Hello and welcome to the jottings of a farmer in Suffolk who, despite his best efforts is still farming...
I am in a dilemma.
We all know that there are not enough days with little wind for good crop spraying and that when we do have such a day it’s all hands on deck - that is if you have something to apply and the field conditions are good enough to run.
However I also want lots of windy days as well and it’s a certainty that I cannot have both.
The reason for my quandary is we have just installed two 18m tall wind turbines on the farm; or rather someone has installed them on my behalf as frankly I’m not up to the job.
The thinking behind my sudden burst of activity is that I feel that we may well suffer some form of energy tax in the future if we as a business are not seen to be using ‘green’ energy. Also, my worries over the lack of any serious investment in our country’s infrastructure during the past 40 years may well come home to roost. In my view as more and more people move out of London to live a ‘better life’ in the countryside but still wish to work and earn the type of salary only London can justify, the strain of supplying the extra power that these new homes require will mean the national grid will not be able to cope, so power cuts will be inevitable. Ahh the heady days of my childhood in the mid seventies!
We also have the prospect of free power.
Mind you, we will still be cut off sometimes here as although the power comes in on our side of the meter from the wind turbines it is still supplying the main grid. It would be dangerous for anyone working on the line to still have it live, so our free wind power will be turned off at times like this. Well that’s just swell.
I have little wish to wade into the current planning debate raging in the newspapers; apart from to point out to the Daily Telegraph campaign that the “hands off our land” is irritating as I had thought my small patch of England was in fact my land, not theirs.
We started the process of digging up information about generating our own power in January and by early February had made the decision to go ahead and had chosen the company to install them. It then took one month to prepare the plans and submit them to our local district council. It took the council until the 1st July to give full planning - just over sixteen weeks - and therein rests the problem in the current planning policy. Pardon the pun, but it’s too long winded. That said, it was pointed out to me that this time frame was in fact quite quick, which just goes to show how far state interference with our lives has permeated.
The slowness of public bodies to process anything is one of the many reasons we are bogged down with over regulation, but I can report that the windmills are whizzing round at present and although there is a little noise, the realisation of free power compensates for this. Although not while my sprayer is parked up because it’s too windy…
- See also: 'Two crops and one sofa'
They don’t call him Richard ‘Two Crops' Styles for nothing, unfortunately.
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