One of the most important events of our farming calendar, the 5th of November, has been reached. Not important to us because of Guy Fawkes, although the neighbours’ fireworks did make us feel under attack, but rather because that is the day that the rams get introduced to their ladies. The old saying goes ‘in with a bang, out with a fool’, as the gestation period of a sheep happens to be the exact number of days from Bonfire night to April fool’s day. It is the first season here for Dougie and Lloyd, and both were met with slightly suspicious looks from their new girlfriends! With any luck (and a bit of wining and dining), they will soon get to work, and we will have a good flush of bonny lambs in time for Easter.

The lambs continue to look very fine, although we have noticed some more signs of worms which may need addressing if fresh pasture doesn’t help. The exceptionally mild and damp weather has created a perfect storm for parasites such as worms and mosquitos.

This mild weather is also meaning we need to think about bringing the cattle into the barn for the winter soon. Although we will always hope to keep them out as long as possible, the pastures are becoming soggy, and the grass’s growth rate has slowed under these grey skies and long nights.

These unseasonable temperatures are also causing other issues in the farming world, and we are watching the blue tongue exclusion zone creep ever closer to our farm, and it seems inevitable that, unless we get some cold weather soon, the whole country will be at risk of this disease which affects sheep and cattle. Spread by mosquitoes, Bluetongue does not affect humans, but on the farm, it is painful for the affected animals and can result in an unpleasant death.

As for our herd, we have had a number of enquiries for our store cattle but are yet to sell them – our traditional Herefords do not provide the lean meat favoured by modern markets – they are mostly chosen by butchers and restaurants who prefer a nicely marbled animal. We have agreed the sale of 4 breeding heifers which is lovely, and our favourite type of sale to make!

Brendan and Alice attended a very interesting course on the economics of market gardening, and ‘enterprise stacking’ on small to medium farms. This was both interesting and inspiring. Although Rush Farm will have its own shape and style, it was useful to see how others have successfully made the transition to providing food to a local market. For those to whom this phrase is new, Enterprise Stacking means running several businesses alongside one another, where the output of one production cycle contributes to the inputs of another. What we used to call diversifying, and what farms have been doing to many a year to keep going.

In this vein we have decided to try and prioritise our direct to customer sales following a successful first season of the Rush Farm veg box. We are very excited about a number of projects coming in the pipeline, such as a small shop and cafe on site, as well as beef and lamb boxes, and potentially catering. Watch this space! We are particularly grateful to our Wwoofer Tom, who is not only a hero with the animals, and in getting the farm looking very smart, but has brought the drive to our team to make these much-pondered projects come closer to fruition. Thank you, Tom!!

It has also been a good week for raptors on the farm. Most excitingly we witnessed a sparrow hawk in hot pursuit of a very indignant heron over the scrape. Fortunately, the heron escape with nothing but hurt pride, but it was a spectacular display from two elusive birds, and nice to know that we must have nesting sparrow hawks to have caused it to chase the bigger bird away. We definitely have a nesting pair of herons, normally found on the other side of the farm, as well as a nesting pair of Snipe. The barn owls are still in residence, and we were overjoyed to see them swooping low over the fields at dusk – easier now the sun sets before the end of the working day. The barn owl has to be one of the most majestic and enigmatic of British birds. Our usual two pairs of buzzards have also been seen about the place. The damp weather has been excellent for mushrooms, and seemingly every verge, hedge, spinney and pasture are heaving with pretty wax caps or delicate brown fungi – very good news for the soil.

It would be remis of us not to mention the significantly negative effect of the budget on our country’s farming community. It’s a complicated area, but it is important to try and make sense of it.

If we were feeling optimistic, we might be glad that DEFRA has been more or less spared from huge cuts, although it was galling (sickening might be better!) to hear one DEFRA minister say that farmers would simply have to ‘do more with less’.

Isn’t that the very same attitude that has already brought this country to its knees? How can food and our natural world be dismissed in this same way, when we all now know so much more about food security, see every day on the news the effects of climate change, and constantly hear about the number of native species that are now under threat? Finally, what of the human cost? Farming is a hard job – physically, and mentally, and this community needs support.

The other attack on small family farmers and tenant farmers was inheritance tax. Why are we challenging this when the numbers spoken about seem so large? The issue is that land and houses both may have an inflated cost, but today it is a real cost, and is in a context which they either ignored for convenience, or lack of judgment. It is deeply disappointing to discover that this ‘new guard’ is as economically illiterate as their predecessors.

For example, imagine a small family run farm, and the parent dies. For the children to continue farming, and pay the inheritance tax bill, the likelihood would be they would have to sell some of the land. They sell land, and they have less land to farm – less land to farm means less productivity, and less revenue. How long can they continue to farm?

If we follow the land sold in this scenario, who can afford it, and what are they likely to do with it? Will it likely be protected for nature or it will be sold to the highest bidder, someone who can turn a profit (i.e. a housing developer or large corporate farm). Suddenly yes, bills are paid, money is being made by the purchaser of the land, but what of the farmer, what of our food security, and crucially what of our much-needed natural habitats?

The ignorance of the true costs and the true worth of our country’s farmers and our land that is being shown here is not ok. Add this into the reality that nearly all farms operate on a knife edge due to seriously undervalued people and products, and for farmers and their families across the country, this is desperate. We know it’s also complicated, but it is important to try to make better decisions. For all of us.

In many ways, we are relieved Adrian isn’t here to cope with this all. The world he worked by, and operated in, was diametrically opposite in every way to this moment in time. To mark the second year of Adrian’s passing, we wanted to choose one of his favourite poets Edward Lear, and one of his favourite poems, but The Jumblies felt a little long… so instead, we hope you will enjoy with us:

There was an Old Man with a Beard by Edward Lear

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.