Michael and Kathy Fordham are tenant farmers working about 700 acres at Little Horsted in East Sussex.
It is a mixed farm, with around 500 acres of cereal crops and a beef suckler herd. The Fordham family has farmed in Little Horsted since Michael's grandfather started in 1916. His father Jim is now retired, but still turns up regularly, looking for something to do.
In between the snow and rain, we have had quite a busy month here in Sussex.
Richard and a mate of his have been cutting back an overgrown woodland boundary and in the process, has provided himself with some valuable firewood for the future.
To many people locally, this has served a reminder of the good old days of coppicing, as not many woods or boundaries are treated like this any more. The ditch has been cleaned out and at every eight metres a small clay land drain has been found, remarkably still running water, so very efficient.
A new fence will now be put up and this boundary will become secure again. Nature will soon recover, the coppiced trees and hedgerow plants and scraped ditch banks will again burst into flora and fauna.
Finding these land drains gives me a timely reminder of all the hard work and labour that has gone into making the land fit to grow crops and be productive. They were all hand laid many years ago, we believe by prisoners of past wars, probably at a time when food production was important and we valued that which we all now just take for granted.
Nearly every field on the farm has these drains and we guess that probably many other farms also have them up and down the country. Whoever took that decision gave the UK a huge boost to productive agriculture and it has been one of the best legacies for us all.
With health and safety to the fore with the knot campaign to come home safely, we took the decision to buy a safe wheel-changing machine. For years we all struggled to change the flotation wheels on the tractors, with the risk involved to us all, and now it has become much safer. As usual the cry is, ‘why didn’t we buy this piece of kit sooner?’.
We also managed to have a lovely skiing holiday in France. We travelled by Eurostar and then by TGV down to Grenoble. Although this takes quite a while, it does avoid lots of waiting at airports and at least we get the benefit of being able to look at the French countryside as we travel.
However, on the way home we were delayed on the first part of the journey, because of heavy traffic to Grenoble train station and missed our connection. At least we caught the next train, whereas if we had gone by plane, we would have been possibly stranded for a day. Never mind - the sun shone and there was loads of snow, so we had a really good break. Time out does make one feel a million times better and is particularly important for farmers, as it is very difficult to take a break without leaving the farm. We know so many colleagues who never have a holiday, or even a day off, for years and it can’t be good for them or their families.
No sooner had we got home, then Michael went off to the NFU Conference - a very political affair this year. No excuses for that, as it is election year. The government came and said what they had done and not much about what they would do.
Both opposition parties then said what they would do, but left me wondering how they would do all these things to make it better for farming because as has been said before. Either way, farming will have to deal with its fair share of budget cuts and the NFU’s lobbying will have to get better and stronger to get our share.
The conference was well organised and provides great camaraderie, as demonstrated by an excellent after dinner speech. Many categories of topics were covered and I particularly liked the science debate, where much more research money could be spent on trying to help us feed the world and getting some of the financial reward, without going all-out GM gung ho and big companies reaping the reward.
The overriding message from all parties was that we should produce more food, but not expect a better price for it, and at the same time protect the environment. In other words, here in the UK farm with one arm behind your back and we will continue to exploit the world by importing from whoever is the cheapest and never mind the environment elsewhere.
To round off the conference some of us went to the council chamber where we, as Council for the NFU, chose our leaders. All of them had endured a fair amount of banter with all the hustings up and down the country, so it was good to see them all on fine form for the vote.
It was a very nerve-racking experience for us all, but thank you to all of the candidates for standing and making it a challenge for the leadership rather than as in the past. Congratulations to the top three - your real challenge has just started.
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