Jim Webster's Blog, page 6

Four weeks late

I escaped and went for a walk on Saturday. I just made my way along the various back paths to a village about eight miles away. It was a glorious day, the sun shone, and everything looked green and well cared for. The village has a coffee morning come jumble sale so I dropped in. …

Decolonise your diet!

Every so often you realise you’ve missed a trick! I was chatting to another church warden and she commented that she cannot wait for somebody to demand her church be decolonised. She’d point out that the parish isn’t worthy and gift the church building to those protesting. Then the church itself could meet in the …

The BBC again

Yes the BBC has been at it again, telling the world that government is paying farmers large sums of money to retire. OK so where to start?Let’s start with the money. The EU (remember the EU, the organisation the BBC executives believed in utterly and knew it could do no wrong?) had a system of …

Protected to death

Do you have anything to do with an agricultural show? Run a gymkhana? Have any connection with a village hall, or a scout or guide troop? The Home Office has issued a Protect Duty Consultation. ‘Making the public safer at publicly accessible locations.’ It could well interest you. https://www.gov.uk/government/consult...  In case you wondered what a …

Suitably homogenised.

Everybody tells me how different things are, the great changes that have been made in society in the last generation. Yet the photo above was posted with the caption, ‘This is what your grandmothers looked like in the 1970s.’ To be honest the only reason for granddaughters not raiding grandmother’s wardrobe is she’ll be lucky …

The Rural Payments Agency has given us Schrodinger’s saltmarsh.

The photo was taken a couple of days ago. At this time of the year we really shouldn’t be seeing snow on the fell tops. Not only that but the grass in the foreground ought to be a lot taller and ready to cut. After all, even round here, it’s common enough to get first …

Does the pit need stirring?

There are more ways of stirring up a slurry pit Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Parking a tractor with a slurry stirrer by the side of the pit suddenly seems so pedestrian. There again, at least with the tractor you’ve less chance of an early bath. The picture is a still from …

The mushroom theory of environmental management

I saw a rather ‘academic’ definition of mushroom management. “Mushroom management, also known as pseudo-analysis or blind development, is the management of a company where the communication channels between the managers and the employees do not work traditionally.” Actually it was defined to me by an employee as ‘we’re kept in the dark and fed …

So where will we get the staff?

Whilst my time in agriculture has been a time of impressive change, I suspect that the industry has been moving so quickly, every generation born since 1900 will be able to say that. I started my life working alongside men who’d been in farm work in the 1920s and 1930s. They were horsemen but I …

A lot of grass to cut?

I came across a picture of a decorative ornament made by the company Border Fine Arts. It’s just that seeing it, a tractor pulling a forage harvester and trailer, brought back a lot of memories. The first tractor I ever had anything to do with was a David Brown 950, and the one on the …