to help out when we can, and vice versa

What about veg though?
I like my veg and grow what I can, but its never enough in my small garden.
Right now I have some pot grown carrots ,two just about surviving sprout plants that have halfpenny size sprouts on, and one cavelo nero left!
I do get mine from a fresh veg shop, rather than the supermarket, but my nearest farm shop is either very very expensive the other side of Tiverton , which i cant get to by bus, or else in minehead, both over 20 miles away.
I realy miss the farm gate which seems to have died a death when theft became rampant, but, hopefully with all the uproar over the farmers, should make a comeback with any luck. I do hope so.
Trouble is, round here, if its anything, its just sheep! No agriculture at all.
Back in thr 70's there was a local dairy, and the cows used to walk themselves through town down to the milking parlour, it's all gone now, and only a garage where they used to milk cows. Can't eat cars, and I'm not keen on brake fluid or engine oil either. ..

 

[Paul_B]

20 years ago I was in a walking group and a new member joined who had left a good job for a new life in Cumbria. His new career is growing vegetables. IIRC he had a bit of land up Kentmere valley and had set up a smallholding with greenhouse and raised beds. Anyway it was all in its first year and he was still living off savings and any work he could pick up. I think he would do well with things like veg boxes to the well heeled of Kendal and surrounds. There are a fair few of them judging by Kendal having one of the few Porsche dealerships outside of a city. Possibly the only one in Cumbria. Now moved to Lancashire just over the border.

I wonder if he is still doing it.

 

[bobnewboy]

Yep, there’s only one dairy near us, but they do have a shop. It’s good stuff but quite expensive to be honest. My farming friends got out of dairy years back.

Up in your area of Exmoor I suppose the ground isn’t that handy for veg or cereal crops and so sheep is where you’re at. We’re 25 or so miles further south, and there’s a mix of cereal and veg farms, as well as beef and sheep. However a lot of the land has been growing rape seed for oil as presumably that’s where the good prices are right now. There are gate sales but they aren’t very publicised and have minimum amounts, e.g buy your onions by the sack.

We do grow a lot of veg and fruit, eating it fresh and in season where we can. The rest is carefully stored and/or frozen. If we can’t use our raspberry and blackcurrant fruit we often swap bags of it for local eggs etc. We’ve just dried and shredded our last harvest of chillies, and apart from a couple of buckets of potatoes that’s it for this year. In the end potatoes we don’t eat before they become straggly we use as seed for next year’s buckets. We use Wickes black builders buckets as they’re the cheapest and seem to last. We also grow tomatoes and cucumbers in them.

 

[slowworm]

We're further west in Devon and when we moved down we were quite surprised by the lack of any small scale farming and veg growing. I know of a couple of places locally selling meat and a few selling eggs but none selling veg.

More recently many of the dairy farms have doubled in size, with a few becoming indoor factory units. Many of the fields are either industrial silage or the pasture has been ploughed for ceral crops.

Plenty of deer about, I must sort a freezer for the new year.

 

[Tony]

Just sheep around here and they're not given those away!
Thanks for sharing Hugh, I love hearing about things like this! IT's one of the reasons I enjoy westa wales so much, old school!

 

[Glow_worm]

Trouble is, round here, if its anything, its just sheep! No agriculture at all.

Sounds like your area would support a viable business, it would only need 5 acres of vaguely suitable land to supply most of the veg and fruit for your village and maybe a few others nearby, with some poultry to help with the muck situation.

I've noted a few references to the higher prices in farm shops/veg box schemes. In reality this is often the cost of growing veg sustainability- as part of a small self-supporting system, rather than monocultures of carrots etc. supermarkets have managed to keep food prices artificially low for years, by supplying essentially rubbish. Low in nutrients, grown in dead soil on huge farms with no biodiversity while depleting the soil and polluting watercourses.

Good food grown properly will cost more, remember how much of a person's outgoings were taken by food before mechanisation/chemicals became the norm. Modern farming methods have little resilience and often fail, and with a changing climate, rising energy costs pushing up red diesel and chemical fertilisers, in time we will likely see the gap close between supermarkets and small concerns doing things a better way.

Hopefully those smaller concerns, being in direct contact with their local communities, will help ensure those who genuinely struggle financially to stay well fed as many do, even those with seemingly eye watering prices.

 

[Woody girl]

I've just been into town to get some bits in. The supermarket is very empty of people, prices are high for veg wrapped in plastic.
I got jersey milk and some brie, £4.76
Popped over to the deli, waited 20 mins to get served bought some more cheese, (sharpham, and a wedge of black bomber waxed cheese,) and a small box of halva, £17!
Then I paid
£9.46 for 4 small carrots , 3 small parsnips, a handful of sprouts , a small swede, small bunch of grapes, and a packet of dried figs.
I made the effort to avoid the supermarket as much as possible, but I realy can't keep those prices up everyday.
I'm going to have to expand my garden even more.

 

[haptalaon]

I think this wass and in some places still is the country way with locals and farming communities. Cooperative. Harvest time was about working your farm and helping out at others. Not one local farm could really crop without help I reckon so it was great. You'd see traactors in the barley field in front of our house from farms across the village.

In Guernsey in the victorian era there was a January festival called something like The Big Plough, basically the community had one ploughing machine owned by one person and getting the fields done was an all hands on deck job, so on Day 1 absolutely everyone would go to Farm 1...do the work, mostly with the big machine once they had it... Then settle down for some cider and snacks and a good gossip...then head over to Farm 2, more cider, etc

All the memoirs of people I've read who lived that lifestyle basically agree it was horrible and they don't want to go back. All the same, that sounds like an excellent excuse for a knees up!

 

[haptalaon]

For the past few years we've squared the cost issue by eating plant-based (I'm an aspiring vegan) but then what we save we put towards a sustainable meat (wild caught or a local farm; my husband is a carnivore). That works well for us and I think it's something we should be aiming at as a society: much less meat but much better quality.

Haven't really thought about sustainable veg though, which is in its own way an environmental issue too. Hmmm...

 

[Glow_worm]

Horrible? I've been reading everything I've come across relating to the history of farming and the countryside since childhood. I agree that by modern standards, the life of a typical Ag Lab (parish record notation for 'agricultural labourer') was unrecognisably tough, with long hours, heavy work and often crude living conditions. But their was a strong community, and a sense of belonging and purpose which is lacking in many people now and probably accounts for a lot of mental health issues.

Farming has always had ups and downs, and many of the horror stories or statistics are from temporary troubles caused by drought or disease, or markets crashing.

Funnily enough, there are a great number of young people (and older people wanting a change of career to something more meaningful) out there who want to work hard, long hours in all weathers growing food sustainably on a small scale. Some have a rose-tinted idea and can't handle the reality, but a great many succeed and find work or start viable businesses themselves.

 

[Bazzworx]

I work for a few local farmers, and they're quite happy to have work done and give part payment in the form of beef, lamb, logs, potatoes etc. I love the barter economy. There's also 2 growers I pass regularly with a veg stand. I'd much rather give these people my time or money for goods rather than some multinational shop.

 

[haptalaon]

I'm thinking particularly of Akenfield, an oral history from the 1970s capturing the lives of the last generation to live in that way in the 1920s; even though they had good memories, they pretty unanimously did not want to go back to living in that way - the particular issue was work insecurity, not just that it was hard but it might dry up one week to the next, and they had very little to show for it, not being the landowners.

Couldn't agree more about the benefits of a community and a sense of purpose though.

 

[British Red]

All the memoirs of people I've read who lived that lifestyle basically agree it was horrible and they don't want to go back. All the same, that sounds like an excellent excuse for a knees up!

Quite the reverse from the people I know who lived rural lives. People now work far longer hours & in many ways are much worse off.

This is our cottage

The Cottage by English Countrylife, on Flickr

It goes back to early Georgian times (1700s) for certain but the bricks are older.

Now it didn't of course have mains (anything) at the point of this photo 100 years ago. It didn't have mains electricity until well into my lifetime (1968 it became available).

The Redoubtable lady in front of the door is Lucy Cook. She lived in a two room wriggly tin building which still has a slab in our field. The building is shown below

Maid's Quarters by English Countrylife, on Flickr

When she had finished with it the local farm family (the Wright's) put it on Perter Ingamells steam engine low loader and moved it 3/4 of a mile down the lane so that Jimmy Wright could live in it. It became the home of Pinty Wright & his wife Martha who raised 4 children in it's two rooms. It never had mains electricity, water or plumbing. It had an outside toilet, pump in the yard, coal range and hurricane lamp. They were offered more modern accommodation or to have mains services connected but always refused. The building was on land owned by David Grant. David Grant is driving the tractor you can see below, clearing the self same field that the building used to stand on after we bought it in a terrible state

Thats the way to do it by British Red, on Flickr

Pinty lived in that old building until the early 2000s. The rent never rose from the original 10/ (50p) a month. He charged a battery (accumulator) for his radio once a week in the farm.

Was he hard done by? It depends how you look at it. He never paid for food or any mains services. The solid fuel range could be fed with logs. His rent was £6 a year and went uncollected for decades. He had the option for a more modern life and didn't want it. His wages and then his pension was his own for clothes and luxuries.

The Christmas food given to me at the beginning of this thread was given by Pinty's Great Nephew Nick. Some was grown on Jimmy Wright's families land (his grandson Norman died recently in his 90s in a bungalow next door).

Poverty is a relative term. Many people in rural areas had low wages. But if you had no bills for rent, services or food that's not such a big deal.

In that respect, we plucked our Christmas Dinner yesterday & it will be lovely with that veg. There will be no fuel bill for cooking it.

Esse & Pheasants Sepia by British Red, on Flickr

Some people would see me as poor. I wouldn't go back to being a well paid consultant for all the money there is.