The Anton Coaker column thread

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Changing Subs

Rightly or wrongly, old EU era farm subsidies being steadily wound down. Cash we’ve relied on to prop up farm businesses is being cut every year, until it disappears in 3 years. The grand plan is that DEFRA is introducing new systems of support, based on us hugging bunnies and dolphins, or whatever the plan is. In fact, Minister George has promised that the overall budget will stay the same, so none of us will be worse off.

However, this is somewhat disingenuous. You see, although the cuts to the old payments have started, his new schemes aren’t really up and running yet, despite DEFRA having had several years to get them ready. I don’t know where the money’s going, because few of us can make sense of the mishmash that’s currently under development. There are various different overlapping ideas, still being changed on the fly. They require time and effort to both get signed into, and then adhere to. Compare that to the old EU ‘Basic payment’, which the world and his uncle said was so terrible. In premise it was very simple – or was until Whitehall intervened, throwing masses of impediments underfoot. One favourite was/is changing the official mapping details annually, so we never knew from one year to the next exactly how much land we were able to claim. That in turn highlighted the striking stupidity that a neatly clipped golf course or aerodrome might qualify for payment, but an overgrown bit of native scrub creeping out from an unmanaged hedge did not. We were – we still are- being financially forced to try and keep everything neat and trimmed….which is rather at variance with the new schemes, where they want everything left to go to wrack and ruin. It’s hard to marry the two isn’t it?

And here’s the thing. The old scheme was very clunky, but simple. You got paid a flat rate, depending on your farm size. And DEFRA’s interference notwithstanding, we knew exactly where we were. Depending on the vagaries of the supercomputer tallying it up and setting the Euro exchange rate, we knew more or less what to expect. Critically, we were left to get on and farm. And it’s an untold tale that, despite it being crystal clear that we could in fact simply ‘mow a big lawn’, put our metaphoric feet up and let the cash roll in, the vast majority of us carried on farming. I don’t suppose it was by design, but the scheme did exactly what subsidies had originally been set in place to do…keep farmers producing in a volatile and often unprofitable market.

But now, as a DEFRA heavily pregnant with new replacement schemes- each with 30-40 fathers- labours towards delivery, none of us have a clear idea of what we can expect.

I see the great and the good are asking me to embrace the planned new schemes, and not be cynical. Being a weapons grade cynic, this is a leap of faith for me. The continual complications that Whitehall cannot resist are to be married to schemes influenced by every lobby group in Christendom. Subsequently, there isn’t the least chance of these schemes being simple, sensible, fair, or practical. To bring you back to the here and now, and how it’s affecting me and mine, this is what’s happening right now. My EU payments are being cut, and soon the only support I’ll get is the most recent pre-Brexit environmental scheme I’m signed into – This is an extra payment, originally based on the premise that those farming very difficult, but highly valued landscapes, should receive extra payments. Overall, my subsidy income is already dropping by thousands.

At the same time, as you may have heard, my input costs have rocketed. Even an extensive grass based system has some inputs, and while I’m a very conservative and careful example of the type, I’m wincing at the bills. Oh, I know George keeps telling us, ‘farm gate sales’ – meaning what we sell, rather than the price of actual gates- are higher than ever. But these are a politician’s weasel words My highest value outputs are suckled calves and store cattle, which my customers subsequently fatten -partly- using corn which has rocketed in value, along with the rest of their costs. I will be pleasantly surprised if they’re able to pay tuppence more than they did last year.

Because I’m careful, and slow to jump into the unknown, I’m not about to ‘go scat’. But, by golly, I’m certainly minimising my exposure by shrinking my farming operations. Many who’re more inclined to ‘push on’ are heading for a cliff edge. This should greatly concern George, but apparently doesn’t.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Baling

So, what’s happening in the executive high-flying world of peasant livestock farming? Well, our resident shearer has been able to spare me a day or two in his hectic schedule, so we have managed to get some wool clipped off the cheviot ewes. One more group of them to process, and I’ll be looking up the hill for some blackies.

The South Devon bulls are ‘on the job’, as I believe the vulgar saying goes. ‘Solly’ has the main lot, while favourite old timer ‘Dave’ has still got some of the mature ladies he can see. He’s in disgrace though, having lamed the Angus bull while they were all waiting for the off. Hence the maiden heifers are in with untried yearling South Devon ‘Max’….it’s not what I’d want, but it’s all he can reach.

A spell of sunshine last week saw me hooking up a mower, with the vague intention of knocking down some grass. There’s nothing ready up here, but some earlier ‘off ground’ seemed have a bit of a shear. I had declined to mortgage my kids to buy fertiliser in the spring so I’m already anticipating a smaller cut, although this particular ground doesn’t often get any of the devils dust anyway. It was formerly a dairy farm, and given the way the nettles grow, I suspect its nutrient indices – or whatever the clever kids call it- will be pretty fair. And despite it having been eaten bare by hungry ewes until March, it yielded a modest shear of round bales. 2 fields which have been down to grass since I’ve had it are slowly improving, and while the volume was average, the quality was good. It was almost fit for hay, but with rain due, I sent the baler man in Friday. Later in the season, I might’ve chanced it, but grass cut prior to mid-summer is always very sappy, and I could easily find patches of greenery. So I gritted my teeth at the cost, and picked up a few rolls of wrap.

The rest of it was somewhat different. The top field was rented out for maize for some years- but I took it back in hand and put back to grass and clover 2 years ago. Initially, this went well, albeit with a few spear thistles and burdocks appearing last year. But this time…I hadn’t walked it since we laid it up, and oh my goodness, have I got some docks. Looking across from the road, it seemed green and lush. But going in the field was a different matter. A lot of the green was chest height docks, just beginning to turn reddish in colour as they flowered. They were chest height over several acres, and so dense you could hardly walk through them. Conversely, where there were no docks, and the grass seeds weren’t as strong, there’s dense white clover…but that had burnt to a crisp in the dry spring. Barely 50% had a respectable cut of grass and clover. It’s thin bony ground, and repeatedly taking maize off it hasn’t done its organic matter content many favours. And now, having spent quite grown up money putting it back to grass, I’ve no intention of scratching it up again, or spending on sprays that’ll incidentally kill all that nitrogen fixing clover. So, in true peasant fashion, we’re simply going to graze it tight with sheep for a couple of years –I’ve told my boy he’ll have to grow his in-bye flock a bit. They’ll eat out the docks and what ragwort I missed – meticulously pulled it as I mowed. I’ll try to get a fresh faced volunteer to spot spray the dashells and burdocks, and be ready to send in a topper when we inevitably get behind on that.

So, docks notwithstanding, we’ve wrapped enough really nice grub to potentially keep the weaned replacement heifer calves next winter. And frankly, they’re the future of my suckler herd, so I’m less concerned with how the rest of it pans out. The better fields on that site might give us another shear later in the summer, which could still be useful stuff. The next block we’re heading to is thinner and drier ground still, and I’m not expecting great things there. While back home, although it doesn’t get shut up until late May we have spread plenty of muck, so there’s a shear slowly coming.



Still foreseeing a shortfall, I made a few phone calls. Without much fuss, a lorry and drag soon arrived with 25 tonnes of reasonable old hay, at £95/tonne. It was a no-brainer … I can barely grow the grass for that, ne’er mind cut and bale it.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Silvo-pasture

I see that, in the interests of saving the world, I should apparently be practicing ‘silvo-pasture’. This is the clever whizz where my livestock will meander amongst trees planted thinly about grassland. Apparently extra grass will grow, my cows will be healthier, fatter, and will probably stop burping noxious gases. It’ll cure all the ills of the world. Bees and butterflies unnumbered will proliferate, colourfully plumaged birds will flit among the dappled shade across a carpet of wild flowers. The trees will lock up other noxious fumes for ever and ever and ever.

Oh please…pass the sick bucket.

As it happens, I’ve just been enjoying some of the realities of silvo-pasture, upon some lowland ‘off ground’ where a previous incumbent thought it wise to plant such widely spaced trees. There are several acres of open ground among these trees, which in turn are finally large enough not to get knocked over/nibbled to destruction. So I’ve allowed some heifers access during the winter months, as a loafing area after they’d eaten their grub in round feeders nextdoor. This was OK as far as it went. Now I’d very much like to get some beasts on the ground during the grazing season, actually eating the grass between the trees. And when I say grass, mostly I mean brambles, thistles and ragwort. I’ve spent significant volumes of cash over the years mechanically cutting the broad ‘rides’ to keep them open, but the trash thrives in the smaller gaps. It creeps enthusiastically out into the grass the minute your back is turned. Likewise, the side branches of the young trees push into the light, closing the rides up.

So, we’ve topped it once more, and are grazing it with some cattle. I daren’t allow sheep in, as the brambles hiding amongst the trees will- as the saying goes- eat far more sheep than sheep eat the brambles. I’ve had to hand pull the ragwort before knocking back the weeds, lest my poor beasts ingest enough toxic material to cause them an untimely death. And believe me, as I laboured away in the burning sun pulling this stuff I gave thought to the pontificating experts who think they’ve reinvented the farming wheel. By golly I noticed they weren’t there to help. Each time I thrust my arms into a happy combination of nettles and creeping thistle to grab another stem, my forearms became steadily tinglier….didn’t the Romans do similar to fend off the Britannic cold? I happen to have very low blood pressure- the quack isn’t concerned about this, merely suggesting I should be grateful- and when I stand up after bending down, I enjoy a moments dizzyness. It’s worse when the sun is blazing….so I’ve been spending much of my time pulling ragwort in a dazed state with my head spinning. I realise that some people might pay good money for the whirling head sensation, but I notice that they too are signally absent from the toil.

And as indicated above, every tree against open ground has to be endlessly kept in order, lest it spreads sideways. The rides around the outside are constantly being engulfed- every time I look behind me as I work, I’m sure the branches have crept another foot onto the clear ground. Thickets of blackthorn creep in from the hedge– the farming term is ‘encroachment’- resulting in yet more mechanical flailing.

It’s not at all like working with trees in ‘closed canopy’ woodland. I’m all for high pruning young trees to encourage straight knot free timber, but there are limits to my time.

The costs of fencing such ground are hideously disproportionate, given the very low stocking rate and inevitability of trees blowing onto fences. Anyone telling you more grass grows under the canopy is deluded. It doesn’t, because the trees have already nicked most of the suns energy. That lush green grass you see under trees is actually very thin, made up of watery stems. Notably, where stock shelter under the trees- either from the heat, or stormy weather- they tend to poop a lot more than elsewhere. So their fertilising poop is then concentrated under the trees.

It’s true that leaf litter blown across surrounding grassland has a value, but it’s limited. And the carbon captured by the trees isn’t going to be held for more than a few decades, however much we cling to the idea.

The whole plan sounds wonderful- and indeed, my heifers are quite content mooching amongst the trees. A few shade trees, or some ‘standards’ left to grow on in the hedgerow are certainly a good thing, But on a broad scale? It’s an unaffordable fantasy. For goodness sake, don’t do it.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Cherries

Returning from my travels last week, I pulled into a business premises, off a busy road just outside a local town. And there on a patch of lawn behind the little customer parking area were a couple of wild cherry trees. And like most cherry trees this summer, they were laden with fruit…I mean hanging with it. I was on my way home, and in no particular hurry, so I asked the staff if it would be OK for me to pick a few. Although I recognised both staffers as long term employees, they admitted they didn’t even realise there were cherry trees on site –I’m not sure how you’d fail to notice, but hey ho. I could, apparently, help myself.
So I left a door open on the truck for Fido to watch me, shook out the bread bag that had contained my lunchtime sangoes, and set to. The fruit was so dense on the branches that I was grabbing handfuls at a time, as well as eating my fill. I soon filled the bread bag to bursting point. Now it’s true that wild cherries are smaller than those selectively bred for heavier yields, and subsequently, the flesh to stone ratio isn’t as attractive. Further, one tree’s fruit wasn’t nearly as tasty as the other’s- doing a bit of comparative study, I’m finding wild cherry trees with darker ripening fruit tend toward the bitter. This in turn led me to recall working –long ago- in fruit orchards in steamy tropical Far North Queeensland. Discovering I was handy with a chainsaw, the owner had me fell a particular large ‘Jackfruit’ tree. Records showed its fruit wasn’t very tasty, so it had to go. The episode has stayed with me not for the interesting example of orchard management, but chiefly because as I used the chainsaw, and he pulled on a rope with his tractor, the tree did indeed come crashing down safely away from its more favoured peers. Sadly, it was also host to a ‘paperwasp’ nest, and as ‘Alf’- the farmer- waved his arms in a complicated bit of semaphore I couldn’t make out, the first of the irate wasps alighted on my bare chest and stung me. It was at this point I guessed the meaning of Alf’s frantic gesticulating, as we both ran for the river – the idyllic ‘Crystal Creek’.
Sorry, I digressed there a bit. So, after 15 minutes pleasant activity stood under a shady tree the other night, I soon had more delicious fruit than a family would eat in one go. Indeed, I’m now preserving surplus for a winter treat. And here’s the thing- I didn’t see any picked-over branches, or empty stems –other than what the birds have been feeding on. It appears no-one else had noticed this free fruit, despite it being in plain view of thousands of people who pass by daily. I’m aware there’s a well-used food bank in the adjoining town, and the premises owning the lawn and trees sells fruit… wrapped in plastic. I’m not sure exactly what either fact says, but they say it pretty loud.
The episode also reminded me of when our kids were half grown, and we were headed off on holiday as a family. We’d stopped overnight in a ‘Chainlodge Motel’ en route, and in the morning strolled next door to the large shiny supermarket, to secure the weeks provender. And there, along the supermarket car park boundary, were planted several ornamental looking plum bushes, some with red fruit, and some with yellow. Both were ripened just about to perfection, and the yellow ones especially were just ambrosial. So 3 kids and I were quickly stood on the low brick walls Tesc-trose had obligingly provided, gorging as we picked carrier bags full. Alison looked on, embarrassed and amused in equal measure, as shoppers walked past us tutting and shaking their heads, muttering that we must be impoverished Eastern European seasonal workers or itinerant tinkers, or some such. Some of the head shakers presumably went into the supermarket and bought fruit- shipped from goodness knows where- on those little plastic trays, wrapped in cling film.
The kids and I cared not one jot, and filled our metaphoric boots. I wish I could make up these tales, but I promise you….every word is true. What a messed up world we live in….even when the good green earth’s bounty is there for the picking, we’re conditioned to ignore it, and shuffle into a neon lit hall, and queue to buy less tasty fruit. It feels like we’ve taken Eden, and thrown it away so we can have supermarkets, concrete, corporate interests, and all that stuff. Weird

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Tory Party Leadership

I’ve got very poor form in picking Conservative party leaders, or being ‘on trend’ with popular politics generally. I’d met Michael Ancram some time before he then ran for leader in 2001, and thought he was a capital fellow. I followed his career with interest…but come his leadership bid, he crashed out. More lately, I considered Rory Stewart an exceptional man, and a worthy candidate. And subsequently, judging by the way Boris quickly chopped his legs out from under him in their leadership tussle, I presume Boris concurred. Then, with the evidently insincere Boris at the helm, I changed a Conservative habit of a lifetime and cast my vote elsewhere. It didn’t help that my constituency MP Geoffrey Cox had singularly failed to impress me. A delegation from the old homestead had met with him, concerned that a very good school one of our kids attended was deemed to be rubbish. Apparently OFSTED reckoned it’s curricular unsatisfactory- it included agriculture and horticulture. Ole Geoff dismissed our concern like shooing a housefly off his arm. All he could do was wax lyrical how great a shame it is that every school didn’t teach Latin nowadays. Latin, you’ll recall, is a dead language used almost exclusively by the legal profession to make themselves look frightfully clever…and able to charge you quite breath-taking fees. But when I voted differently for once, Geoffrey- and his dishevelled leader- got in on a landslide. Clearly, it’s not worth following my lead.

But, I can’t resist having a go, regarding the extant leadership contest. My first concern is that most of the current field have been happy enough to hitch their whatsits to Boris when he was in the ascendancy, despite his clearly having the moral compass of a sewer rat. It’s a sad reflection of our wider collective myopia. Worse, close ally Dishy Rishi is apparently in with a good chance, which beggars belief. Wasn’t it 10 minutes ago we discovered that he was happy, while running the country’s finances, for his wife to…er… ‘sidestep’ tax liabilities. And then, when the cat slipped out of the bag, his initial response wasn’t contrition and apology. Rather fury that someone had leaked their private affairs- reports at the time suggested he’d launched an inquisition to find the culprit. He wanted to keep grubby little secrets about how his family was managing not to pay tax, and was angry that, despite holding high office, he wasn’t able to keep these secrets. It was a shameful display, and a clear reflection of both his personal character, and poor understanding of perceptions. But somehow, apparently, MPs think everyone has forgotten.

His maintaining the chance to run off to the US bothers me less- indeed, I wish he would-, but it hardly shows commitment to the country he claims to want to lead.

I have no issue with employing the right people to do a job, and to take an example, accepted that Canadian Mark Carney could be trusted to head up the Bank of England without secretly funnelling off funds to buy eleventy gazillion gallons of maple syrup. But I’m afraid walking into No 10 requires a rather clearer loyalty.

The rest of the field leave me fairly uninspired. I’ve once had direct dealings with Liz Truss, and to be fair, she took on the brief I delivered in a crammed 3 minute introduction. She then went away, and dealt with the matter. She does get things done. But does she have that gravitas required? No, she doesn’t. Standing head and shoulders above the rest however, is Tom Tugendhat. Untainted by association with Boris, and with a solid background revealing a significant intelligence, he’s been unafraid to say things which others at the top might not have wanted to hear. He’s impressed me with his earnest intent, and ability. Indeed, given that most of the others have been on the front benches, he’s the one I’d formerly noticed most. I wasn’t that impressed that he joined the ‘I’ll cut taxes’ scuffle at the outset, but hey ho.

Anyway, given my poor judgement, he’s probably got no chance – indeed, he might even be out the race by the time you read this. I hope not.

Meanwhile, I’ve got rather more pressing matters to attend to. With a high pressure centred right over my shiny bald head, I’ve been mowing hay like a mad thing. My crops might’ve done with another week or two, but farming on a soggy hillside, I’m not inclined to pass up this weather. You’ll recall I declined the kind offer of fertilisers at 3 times the old price, and crops are a bit lighter. But, there’ll be enough.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Hey Hey

You won’t be getting a prize for guessing what I’ve been up to, as the high pressure finally drifts away, and the dust settles. Because yes, in a more or less relentless 3 week spell, we’ve cut and baled about 80% of the hay/silage crops. There’s still a few odd outlying fields up here to do here, 25 acres of dried up wisps that weren’t worth cutting on some frazzled Eastern ground, and the possibility of a 2nd cut- subject to some moisture- on another lowland block.

I have got some numbers for you. I like numbers. Surprisingly, my unfertilised old pasture up here yielded a steady 5-7 round bales to the acre, despite having mostly been scalped with sheep until the end of May. This is maybe 3-4 bales less than if I had sprinkled some granules in the spring, and since they were going to cost approaching £1000/tonne, or £100/acre, I think we can agree they wouldn’t have represented a very good investment. Some of my colleagues bought their fert a bit cheaper, or used what they had previously stored, but the bottom line was that I was able to buy extra hay in, safely delivered, for less than the cost of the ‘Devil’s dust’. It really was a no brainer.

It has given me cause to reflect, and observe. I did spread plenty of dung – but then, I do that every year. We applied a lot of ground limestone too, although that was so late that it can’t have had much effect this season. And the fields spread weren’t any different to those that didn’t get limed. A marked anomaly has been inconsistent crops. Almost every field had huge differences in grass volumes within their mown area. Some patches yielded twice what the other end of the field did. There wasn’t any evident rhyme or reason, like where dung might’ve gone on thicker. I’m baffled. The only real implication was the logistics of harvesting such crops. If we were trying to get it dry enough for hay- to save yet more rolls of expensive wrap- we had to tip toe around these light patches. Turning it once was OK, but a second turn reduced it to chaff and dust. I had field after field where main crops weren’t coming ‘fit’, while thin patches were disappearing fast. Judicious lifting of the tedder was the trick, along with then raking it across into bigger rows to aid the baler. Even then, the goon driving the old rubber band baler – yours truly- still had several difficult sessions. When you’re getting hot and bothered, and the shiny chaff shoots up into the balers workings, packing itself tightly where it wasn’t meant to be, having to stop and pull out armfuls of this dusty rubbish is a recipe for a moments slip in concentration. And we know where that can lead, don’t we?

By chance, we’d bought one of those single rotor rakes this spring, so we were able to make ever bigger rows, which certainly helped.

And on the upside, the bales have mostly been of the sweetest smelling soft green fodder, which stock will adore. Mind, come January, the beggar’s will then eat it too fast and stand bawling for more…but hey ho.

Some more numbers for you. What ‘off-ground’ we harvested ourselves –some was done by contractors- was cut and baled using fuel carried daily to tractors in cans, so we know exactly what diesel got used. And the average – not including travelling to site- was about 15 litres per acre start to finish. That works out at about £3.25 per round bale. Interestingly, where bales needed wrapping, the wrap alone cost as much. Hmm. Where I’m not sure the ‘hay’ is quite there, we leave bales out for a few days to see if they start heating. If they do, I either wrap them, or sometimes just leave them out until they’ve calmed down again. I’m sure the pointy end go-ahead sorts will be shouting that I don’t know what I’m doing and that I should probably plough everything to put in new seeds, and get a big forager in to make clamp silage. This advice generally comes from those blissfully unfamiliar with 7’10” bridges, and boulders surfacing through the pasture like whales coming up for air.

Anyhoo, with the bought in fodder, and 100 bales of leftovers from last year, I reckon I’ve enough to carry my reduced number of cows through a moderate winter. And to ensure it’s worth doing so, they need to be in calf. So my next job is to venture out onto the veldt to find the Galloways for a liaison with the boys.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Dover

What a bizarre scene. Thousands stuck in traffic jams trying to get to Dover to go on their hols, along with HGVs stretching beyond the horizon. Meanwhile several hundred more bob about in the Channel in rubber dinghies, also trying to get to Dover. I found the juxtaposition quite striking.

We can afford to drive our cars across the continent for a bit of recreation. We buy and sell ‘stuff’ to such an extent that the moment the flow of juggernauts stutters, the resulting queues reveal the scale of it all.. Both cars and lorries- pretty much all of them- are burning 350 million year old fossil fuels, adding ancient carbon to the atmosphere. We’ll come back to this directly, but accepting the science means acknowledging that some of those poor souls bobbing about in dinghies are being displaced by changing climatic conditions- along with a desire to live in a safe country where comparative wealth and luxury abound….. so they come here, and we all add to the cycle.

Writing about those clamouring to get into the country as ‘asylum seekers’ is, of course, fraught. I can scarcely type a word without getting shouted down. Some people can’t contemplate the subject without adopting a ‘we love everyone and welcome anyone’, but then aggressively – and somewhat confusingly- jump down the throat of anyone they disagree with. Some of them will decry the regimes and ideologies the refugees are fleeing, calling the leaders all kinds of names….but claim to love everyone without judging. How do they know what kind of folk the occupants of the rubber boats will be? It’s all a bit weird.

Government policy tiptoes around it. Policy ties itself in surreal knots trying to find a way of stemming the flow, without confronting the reality that a great many people in the UK want the flow significantly reduced. The plan to –possibly- send some to Rwanda is going cost a fortune and incense opponents, whilst barely scratching the surface. Who’s kidding who?

As that Clarkson fella suggested lately, the flow of migrants who will be arriving if world food price and availability isn’t resolved, will make the current level seem like a trickle. At what point will we be able to have a frank discussion at national level, without it descending into a mudslinging fest about race? Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to talk calmly about it. Saddest, the refusal to talk simply fuels a kneejerk reaction, which is not exactly going to build the cohesive loved-up society some people imagine.

Back to the carbon stuff then.

I suppose no-one wants to be the bearer of bad tidings. Happily, I don’t care. I’m quite comfortable telling you that anyone earnestly talking about ‘net zero’, or ‘carbon trading’, or any of that guff, is- frankly- lying. As long as we’re releasing carbon by burning fossil fuels, there’s not really any such thing as ‘carbon neutral’, and the credit/offsetting business is nothing more than a smokescreen. There isn’t any realistic carbon capture being done, and planting a few trees won’t solve anything. At best they’ll soak up a bit of the carbon …and then release it again for our grandchildren to deal with.

It saddens me that some people who I might otherwise respect get sucked into it. Perhaps they see the even bigger reality, and have decided to stick to the illusion that we’re doing something, hoping that business as usual and some kind of societal stability can be maintained. I can’t subscribe to it……it’s dishonest, and won’t make the carbonised bogeyman go away. Mentioning ‘sustainability’ and using all the right catchphrases is all very well. But if you’re wearing synthetic fibres, eating food grown on the other side of the world, and are vaguely familiar with the inside of an aeroplane, then you are the problem.

Look, I’m a simple livestock grazier. I see the landscape under my management as the home for the flocks and herds I maintain. I have a reasonable grasp on how many sheep and cows it can support, and understand how outside inputs raise this. I can see how the bio-diversity is affected by the level of intensity of my farming operations. I know all too well what happens if I overstock a piece of ground.

Humanity doesn’t seem to have a comparable planetary overview, and until evidence shows otherwise, doesn’t seem to have a shepherd to direct us either. We are fuelling a population explosion with ‘outside’ inputs, in the form of fossil fuels - and other forms of mineral exploitation. And I’m afraid when the ship sinks, the number of life rafts is going to be woefully short.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

What Makes the difference

In between rushing around, I sometimes take a moment to just watch my cattle peacefully graze – or sit and cud, or bicker and argue in the never ending tussle of who is at the top of the hierarchy today, or doze, or meander off for a drink at the trough/stream/puddle. Most of my beasts are quiet enough that I can go in amongst them, and talk to them as we both enjoy the day. And as anyone who knows could attest, there is something deeply soothing about being at peace with ruminant livestock. I adore the subterranean gurgling sound of a cow bringing up a mouthful of cud to chew – it signifies that she is content. I love the smell of cows chewing and burping at me. The touch of their greasy coat shows they’re ‘doing’, which in turn shows as a summer sheen the eye can clearly see.

Likewise the growing lambs, which- this year- have a roundness to them and a dull oily quality to their coats, showing they’ve prospered. I’ll soon be cashing in some of these lambs, and while I long ago learnt not to count the cash until it is in my grubby hand, the portents are good. To date, we’ve had scant trouble with them – for there are dozens of things to go wrong with the blessed creatures. The ewes wintered well, but without excessive feed bills. The lambs slipped out easily enough when it was time, in fair weather. The grass grew alongside them through the spring, critically during that difficult moment when we need to empty the hay fields and get the sheep out onto the rough, which in turn is always later to grow. We were soon fetching them back in to get the jackets off the ewes, and the lambs were still handling well. Treated against wigglies, and drenched and bolused, back to the rough they went, and are looking promising yet. At the time of writing, there’s only the furthest flock to fetch in off the hill. They get the least intervention, and are my favourites because of it. How will they come in? We’ll see.

The bit that baffles me is why some years are so different to others. I wouldn’t be able to say one year was that much different to the next, but the lambs this year are streets better than most years. We are bolusing more against cobalt deficiency, which often seems to be a seasonal problem. One year will be worse than another, and having a few bad goes with it – and you really don’t want to experience cobalt problems if you can avoid them- we’re trying to be one step ahead. I’m watching the cost carefully, and have one or two ‘controls’ to compare. We’ll know in a week or two.

The only fly in my oinkment will be the very dry conditions elsewhere. Up here, we’ve had enough moisture, and everything is green. But on my lowland ground, and critically, in parishes where some of my buyers make their living, the conditions have been dire. I’m lucky enough to have been able to ship my yearling heifers back up to the hill, when their keep ran out and turned to dust. Not everyone has that luxury, and I don’t expect those worst affected will be wanting to buy a few pens of store lambs for a week or two.

I’m reminded of a visit to a cattle market, when I was adrift in Australia as a lad. I’d already passed herds of cattle grazing the wide verges, with a dog sat patiently at either end, and a lad living in a caravan tending them. They were being walked slowly away from drought hit areas, paying a little rent to the parishes they passed through. ‘Grazing the long acre’ I think they called it. Then, when we got to market, and I saw trucks unloading the cattle that had remained in the dry area, I understood why. Oof! I’m fairly hardened to the realities of such things, but they were not a pretty sight. The Aussies regarded it as perfectly normal, and part of the farming business. If you were lucky with the weather, you got to buy truck loads of hungry beasts at a bargain price. If you weren’t so lucky…well, ‘tough go, eh son’. That memory keeps our troubles in perspective.

Lastly, is it only me that noticed that the one named victim of Russia’s latest bombing campaign was one of Ukraine’s richest men, blown up in his own mansion. He was a grain trader. That was no accident. It was a targeted and specific message from that nice Putin chap.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Scotland

My lovely little wife and I have been away, quietly slipping up the M6 for a week’s R&R in Scotland. But before we even got there my blood pressure was rising again. As is our wont, we broke the journey with a night in a favourite faded beauty of a grand old hotel in Lakeland. And taking an early morning constitutional, I found myself walking back up toward said M6. As I’d seen the night before, prior to dropping off the sliproad at Shap summit, that farm within the carriageways is now destocked and dotted with silly fantasy tree plantings. And sure enough, my dawn walk revealed acres and acres of it. Clumps of plastic tree tubes are filled with thorns, alders and hazel, planted last winter. The bold plan seems to be to create some idyll of broken scrub woodland, based no doubt on the fanciful idea that this will somehow make climate change ills all go away. It will so obviously not do this, but has equally evidently taken away the livelihoods of a number of shepherds, hauliers, auctioneers, abattoir workers, and goodness knows who else. Enquiries over subsequent days suggest the land belongs to a large estate, who would also undoubtedly control most of the commoners via tenancies. Some ground was still unfenced, with evidence of a small number of cattle still grazing. Sources indicate that there are to be a handful of in-hand longhorn cattle left to forage amongst the wilderness. Wherever the cattle potentially remain, the trees have enormous galvanised mesh guards, spiked on the outsides.

I think it likely money has changed hands somehow, probably to permit some corporate giant to continue spewing carbon much as ever. I walked as far as the Northbound overpass, beneath which I stood and listened to the traffic thundering overhead. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

The reality of the planting is the mesh guards will become messily engulfed by any trees that successfully grow on that blasted hill, although my own experience suggests they’ll mostly fail anyway. I noticed the fencing wasn’t carried out carefully enough to be sheep proof, and some neighbouring Swale ewes had already pushed into one of the new enclosures. Hopefully they’ll nibble the trees out toot sweet, but I fear they’re fighting a losing battle.

Onwards, we crossed the –still open- border into a damp and green Scotland, headed for the warm embrace of several dear friends, across a widespread and vibrant farming community. One of our goals was the centennial celebrations of the Belted Galloway Cattle Society, and it would be wholly truthful to modestly admit that I took the champion female Beltie to their big National show at Wigtown. Obviously, the more astute will’ve detected the weasel words, and I neither owned nor led out said beast. I merely pulled into a friendly yard and hitched up their 2nd trailer to help get the team to the show.

Obviously, all the subsequent celebrating, along with pre-planned jollies, involved no small amount if libation and feasting, and I’m now a stone heavier.

Back to land use and community. Around Dumfries and Galloway, any ground good enough to support milch cows is being hoovered up by those who’re convinced you’re not a real man unless you’re milking 800-900 cows- preferably more. The landscape is slowly changing by judicious use of large swing shovels, where anything from wet patches and old stone walls, up to and including geological formations like drumlins, are simply flattened, drained, or removed. The resultant ryegrass monocultures are a biological desert….no less than the reviled commercial sitka forests. As you know, I sit somewhere between all this. I struggle to defend this level of intensive land use, although it’s truthfully just a reflection of the effect of urban humanity multiplying unchecked. Conversely, I’m repelled by the childish rewilding fantasy. A lot of the locals struggle to differentiate between the differing extremes of tree planting ambition, and- not unreasonably- simply hate it all.

One of the highpoints of our trip was diversion North to an iconic 5000 acre property, running 3000’ up above a famous loch. 1000 blackface ewes and 40 cows graze the mountainside as thousands of tourists enjoy the scenery. It is a model example of hill farming, but they now have no farming neighbours. Not one. Looking out across the loch at miles of mountains, there were only 2 hills visible that were stocked. It shocked me to see it.

Pondering all this, we trundled homebound once more, back down into the baking Southern dustbowl. Foragers were spotted chopping spring crops of corn, in a belated attempt to find feed for cattle in the drought hit landscape.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Phew Hot Bailing

Phew….that session was a bit warm. Pretty much the moment I stepped back on the place from a week away, we’d knocked more grass down, and straw was starting to roll in. By the end of last weekend, I was a filthy baked dust choked wreck, but had baled all of the leftover bits and pieces of mowing ground up here. I had round bales of hay everywhere, and had managed to fill a loft with 360 very nice little bales. I’d tell you more about the latter, but it would involve admitting someone nameless had bent the brand new PTO shaft on the little old baler. And I can’t mention the matter, or my stand-in baler driver will take umbrage. She’s usually quite adept at the job, but if we upset her she won’t cook my tea. So schtum, OK?

18 tonnes of bright barley straw had also appeared, although that has to be off-loaded as near as the big wagon can get, until I cart it over the narrow bridge separating me from civilisation. To add spice to my weekend, the wrinkles in my rug included a strapping 4 month South Devon calf dropping dead beside the West Dart…right by a popular picnic spot. This was just as I was hitching up a baler, and isn’t exactly the most accessible place on the property. I could maybe get a tractor within 150 yards of it with an hour of difficult and risky rock crawling….although that would still put me on the wrong side of the river. Luckily, a phone call soon organised a couple of strong capable sorts on a quadbike, and while it took them as long to get down to the riverside, at least they could get to the right bank. There were no signs of ‘blackleg’- the most likely clostridial disease to have knocked such a beauty down so suddenly. Suspicions lie on his having choked on detritus left by some helpful visitor.

I’m not going to dwell on it, and don’t know for sure….but the suspicion remains. To give you an idea of the special kind of stupid I’m faced with in this regard, let’s move the narrative to one of the blocks I was about to bale. Lying beneath the ‘big house’ down the valley are 3 alluvial meadows, where the owners like me to cut the grass late enough to allow wildflowers to seed. It’s a faff, but the fodder is always lovely stuff, even if the molehills make for some sandy dust when it’s so dry. The real bugbear is access. The entrance is right by a much loved honeypot picnic spot, where the river babbles idyllically under a picturesque old bridge. The handy layby could sensibly contain about 6 cars, so the 12 other vehicles pulled up were just abandoned wherever the drivers thought fit. And before you suggest I’m a curmudgeonly old grouch, ask how you’d feel, knowing that should your house catch fire, or someone dear to you need the emergency services in some way, that these idiots give scant thought for keeping the road clear. Anyway, threading my way through early in the day, I managed to get the baler in. Stopping to open a gate, I picked up a few bits of litter as is my wont, but stopped short of picking up 2 knotted plastic bags of what we can reasonably deduce was dog muck- neatly hidden behind a boulder. I didn’t really fancy having it in the hot cab with me all day, and seemingly neither did the dog owner. They drive all the way out here, because it’s so lovely, but then leave plastic bags of dog muck. Thanks.

The next day I’d allocated to getting the straw picked up. Half of the load was pitched off outside my cattle grid on the common. A dozen or more cars are generally parked there too, so I’d rudimentarily coned off enough space to work, and get in with the telehandler as needed. When I was down to the last few big square bales, I picked up the cones- read empty drums- in passing. And sure enough, within 10 minutes, some bozo had parked in front of them. I squeezed past, having to lift the bales high over his vehicle –hoping the strings didn’t break at the wrong moment. It’s true that I could have tracked in around to the back of the stack and loaded from the far side. But then, he could’ve easily parked 10’ to one side, and been spared the unkind thoughts I had about his intelligence and parentage.

Somehow though, through it all, the team kept our collective cool.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Ploughs

It’s that time of year when I watch harvest reports, and see the combines rolling beneath their columns of dust, as another year’s crops are safely harvested. This has been a topsy year, not least because of abnormally dry conditions. I’m hearing that many operators have had to take extreme steps to prevent fires, including having lads following the harvest crew with firebreak equipment and bowsers of water, or operating only when the dew is down. Even then, there are reputed to be scores of combines lost to fires, complicating a significant shortage of new ones. Revealingly, the farming press is running features on those nursing tired machines along, or hiring out carefully rebuilt old ones, rather than the usual articles featuring shiny new machines that cost more than a house. Another feature of the dry conditions has been some crops have needing to be harvested through the cooler night to prevent the shattering crops from simply falling to the floor.

But chiefly, as usual, I’m in awe of the scale of the operation, where a relative handful of men and women feed untold hundreds of millions- who remain ignorant of how they really exist. It’s unfailingly striking…to me at least.

A slight tangent has been a glimpse into a world few of us even realise exists, and if you can get to the bottom of this piece, perhaps you’ll better understand my awe. It started with a casual glance into an online discussion about tillage equipment…ploughs and the like – and the wear and tear it suffers under work. Specifically, the chat was prompted by a fella who was after advice about differing alloys and their wearing properties.

You see, while most of us are worrying about whether the dog with the dodgy tummy will get through the night, or whether little Hermione’s exam results will get her into the right university, or whatever our troubles might be, a tiny fraction of humanity is worrying how they’re going to affordably turn the dirt in preparation for planting next years crops. I am only vaguely aware of such things, being mostly focussed as I am on gathering the last woolled hill sheep to clip, and maintaining a steady log infeed for the sawmill. So it was a very real privilege to stumble upon this discussion.

To expand then, apparently some soils plough, or till, or whatever work needs doing, easier than others. It’s obvious if you think about it. Dragging pointy bits of steel through soil infested with bits of flint is probably more wearing than, say, soft clay soils. Other variables apparently include the amount of soil moisture, and tractor speed. Then, there is the steel you might be using. Tillage equipment – and remember this is hardly my area of expertise- has wearing parts, which can be replaced. Like putting new tyres on your car, arable farmers have to renew these wearing parts on their equipment. And like tyres on your car, there are often myriad options to choose from, with various ‘aftermarket’ manufacturers providing differing specifications. Different shapes and alloys each have their relative merits and fans.

And the chat I happened upon soon revealed an immensely satisfying meeting point, where this technology slams up against practical farmers, who’re not above experimenting, changing things, and cosmic homespun repairs. The talk was soon straying into ‘welding on a bit of reclaimed spring steel’ territory, heading for a degree of semi-professional bodgery even I could relate to. The spread of opinions and experience within the 4-5 participants went from such primitive repairs, through bolting on standard replacements, to ceramic alternatives, or exotic tungsten alloys.

And here’s the thing, while I realise this is an extraordinarily obscure bit of trivia, which would barely interest anyone ordinarily, you need to understand….this is how society is able to function. If these men weren’t constantly struggling to find cheaper ways to grow crops – and it’s a certainty they’ve got counterparts in Kansas, the Ukraine, South America and the Antipodes- 8 billion clamouring humans – and yes, we’ve just passed that milestone- would very quickly be eating each other.

To put a loaf of bread in front of all of these hungry people, a tiny percentage of men and women have perfected growing cereals across broad acres, for a comparative pittance. They’re still relying on fossil fuels to forge the steel they’re using, power the machines, and make the nitrogen fertiliser.

If you imagine there is a ‘cost of living’ crisis, better ask yourselves how these men are going to bodge their way around using fossil fuels. Because we’re living on the back of this accomplishment- all of us. And it never escapes me for a moment.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Large Families

While we’ve been sweating in a parched landscape, Europe has had it worse, and Pakistan has been flooded, it’s more or less passed us by what’s happened in China. And we might do well to notice, because it could upset everyone. China has endured a searing heatwave, across vast areas, for over 2 months. Some areas affected are habitually hot through the summer, some less so, but this year it’s different. A large percentage of weather stations have recorded their hottest temperatures ever, and it has been ongoing for over 70 days non-stop.

Unsurprisingly it has had various effects, not least a significant lowering of river levels meaning there is less hydro-electricity to be harnessed. Coal fired power plants are wound right up. Agriculture has been hammered, especially the pig sector, although the details are still scant….more will surely be coming out in the wash.

And the reason we should be noticing is that there are an awful lot of Chinese, and collectively they have a lot of money to spend. As we noticed last year, their leader Xi Jinping, who grew up in times of famine, has no intention of allowing his population get hungry. After all, hungry people are grumpy people, and if they all kicked off….well, that would be an awful lot of cobblestones coming over the barricades wouldn’t it? So a couple of years ago the Chinese embarked on a major food buying spree, hoovering up something like half of the world’s traded cereal crops last year alone. And it looks like they’ll be needing that reserve already. Indeed, given the reduced yields across such disparate regions globally, we might already have been in a tailspin of unavailability if Xi hadn’t been so prudent. But it looks like the crisis is here, and no amount of talk is going to refill empty granaries.

This has made me ponder anew the size of the human population. It is so out of kilter now that something is inevitably going to give. Whether or not 8 billion of us could find a way of managing our affairs better is moot really…Mother Nature will do the house keeping for us, if we can’t. And her broom is broad and brutal. It’s also clear that part of human nature is to want everything we can possibly have, now.

I’ve grappled with how we would have to come to terms with our behaviour, and it’s a morass that we seem unable to contemplate. Just suggesting that people shouldn’t have large families leads to the inevitable implication that those who do are selfish, or greedy. Or perhaps, just unable to see the bigger picture. And that’s clearly not always the case….any of us can think of plenty of perfectly nice reasonable people who have more than 2 kids. I’m one of three, and have bred and raised three myself…. And as we know, I’m a marvellous sort of chap.

One of the problems is that we’re hard wired to want to reproduce. Right from the simple physical urge – I seem to recall it wasn’t the least pleasurable way to spend some time, through to the subconscious drive to replicate ourselves, and provide for our offspring to ensure their success. It’s pretty basic Darwinian stuff. Indeed, I’m always amused when people try to step around the reality of our urges and drives, never mind the finer points beneath them.

Do you think the King Solomon or Genghis Khan kept such vast harem’s because they enjoyed ‘a bit of nookie’? No maister, they did so because they wanted to father lots and lots of kids. Whether they saw it as a power thing, or understood the base drives behind such behaviour doesn’t make much difference.

Then, a regrettable but repeating factor in modern human fertility medicine is the seemingly unlikely cases where Doctors somehow end up being the father of several of the infants born to women/couples they’ve helped. There have been a number of such cases, including one Cecil B. Jacobson in the States, who was eventually jailed for ‘fraud and perjury’ for secretly impregnating his patients with his own sperm. It’s thought he might’ve fathered 72 children. Mind, to be fair, he was born in Utah to start with, and isn’t that famous for the Mormons polygamy? Or there was a Dutch fertility Doctor Jan Karbaat, who did much the same. He died in 2017, before the case really exploded, but it appears there are maybe 200 kids conceived to patients of his, who are in fact his own children. The case is ongoing.

We are, simply put, driven to replicate, but haven’t collectively come to terms with how to limit our success. And the rest of the planet is now paying the cost.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

HM The Queen

And so the page has finally turned on the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. We all knew the day would surely come, but that doesn’t lessen the shock and feeling of national loss. It’s hard to picture a Monarch reigning so flawlessly over such a tumultuous era, or having seen such change in her life. Just take a moment to think how Britain- and the world- has changed in her lifetime.

Her Majesty’s constant grace and dignity was outstanding, and more or less unparalleled. Her value to our country, both internally as a stabilising force, and externally as an iconic sign of steadfast Britishness, is beyond ordinary measure.

I am glad for her, the family, and the institution that her dignity remained to the last, and that she was granted a chance to fulfil her obligations until her final day. Bless her soul, I shall miss her presence- however remote it was to such as I.

So it is with slightly mixed feelings I greet the accession of our new King. I’ve no doubt he’ll acquit himself admirably, having been ‘in training’ for this event so long. But amongst other considerations, I’ve lost my ‘landlord’. As you probably know, I’m a Duchy of Cornwall tenant – and this means I acquired a new landlord –Prince William- as of Her Majesty’s passing. As a tenant I have had the privilege of meeting the former ‘Boss’ on a few occasions, and have been close enough to his organisation to have a fairly good idea of how things were. Indeed, it’s going to be a mental trip hazard for a while to think of him as ‘His Majesty’, rather than the long accustomed HRH.

Indeed, he’s been ‘Aitch are aitch’ on the estate so long I can remember nothing else- I was a child when he was investitured –is that the word? Early in his incumbency, possibly with less going on in his life, he was able to take a closer interest in the estate. Once, somewhat to my late mother’s embarrassment, he simply walked in the backdoor of an evening, quite unannounced. Mother was busy cooking some tea, as one of her stable girls was sat trying to extricate a thistle spine from her bare foot – I don’t think either really knew what to do, although I believe he was perfectly disarming. He then spent a couple of weeks working on one of the farms above Chagford, with Fred Hutchings and family. Cows had to be milked, calves fed, and muck shovelled. Fred even took him up onto the newtake to show him how to build drystone wall. Fred admitted later with a twinkle in his eye that they wouldn’t normally be doing that task in February, and it was some time before the young Prince got over the brutal cold of man-handling granite boulders on the top of Dartmoor in the depths of winter.



As for his nature, you can take it from me that he’s been far better informed, and has a sharper grasp of a range of matters which have concerned him over the years than many would have given him credit for. I was once summoned to the local office, as one of four, to brief himself on 4 disparate rural subjects. He was passing through, on his way from a meet and greet job in Cornwall, and wanted the latest developments straight from those best placed to know. My presence was with regard preserving cattle herds on the commons. As we sat amiably around a table, he had an assistant stood behind him with a big file full of paperwork, should information be needed. I noted he was already well up to speed, and didn’t need to refer to the file once.

When the FMD storm broke upon us in 2001, his empathy and support for those affected was immediate, personal, and made very clear.

His interest in the environment has been decades ahead of the curve, and it feels like everyone is only just catching him up on this.



Of course, not everyone shares his specific take on things, although he never tried to push his opinions on us. Rather, he showed us what could be achieved farming organically. And indeed, no-one who saw the Ayrshire herd at Highgrove could escape the glow of contentedness that came off that herd. They remain the happiest epitome of healthy milch cows that I ever saw – and I’m not an easy judge to win over.



So, I welcome his getting the main job, but already miss his caring and steady hand as Duke of Cornwall. He could hardly have done the job better.

God save the King.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Lawn Mowings

A dry week has seen me out mowing the last grass cropsof the season. Some was second cut, which –for the want of bagged nitrogen and moisture- has taken a long time to come back. Most was first cut in a very dry parish, which we abandoned as ‘not worth mowing yet’ at midsummer. I was ambitiously thinking a few thundershowers would soon freshen it up, and we’d be back into it in July…ha! That didn’t go as planned did it?In both cases, I was only just getting the mower under the green shoots which have finally reappeared, albeit some had the benefit of some dead seed heads to help hold the swath together. It was like mowing very big lawns, only yielding up 2-3 bales to the acre.
I’d never bother with such fiddling crops as a rule, as the maths don’t stack up very well. But I daren’t have left it to grow on for a few more weeks- indeed, much of it wasn’t really growing away anyway. I didn’t want to run the risk of wet weather properly returning, and making these bales disgusting soggy dumplings, or worse, simply unbaleable. I’ve played that game…trying to salvage late silage from muddy miserable conditions….it’s no fun at all. Further, if I cut much later, I wouldn’t have any regrowth where I need to be wintering ewe lambs, and tupping some inbye sheep. Hopefully scalping it now, in kind conditions, will stimulate a bit of a bite for these sheep. And the 110 round bales will feed half a score of my hungry cows.
Such are the nuts and bolts of peasant livestock farming. And while it mightn’t be of much interest to anyone else, these are the trickling little pebbles at the top of the coming landslide. By chance, I’ve had to cull out a number of my suckler cows – due to Neospora infection from dog or fox muck. So my numbers are already about 15% lower than I’d normally be carrying. Otherwise, I’d have to be taking some hard choices about what to get rid of, selling them into a ‘difficult’ market. ‘Difficult’ because unsurprisingly, it isn’t only me looking carefully at my fodder stocks, and not much liking the volume I see.
I’m hearing repeated stories amongst my peers of men who’ve been feeding cattle all summer, already having eaten most of their conserved winter fodder, and now don’t know what to do. Some are farming their way through it, sowing optimistic catch crops of brassica’s, culling harder than normal, and incorporating more straw in the cow’s diet to make up some volume – for reasons I can’t quite get a hold on, there is at least an ample supply of barley straw in arable areas.
The same is true of the sheep trade, where vast areas of the country have got a shortfall of grass now, and don’t want to be buying store lambs off the hills, or replenishing in-country ewe flocks. My cheviot lambs were £10 a head down on the year, and it looks like the draft ewes will be more like £15 back. It’s a bitter irony that the lambs are the fittest bunch I’ve reared for some years.

Amongst these testing times, I wasn’t exactly pleased to hear chirpy Steve Wright on the radio in my baler tractor, blithely assuring me that the methane from my cows was equal to all the pollution from the nation’s cars. Because while this ‘factoid’ might – or might not- stack up if you count all such gases the same, it’s hardly a fair or reasonable comparison is it? My cows burp hydrogen and carbon in a very short loop…as part of a pre-existing natural cycle. Ruminants were doing this long before we started drilling for oil and burning hydro-carbons which are hundreds of millions of years old, which releases all kinds of much nastier fumes and odours. As they say, if you don’t accept this…try spending a few hours in a confined space with a couple of cudding loafing cows, then try the same with a running car. The former would leave you fit and well, possibly developing an abiding love of cows. The latter would, admittedly, take away all of your cares and worries.

I consider it’s not only extremely disingenuous of ‘Wrighty’ to make such comparisons, reinforcing the lunatic concept that we can go on burning fossil fuels if we only get rid of those nasty cows…but it’s also hurtful. It’s damaging both my community’s mental welfare, and our standing in the wider society. And that’s wrong Steve. It’s dishonourable. You should apologise, lest you get remembered for the wrong reasons.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

ELMS RIP

Today I’ve a bit of a spindly thread for you to follow.

Boris- remember him? - was chummy with various rich clots, who imagined their money made them clever. And one of the clever wheezes they loved was the idea that, irrespective of how your lucre was made, if you vaguely look after nature in one place, it’ll be OK to hammer it flat with new houses/roads/airports/industrial parks/endless consumption everywhere else. An extension of the ideology is the subconscious salving of guilt, by supporting rewilding/tree planting/ wetland protection/species reintroduction etc. It’s a bit like putting a very big tenner in the Greenpeace collection tin. You can still wear plastic clothes, stitched together by a child in a distant sweatshop, and inevitably destined to become microfibers swilling about the ocean. You can still hop on a plane for a bit of sun, and dine on whatever fad diet is the thing of the moment, flown half way across the world to satisfy your fickle shallow needs. You can drive your car down the road, with the metals smelted, the tyres manufactured, and the whole shebang fuelled by endless fossil fuel consumption, and scrabble for more money to do even more of it. But if you fervently shout that- for instance- Anton’s cows are destroying the planet, by eating some grass and burping, you’re doing your bit.

Never mind how I feel about this, follow the bread crumb trail.

Boris was, you might remember, swept to power on a populist wave of getting us out of the EU. Ne’er mind that he pretty much tossed a coin with his old chum Dave as to who would support which campaign, and Boris’s interests in Brexit were solely -quite nakedly solely- to attain power. And having attained power and achieved Brexit, he was then faced with rejigging agricultural policy- including reforming EU subsidies. These, you’ll recall, allowed us peasants to continue raising livestock and crops at far below the cost of production. The faux greenie nature lovers were beside themselves, pretty much queued around the block giving him good advice. Every man and his dog was lobbying Boris and his minions. Farmers were going to be encouraged to protect nature and bio-diversity once more, and unroll all those years of wickedly boiling baby hedgehogs, and drenching the entire landscape with nasty poisons. Instead, they were going to provide a verdant sylvan heaven, where unicorns would soon be gambolling in pixie dust spangled sunbeams, filtering down through the forest canopies.

Our own industry was pretty much excluded from the discussion, for daring to suggest that perhaps, maybe, we ought to include food production in the list of ‘wants’. And so, unsurprisingly, when DEFRA started to ‘soft launch’ the evolving post Brexit schemes, they were nonsensical, and singularly unattractive to the great unwashed. Like anything designed by such a huge and disparate committee, they were a disaster. Frantic re-jigging and tinkering has been going on these last few months, but to no avail. Like many of my peers, I’ve simply refused to engage with any of it whatsoever. The base concept started from the insulting proposition that what I do is wrong, evil and nasty, and I should stop doing it to receive any reward. I could see it was floating on a sea of baloney, and knew it wouldn’t work.



Here, I’d like you to recall what Harold Macmillan claimed were his administration’s greatest challenge….’Events dear boy, events!’. And so, as Boris has lied his way out of office, some of his key chums have been shown the door, and Putin has caused a certain upset in world gas and grain markets, so the game has changed. And it’s rattled Whitehall. The ‘cost of living crisis’, and fuel and food insecurities, have conspired to threaten social cohesion.

While the old EU ‘Basic Payment Scheme’, which simply paid farmers a flat rate of subsidy according to how big their farm was, has been wound down, the new ELMS schemes were supposed to replace it. But with these latter being unviable, us peasants were faced with having to correspondingly wind down our farming activities…or go bust.

I speculated, about a year ago, that faced with this cliff edge, DEFRA were going to have to hurriedly dust off the old BPS, and roll it out again before things went South. Oh it’ll need some tweaks….extra payment for smaller farms, lower rates above a certain size, and a cap on maximum area etc. Some add-ons for wildlife, managed productive woodland, and restrict it to active farmers- rather than corporates, oligarchs, golf clubs or vast charities et al.

To the greenies horror, guess what’s the rumour carried in the wind?

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Sticks

As evenings cool, and evenings draw in, I’ve been engaging in that most primeval bit of human behaviour…I’ve been lighting a fire at night. There’s nothing new in this for me…burning a few sticks to warm the house has been a part of seasonal life forever. The difference this year is that a few more people have decided it might be a good idea. Given there’s some rumour that energy bills might be going up, you wouldn’t think it’d be any kind of surprise. Indeed, I was talking to a pal who makes and trades a lot of logburners a few weeks ago, and he confirmed what any clot could’ve guessed…demand is through the roof, and there’s a waiting list. His firm also sell a lot of ‘kiln dried’ logs, which he’s been imported from somewhere distant. My previous gentle inquiries regarding just how the kilns are powered have met with flustered evasion. I smelled a bit of a rodent in artificially drying firewood, and then trucking it 1200 miles…but what do I know? Anyway, you can probably surmise for yourself what’s happened now. Yes, with the price of gas, oil and electricity having leapt upward, he’s found these imports have rocketed in price- which rather suggests these ‘kilns’ weren’t running on fresh air. He’s now looking for a more local supply.
This all tickles me as I run a hardwood sawmill, and the raw data suggests if we’re recovering a sawn yield of maybe 50%, and cut 10-12 tonnes of round timber a week….I must be generating upward of 5 tonnes of eminently burnable waste. Or ‘valuable co-product’. And responding to Michael Gove, whose superchargedfizzing intellect discovered it’s more efficient to burn dry logs…and promptly attempted to ban the sale of anything even slightly damp, we built a monster new log store to dry this valuable co-product. It doesn’t use external heat to dry the product, but rather lets air through. I don’t suppose it meets Michael’s insane targets – but hey ho. So, what you might buy from me are ‘Lawn jenga kits’, and if you want to burn them, well you’re very naughty.
In fact, with 30 years of milling and seasoning English hardwoods, I know a bit about moisture content in wood. And it’s a fairly subjective business. Some species give up their moisture in a few weeks if cut small and stored well. Indeed, if you let it sit around for too long, fungal decay takes hold, and the calorific heat value plummets. You wouldn’t want such stuff to burn, as it’s gone in a flash, and you’re forever getting up out the comfy chair for more. Oak meanwhile, especially in bigger sections, is famously reluctant to dry out. We often hold oak trunks in the yard for years before milling, and while the sapwood and bark might be long gone, they’ll still be damp to touch inside. Perversely, correctly stackedboards of oak heartwood will dry perfectly well outdoorsin the rain. It’s all a balance, but hardly rocket science….and if you can’t manage your own log store, perhaps you oughtn’t be playing with fire.

I haven’t put my firewood prices up much – only enough to cover some wage and fuel outgoings- but by golly I’m anticipating having a good year flogging sticks for other people to burn. Trade is already increased, suggesting we’d better get busy and process extra into the store…. It’s hard graft, but ‘This time next year Rodders, we’ll all be millionaires’. I’m hearing that in some parts of the country the trade is …er…on fire. Aha! I guess if there weren’t masses of ash trees being condemned due to Ash die-back, there would be a much bigger spike in the price.

One of the problems with burning wood – and it’s a gloriously short carbon loop, so that needn’t be an issue- is the particulate pollution. Nasty little bits in the smoketo you and me. How government are going to deal with the surge in this I’ve no idea. It’ll be a tough sell this winter telling people they have to stop lighting the fire, and turn up the electric heater to keep warm. And anyway, can they criticise us peasants when they’re been subsidising huge freighter loads of wood pellets being brought across the Atlantic – from the Eastern US, Brazil, and now we hear, British Columbia- to burn in the huge Drax power station? I’m sure it was just a coincidence that a Drax boss sat on the ‘Climate Change Committee’ for years, only stepping down once the gravy train was properly rolling.
Hmm.
Happily, I know very little. Now, where’s the matches?

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Coal Methane

There’s a couple of bits of climate change news this week you might want to keep abreast of. No, not New Zealand’s febrile plans to tax cow burps, to which I’m sure we’ll return dreckly. But staying in the Antipodes, Australia has been shown to be sitting on a rather grubby secret. Quite apart from one of the most destructive cultures on earth – and I love both the country and the occupants, but their record of causing mass extinctions, land degradation, and pollution is right up there. It’s their coal industry, and the wholesale under reporting of methane losses. The Australian mineral exploitation industry is colossal – per capita, one of the highest levels of mining in the world. And high grade coal is one of their biggies. It’s a big empty country, and operations can go on in the outback that voters would never tolerate in heavily settled countries. If you’re imagining a couple of dirty faced miners swinging picks at the coal face, or pushing a little truck along the rails coming out of the adit, I’m afraid you haven’t quite got the idea. It’s being carried out on epic scales, using huge machines. Millions upon millions of tonnes is being extracted on a continual basis. And as if burning that lot isn’t bad enough, the incidental release of methane has been shown to be double the officially acknowledged figure. These plumes can be measured from space now, and can’t be hidden any more. Australia has little chance of achieving their declared carbon cutback goals, such as they were.

And then there’s Russia. Ne’er mind Putin’s desperate Ukrainian gambit, it’s another vast country, with mining interests in remote places where no-one is paying too much attention. And coming from one of these mines- the vast Raspadskaya plant, even bigger plumes of methane are being measured. They’re sporadic, but on a scale hard to grasp, with 90 tonnes per hour being recorded in one release. 90 tonnes doesn’t sound much unless you consider this is a gas, and that volume would power hundreds of thousands of homes….and it’s simply being vented straight into the atmosphere. The plant itself is of some note, opening in the late 70’s, and supplying about 10% of Russia’s coking coal. Several dozen miners have lost their lives in it to date, producing over 20 million tonnes of coal. Its reserves will last for some decades at current extraction levels.

Previously, all of the methane- and coal- referred to above has been lying safely inert under the ground for hundreds of millions of years. Say the number out loud to yourself – unless you’re reading this amongst mixed company……you’ll get funny looks. Go on, say it aloud.. ‘Hundreds of millions of years’, and these huge mines have only taken off in the last few decades.

Their coal is being used to power an unprecedented global industrial boom, firing steel smelting works, cement kilns, and power stations. It’s largely hidden away, channelled through distant countries with lower regulations and wages. But we buy the products that they fuel. The steel, the manufactured goods, everything downstream. We are all responsible.

This leads me onto something else that’s bothering me. I cannot stand to hear anyone talking about ‘net zero’, or ‘carbon credits’, or ‘carbon trading’. Any of it. Saying you’re going ‘carbon neutral’, while occasionally walking through an airport, or driving a car, or just living in the modern world, is a lie. Talking about achieving ‘Net zero’, because you donated toward a fund that plants some short lived trees somewhere, is a lie. And while you’re free to lie to yourself…you’re not going to lie to me.

The trade in such nonsense, where wideboys are piling in to greenwash your battered conscience, is the modern day equivalent of those medieval peddlers in religious relics as a cure. I don’t know that I blame the traders…they are only expected to try and make a living. They will, by their nature, making any claim to justify their schemes.

But you, buster, if you bleat about how you’re trying to do something, and will be part of some mythical revolution in human behaviour, and make everything better…..I’m going to call you out. Your house is filled with the products of this global carbon consumption banquet, your lifestyle is wholly reliant on it. You personally are not prepared to go without, and are ready to lie about it.

Every single delegate headed to Egypt’s COP climate summit will be lying about it- although to be fair, a lot of them are in fact paid fossil fuel lobbyists…like the Del Boy wide boys referred to above. Ha! At least their lies are honest.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Poor old Liz ….. (this dated quickly !)

Poor old Liz. A bit like Gordon Brown, she’s been allowed to take the wheel…just as the bus plummets over the precipice. Events are moving faster than I can type, but it sure looks like she’s toast now. She got in on promises of various tax cuts, and before she’s had a chance to look at wallpaper catalogues, she’s had to replace the Chancellor who was going to deliver thesepromises. And his replacement is now sailing off in the opposite direction, making her look very foolish indeed. Who’s really pulling the strings I have no idea, but it doesn’t look like its Liz –and I don’t suppose that’s the best way for a country to be governed.
It does call into question the entire Westminster Conservative cadre. Remember, they selected 2 candidates for the wider party to choose from. One clearly didn’t appear ‘man enough’, and so she’s subsequently proved, while the other had revealed a fairly shocking character flaw. Here I refer to Rishi’s reaction when his wife’s dodgy tax arrangements were revealed. His grasp of finances might be good, but his reaction then was so wrong footed it makes him uselesson a wider stage. You’ll recall that instead of embarrassment, contrition and apology, his chief concernwas to angrily try and find who’d leaked his secrets.
How Tory MPs managed to be left with those 2 candidates is a bit of a poser for me, suggesting an uncomfortable level of ineptitude.
Hey ho.
How Jeremy Hunt’s efforts will play out remains to be seen. The general assumption seems to be that wider events are going to force interest base rates up to 6% or so –although who can be sure of the numbers I don’t know. I’ve got no particular issue with these figures, although they’ll cause untold squealing. We’ve been living in a fool’s paradise for over a decade, where ‘money’ is worth nothing. You’ve been able to borrow at almost no interest – and lots have- while there is no incentive to lend money to the bank- or ‘save’ as it’s known. And this is wrong. It’s contrary to basic financial function. It devalues everything. Look, we’ve only gotone planet, and slicing it into ever smaller pieces doesn’t make the whole any bigger. It’s no better than ‘quantativeeasing’, which merely shrinks the slice of pie you already have.
Still…what do I know? I only count cows and oak trees for a living. But do stay tuned for more financial wisdom!

Further afield, to what’s happening in Ukraine. We could all see that Vlad wasn’t going to like being thwarted. And he certainly doesn’t. The current round of bombing civilian infrastructure is just vile. War is never very pleasant to behold, but resorting to hurting the wider population because you can’t get your way on the battlefront is something else. It is of note that Putin has changed his commander on the field yet again – a bit like those Premiership football club owners who sackmanagers if they lose 2 games on the trot. He’s now put in a general infamous for destroying civilian buildings in Syria. I don’t know whether the world is going to be able to sit and watch this next round of ugliness. The Russians have clearly bitten off more than they can chew, and-on the frontline- have been getting their just desserts. The current use of Iranian drones is of particular note. Analysts suggest they’re running out of hi-tech ‘cruise’ missiles, and are unable to buy components to build more. This must be seriously weakening their ability to defend themselves if something wider were to kick off. And I don’t like the implications of that one bit. Goodness but I wish they’d do themselves a favour- if they’re really getting short of munitions, all they need is one well-placed round from a handgun.
Connected, the price of gas is still in turmoil. And the turmoil has persuaded various fertiliser companies to shut down operations. Currently, the UK price for the rawest stuff is about 3 times what it was 18 months ago. That’s slowing demand, leading to soul searching by the fertiliser manufacturing industry. They have businesses to run, and are trying to guess who will pay how much for a product they make using a fossil fuel they don’t control. UK farmers have been warned by a leading supplier that there is very likely to be a 60-70% availability shortfall next spring. This may very well be a sales pitch… ‘Buy now, while you still can’. But by gum it might very well be true, and if it is…..well, whoever is in No. 10 will have further problems.

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Apples

Some worthy body announced a while back what any of us peasants could’ve told you. The crop of apples is both bountiful, and abnormally sweet this year. They benefitted firstly from a lack of frost when the blossom was out, then a lot of sun through the summer months. Even up here, I found the same. Where the odd tree struggles to set much fruit above 1000’, and often have none at all, there were apples to be seen. And fruit which is usually so sour you can hardly stand them, this year you wouldn’t need to have been very hungry to eat them.

But when I ventured down to lower climes, where I’ve got a few trees on some ‘off land’, I saw the real crop. There were indeed sacks full. My trees are hardly commercial varieties. Some have very small fruit, others have a shelf life of about 10 minutes before they’re brown mush, while one or two bear odd shaped fruit which still eats quite well. And while the latter bore no fruit at all- they must blossom earlier or later, and I daresay a frost got them- the majority were hanging with fruit. I’d had to turn the yearling South Devon heifers in with them in July, desperate for grass in the drought, so the browse line is like a clearly defined ceiling. But backing the landrover in amongst em as a work platform, I was able to fill my metaphoric boots.

I’d already popped in to see a neighbour, and he’d let me fill a 3 gallon bucket from his more domesticated trees in the garden – growing them isn’t the problem he assured me, it’s finding someone who wants them. I plundered a tree laden with large yellow apples, which have proved ambrosial. I’m idly wondering if I can get my green fingered boy to graft a few twigs off that tree onto some of our feral ones.

While I was there, I also tracked down what bullace I could find. As I’ve formerly mentioned, these oversized and more edible cousins of the sloe have carefully been set growing in the hedges either side of several internal gateways, by some shrewd and blessed soul. They weren’t as plentiful as the apples, but I still quickly gleaned a couple of gallons in my bucket. Having been drizzling on and off, it came in properly wet as I set to this enjoyable bucolic task. And the last bush I worked, with the truck backed downhill right into the hedge, was nearly my undoing. Dripping wet, I hopped back in the cab as the light failed and discovered that while I might’ve got a surfeit of fruit, I had a marked lack of traction. Happily, turning the steering across the slope, and jamming the old bus’s gear stick into difflock soon slewed me sideways out of that embarrassed phone call for help. Slithering back across the slope diagonally toward the road gate, I went on my way in a steamy cab filled with the aroma of my efforts.

My evenings now are being spent drying my gleanings before they spoil. I’ve frozen some fruit, but hearing rumours from my domestic superior about the size of the electric bills, I suspect that freezer number 2 is going to be emptied and turned off shortly. But it’s been a bumper year for such things. I’d already told you about the crop of cherries earlier – a lot of which I simply destoned, and dried like raisins. And the blackberries went on for months rather than weeks. There aren’t a whole lot of haws on the thorns, but there’re masses of sloes, and the rowan is laden with as much fruit as I’ve ever seen it bear. They’re hanging so far over they must be near to losing branches to the weight of berries.

I haven’t explored what I could do with the rowan – rowan jelly is an option, but not one which talks to me much. Seemingly you have to add a lot of sugar, which kind of defeats the object for me. All you’re doing is making berry flavoured syrup. A bit like sloe gin – which I’m very happy to sample when it’s offered, but which I don’t know that I could be faffing about making…since you buy the main ingredient, the gin.

Instead, I’ve been honing my ‘fruit leather’ production technique, removing the skins and stones from various mixed hedgerow fruits, and drying the resultant mush on a clever non-stick sheet on the stove. Stored in plastic tubs, it seems to keep indefinitely, although the main trick is stopping yourself scoffing too much as you go

 

[Anton Coaker Blog]

Chicken Licken said the sky is falling down

‘Oh no’ cried Chicken Licken, ‘the sky is falling’. And in this case it was, cos poor old Chicken Licken had the avian flu, and all of her mates had to be culled. I don’t know much about it, but could take some guesses. Birds, which make a tasty meal for such predators as can catch them, famously flock together for safety- albeit just to lower the odds. Then, they equally famously fly about the place, with many species migrating across continents and oceans. These details make quite a difference to the spread of a highly contagious pathogen. Now factor in what us clever monkeys have done this last few thousand years, domesticating birds and the grains they eat. We can keep hundreds of thousands of tasty pre-fried chicken nuggets in one place, in conditions perfectly adapted for their rapid growth. Unfortunately, said conditions are also pretty handy for infectious bugs.

A cleverer peasant than me might speculate whether the spread of bird flu in the wild is also connected to our unprecedented proliferation. Have we somehow damaged some environmental factor that has accelerated its evolution, or encouraged its spread? It can hardly be a coincidence that it’s only now become a problem, unless it’s simply a more noticeable problem because of our immense poultry farming industry. I rather suspect it’ll be a combination of the above.

Anyway, I understand my darling little wife will have to keep her few egg layers shut in their house for a while again.

And while we’re on the subject of these tasty feathered snacks, I’m intrigued by the giant flightless varieties. Not because I want anything to do with them you understand…indeed, surviving species are famously difficult to handle. Being unable to fly away has led to them being very handy at defending themselves, and I believe you really don’t want to mess with a grumpy ostrich. However, what I like about them is their place in evolution – both theirs and ours.

You see, some evolved alongside humans in Africa, and they’re absolutely fine, still extant in their natural habitat. But others, for whom humans were a novel species of clever talking monkey, who turned up late….and hungry, found us something of a nuisance as we ate them all. History generally doesn’t relate whether it was hunting the birds themselves that led to the demise of various species, or simply our taste for monstrous omelettes. But they went extinct just the tame…..just about everywhere we encountered them as we ambled out of Africa. The peculiar exception is the 2 species which survived the aboriginal’s arrival in Australia…..I’ll let you ponder that one.

Anyway, before we move on from matters ornithological, I want you to consider a recent discovery by those who’re properly interested in such things. A ‘Bar-tailed Godwit’ – whatever they look like, was lately identified in Australia’s island State of Tasmania, by its satellite tag – for as you know, those twitchery folk are always tagging birds and seeing where they turn up. Nothing unusual here so far. Except this particular Godwit was shown to have been in Alaska just 11 days previously. That’s 7500 miles away, and the satellite data suggests it had flown non-stop. No delays in Hawaii or Fiji for a nice little stopover then. Although if it had stopped for a bit of a leg stretching and relaxing on a tropical beach, that would have increased its average airspeed somewhat. Because as things stand, it appears to have flown at an average of about 35 mph, non-stop for 11 days. It’s a jaw dropping discovery, still being interpreted by the folk at Germany's Max Plank Institute for Ornithology.

And still connected, that just leaves me to offer my heartfelt congratulations to a boffin I’ve long admired, in a different department at said Max Plank Institute. Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo specialises in the field of human evolutionary genetics, exploring how ancient hominid dna reveals much about who and where we are now. Even an uneducated peasant farmer on Dartmoor has stumbled on his extraordinary works, by reading 3rd hand science papers sent by sympathisers. And what he’s found, interpreted… and explained for us idiots, is pretty profound. I can’t begin to describe…go look it up yourself.

Seemingly I’m not the only one who’s impressed, as he’s lately been awarded the coveted Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The citation is “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”, although I’d add ‘And for helping peasants understand some of it’……although the Nobel committee are notable for failing to consult me in such matters.

Anyway, he is pretty cool, and a rock star in the world of science.