What would it take.

czechmate · Nov 11, 2021

Bruce Almighty said:
Of course, I would suggest the big difference is growing up with livestock & not knowing any difference, rather than thinking "wouldn't it be nice to keep a few cattle ?"
To be fair, I'll bet growing veg was as hard as keeping cattle or sheep

Much harder but ... so last Monday here was a holiday, well into Sunday night out in the field a cow couldn’t calve herself, we finally got it out, dead, after midnight; then she prolapsed

. So I was waiting at 1 am on a holiday Monday morning for the vet to come out and put her insides back inside looking at a dead calf. Cow also didn’t get up for four days.
Veg and cereals didn’t give quite such delights

Mind, it wasn’t raining

Steevo · Nov 11, 2021

DrWazzock said:
Reminds me of the time the RT inspector asked me about my emergency plan.
Apparently “put the lot up for sale and move to the South of France with the cleaner” wasn't the right answer.

Thank you!! I really needed that laugh!!!

czechmate · Nov 11, 2021

neilo said:
I think I’d give up if I couldn’t keep livestock.

Driving a tractor up and down a field in straight(ish) lines for a fortnight a year isn’t proper farming is it?

I couldn’t waste my life on here without auto steer

Flatlander · Nov 11, 2021

Exfarmer said:
I think you should note his location

czechmate said:
I couldn’t waste my life on here without auto steer

I spend a few weeks a years hooked on straight lines. Arable farming to some is boring but for me it’s the ever changing tasks that keep it fun. Nothing better than watching a crop coming out of the ground and watching it grow. Most of my buying, selling and social calls are made while auto steer does it’s think. Can even take a nap in some bigger field lol. Why would I give it all up unless I had too. Money would never replace my happy place.

czechmate · Nov 11, 2021

Flatlander said:
I spend a few weeks a years hooked on straight lines. Arable farming to some is boring but for me it’s the ever changing tasks that keep it fun. Nothing better than watching a crop coming out of the ground and watching it grow. Most of my buying, selling and social calls are made while auto steer does it’s think. Can even take a nap in some bigger field lol. Why would I give it all up unless I had too. Money would never replace my happy place.

I am struggling to make my days long enough at the moment... with my obsession for examining emerging crops

czechmate · Nov 11, 2021

Flatlander said:
I spend a few weeks a years hooked on straight lines. Arable farming to some is boring but for me it’s the ever changing tasks that keep it fun. Nothing better than watching a crop coming out of the ground and watching it grow. Most of my buying, selling and social calls are made while auto steer does it’s think. Can even take a nap in some bigger field lol. Why would I give it all up unless I had too. Money would never replace my happy place.

I have a piece that is 1.3km which gives a nice break. At that length, I imagine it is a back garden to you...

Nithsdale · Nov 11, 2021

Bob the beef said:
I’m not an alcie, but plenty nights at lambing I need a dram when I come in, just to settle down and ponder the day. Just the one though

Hardly ever touch the stuff at home. And certainly never during lambing no matter how bad it gets, safe to say I'd never be an alky.

Different story if I'm out/in the pub though - drink like a fish and can't be stopped until I'm couped

Flatlander · Nov 11, 2021

czechmate said:
I have a piece that is 1.3km which gives a nice break. At that length, I imagine it is a back garden to you...

Longest field is just a fraction under two miles and 857 acres. At 7 mph drilling that a 15 minute nap assuming i wake up.

Steevo · Nov 11, 2021

Flatlander said:
Longest field is just a fraction under two miles and 857 acres. At 7 mph drilling that a 15 minute nap assuming i wake up.

That’s a farm….not a field!

(have we had a “who’s got the biggest field?” thread on here before?)

Bruce Almighty · Nov 11, 2021

czechmate said:
Much harder but ... so last Monday here was a holiday, well into Sunday night out in the field a cow couldn’t calve herself, we finally got it out, dead, after midnight; then she prolapsed . So I was waiting at 1 am on a holiday Monday morning for the vet to come out and put her insides back inside looking at a dead calf. Cow also didn’t get up for four days.
Veg and cereals didn’t give quite such delights
Mind, it wasn’t raining

I should've warned you a few years ago on ffuk, welcome to the livestock farmer's world

Red Fred · Nov 11, 2021

Flatlander said:
Longest field is just a fraction under two miles and 857 acres. At 7 mph drilling that a 15 minute nap assuming i wake up.

Grandad worked as a ploughman in Canada before the First War. His favourite story was of how he
ploughed once up in the forenoon and once back in the afternoon with his team of mules: Nick, Bright, Buck and Barney

jendan · Nov 11, 2021

Red Fred said:
Grandad worked as a ploughman in Canada before the First War. His favourite story was of how he
ploughed once up in the forenoon and once back in the afternoon with his team of mules: Nick, Bright, Buck and Barney

He would have to stop every 200-220yards or so,for a breather for the horses if a two team. Most old field sizes in the UK were set up to plough that length. (edit,its a furlong,and x by one chain,22 yards is one acre,what a two horse team would plough in a days work.)

abitdaft · Nov 11, 2021

Bob the beef said:
I’m not an alcie, but plenty nights at lambing I need a dram when I come in, just to settle down and ponder the day. Just the one though

I am the same, not quite a jakeball but just sometimes need that edge smoothed. It generally is towards the end of lambing that I imbibe and often because the pets are making my life a misery!

Flatlander · Nov 11, 2021

Red Fred said:
Grandad worked as a ploughman in Canada before the First War. His favourite story was of how he
ploughed once up in the forenoon and once back in the afternoon with his team of mules: Nick, Bright, Buck and Barney

My longer fields are river lots. Which when marked out many years ago would have given the owner access to water from the river to water livestock or for the house. Many years gave passed since then. Only ever found a couple of horse shoes. Big fields aren’t all they are cranked up to be. 250 is big enough in my mind

czechmate · Nov 11, 2021

Bruce Almighty said:
I should've warned you a few years ago on ffuk, welcome to the livestock farmer's world

By and large it’s great. Just wish it would stop sometimes

Pilatus · Nov 11, 2021

I find this thread interesting and it prompts me to ask the questions, to TFF members worldwide.
1 Who are the people who are going to buy your farms.
2.Why do those people want to buy your farm.
3. Where does the money come from so those buyers can buy your farm
It would be great if @Roger Perry ,@Flatlander ,@Kiwi Pete , etc and other TFF members around the world could comment on who is keen to buy farmland, despite the media making out livestock farming will be at thing of the past.

Flatlander · Nov 12, 2021

MX7 said:
I find this thread interesting and it prompts me to ask the questions, to TFF members worldwide.
1 Who are the people who are going to buy your farms.
2.Why do those people want to buy your farm.
3. Where does the money come from so those buyers can buy your farm
It would be great if @Roger Perry ,@Flatlander ,@Kiwi Pete , etc and other TFF members around the world could comment on who is keen to buy farmland, despite the media making out livestock farming will be at thing of the past.

Land buyer here in Canada have changed over the past twenty years I’ve been here. When I came here European immigrants were the main buyers and seen as a cash crop. After the high interest rates of the eighties coupled with multiple drought years there were few sons wanting to take the farms over. now it’s more multi generational family farmers that are expanding and mostly dairy and hog farms. Has a lot to do with having enough acre to spread manure On to meet new rules for nutrient management. Other are grain farms that are expanding to get enough acre to remain viable when a son is added to the business. Also heard by a friend that has lost rented land to an investor from the Bahamas buying land as part of a long term investment. up until the last ten years land here was cheap compared to other major grain growing regions in the world. As for where the money comes from Well we’ve had some good years in the past ten and with interest rates at historic lows and good commodity prices it all makes for some aggressive buyers. Here buying or farming another 500 acres for a 5000 acre farm isn’t much more than a days drilling and a couple of combining.

Kiwi Pete · Nov 12, 2021

I guess it depends how you want to define farming, in some ways I gave up farming the moment I saw the financials of the dairy farm I came from

couldn't believe the turnover, and definitely couldn't believe that the farm assistant was going to make more than the farm owner was - given the farm owner had about $12M of debt loading

By some definitions we still farm, we "raise livestock", but it's more of a ranching thing we have than what is described as "proper farming" on here. I can't afford proper farming.

Most farmers here are now seeing that they can't compete with consortiums when it comes to land acquisition, because we built an economy on farming and it's no surprise that our currency got left behind (see, about 100 current threads running stating what farmgate prices should be to achieve parity with costs)

the only real way forward for us is to be good at ranching, fortunately it isn't difficult to do that once you abandon some concepts about what is necessary to do, what you need to be spending etc

Not too sure what the future really holds, this past week I have busted an ankle and discovered that I can still do everything that needs done, and a few other things that don't (like regrassing a paddock), so there is hope in that that I'll be able to mess around for a while

heaps of pressure on farmers though, fert prices and fuel and all things going up in price, really glad we don't need those as it's going to be a tough decade ahead

Flatlander · Nov 12, 2021

Deepest sympathy for you ankle situation Been there with a crushed foot just before seeding. It is hard to compete with outside money but I can remember the days when the insurance companies and pension funds invested heavily in farm land in the uk. After the shine went out of farming for a while they were happy to drop those acres in favour of a more easily traded asset With less risk. History is repeating itself I think. Just hope interest rates don’t follow that historic trend or agriculture will suffer.

Steevo · Nov 12, 2021

I think the problem many farmers face is that stopping farming wouldn’t necessarily bring an end to the worries or troubles. Or if it does, it would instead create different worries which we also feel in prepared for.

This is one reason many farmers never retire. Often it is not in their interests to do so. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The other difficulty is that when others are involved in the business too, as other posters have mentioned (employees, family etc) there are other factors too. Changes we make have consequences for them, and can often cause them to make changes themselves which have consequences in return we may not have expected when making our first change.

Some days I feel like it wouldn’t take much for me to stop farming. However the reality is often that any stress that relieved in one direction could quite likely create equal or more stress in another direction and not necessarily create any net benefit. The result being stopping farming wouldn’t actually change things.

Often what is actually needed is not a total upheaval, but just some small tweaks round the edges that can actually make a MASSIVE difference.

The skill is finding out what those tweaks are and how to implement them. Something I am very much still working on…

What would it take.

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Up to 25%

25-50%

50-75%

75-100%

100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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