A Leap of Faith into the New Year

Farming, fear, foxes, crows – and why belief still matters when the ground feels invisible beneath your feet.

Twixmas on the Farm: Comfort in Routine

I always feel anxious at the beginning of the New Year and perhaps this year more than ever. During Christmas and ‘Twixmas’ on the farm you just slip into a gentle routine, trying not to take on anything too adventurous: just doing the basics, keep the feeder wagon turning for a few hours a day, bed the cattle, check round the sheep and then back in with the family by the fire and join Harrison Ford blowing up a bridge, saving an Indian village or rescuing the world from the Nazis.

The Leap of Faith (Minus the Fedora)

And to be honest I currently feel a little bit like Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade during that iconic scene where Indy must take the ‘leap of faith’ and step into an invisible bridge over a deep, dark chasm.

Clearly this metaphor has limited scope for me because instead of a cool fedora, leather jacket and bullwhip, I am wearing a woolly hat from Melton Mowbray Market, a tatty Barbour jacket, wellington boots and only have a small, blunt pocketknife in my pocket to fight the Nazis with.

At this time of year though, as with the scene in the film it is important not to look back, to fall forward and believe in whatever you want will happen and that is what I am trying to do right now. Believe in a better year this year.

A Busy Shop, a Threatened Farm

It’s not that last year was a terrible year, we survived another season and we managed to keep all the plates spinning. In fact, the farm shop was busier than ever and we had a record number of Christmas orders, but the beating heart of the business: the farm has never felt so under threat.

Tractors in London and a Government That Doesn’t Get Farming

It probably came as no surprise that our urban government proved it doesn’t understand farming. The fact that on several occasions last year there were more tractors in central London than black cabs tells you everything.

Farmers turned out in their thousands to protest against the family farm tax (amongst other things) and the government did finally perform an enormous U-turn just before Christmas thank goodness. In no small part having listened to some of their own brave rural MP’s like our very own Samantha Niblett, who abstained from the vote on the changes to inheritance tax on family farms and urged the government to reconsider.

Banned Lobsters, Trail Hunts and Rural Pageantry

In an uncertain and crazy world where Donald Trump is threating to start World War Three on some Inuit people in Greenland, this government has found the time to ban us from boiling lobsters and to even ban people from going trail hunting.

For the first time in my life and with an open mind I followed a trail hunt over Christmas. What a wonderful pageant of rural life it was, glorious horses bred to jump tall hedges and wonderful hounds, with pedigrees stretching back hundreds of years. Not a fox did I see.

But lets just be clear foxes are not cute and cuddly with a good sense of humour and roaring laugh like Basil Brush. They are highly successful murderers with no natural predator who would without doubt make cunning villains in an Indiana Jones movie.

Foxes, Crows and the Reality of Predators

Even crows have come in for government protection.

Yesterday I went out with Tori and the children to gather the in lamb ewes in and bring them inside before the snow arrives. I knew what had happened the minute I got to the gate. I just hoped she might be still alive and the crows hadn’t already set to work on her.

A big heavily pregnant Border Leicester had got stuck on her back and we frantically ran up to her flapping our arms to scare away the damn vultures. We got to her and I dropped to my knees, rolling her over and realising the crows had taken her eyes.

These creatures are not the sweet animals of Farthing Wood either and as the black cloud of cawing birds disappeared over the horizon and the children began to cry, I can’t help but think that protecting crows is a bit like Indiana Jones telling all the Nazis to quickly shut their eyes at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Real Precipice: Farm Support and Survival

My biggest worry to our survival though this year is what the government is going to do with farm support. Subsidies have gone and as part of the perfect storm grain prices are at a record low.

The replacement for direct subsidies, the Sustainable Farming Incentive, was withdrawn in March last year and the much awaited and revised scheme was due to be launched this April. Last week at the Oxford Farming Conference DEFRA minister Emma Reynolds pushed any announcement on the Sustainable Farming scheme further back until June.

Wildlife Wins, Business Losses

We did join the initial scheme and although it reduced the output of the farm it has been very successful in encouraging all the right sort of wildlife; I can’t sleep at night anymore for all the owls twit twooing, presumably in pleasure at all the extra voles running around in the long grass.

But put simply, we cannot survive and continue to pay the rent without it. So until June it is difficult to know if this year will be our last — and how is that ‘sustainable’ for any business? Let alone an entire industry, the industry that produces our food in an increasingly uncertain world.

So, we can’t make any plans or invest in our future with any confidence.

Tenants, Rents and the Shrinking Gravy Boat

The problem of farm support is especially more acute in the tenanted sector, because the land agents have always essentially taken the support payment straight from the tenant to pay the rent.

Perhaps these crows of the agricultural world need to realise that there is less gravy to go around and adjust rents accordingly. Pigs might also fly.

AI, Jobs and Rubber Gloves

Then to make it all worse I open today’s Farmers Guardian and learn that if we do survive into next year that AI could replace 25% of farming jobs within five years.

All I know about AI is the type that involves a large rubber glove and the backend of a cow.

Weather, Worry and Waiting for Spring

And don’t even get me started on the weather… but surely it can’t be as bad as last year.

Baby Steps Across the Invisible Bridge

So, as I stand on the edge of the precipice tottering away, trying to get my balance, wanting to believe and put my first step forward into the New Year like Indiana Jones, I think I must remind myself not to get overwhelmed.

To take baby steps, not a giant leap into the abyss. To remember that Alexa still can’t calve a cow and Siri can’t shear a sheep yet, we can still eat a lobster for now and each day is ninety seconds longer.

The snow might come but Spring will follow, and hopefully the year will provide lots of adventures, like our hero riding off at the end of the film (as long as the government doesn’t ban riding as well).

Happy New Year.