:: Rant ::
Watched a programme last night on Channel 4 called 'The Lie of the Land' which was rather depressing.
I've got such sympathy for the English farmers. We've not been hit as hard by legislation and nationalisation in Scotland, and individually as a farm because we're an organic sheep farm we also have different regulations to follow. The delay in subsidies for them last year put a lot of them out of business; Scottish farmers got them which was lucky. The offices that deal with applications are very sneaky though. With so many of the subsidies and grants, failure to submit your form in on time will result in the farm no longer being eligible for it. For example, the arable aid one. We’ve got arable fields and grass fields. If we fail to plant in the arable fields and they’re not in a crop rotation, that field becomes a grass field and is no longer classed as an arable field. Even if there’s a big crop of Barley in it, it can’t be returned to arable.
It was heartbreaking to see them killing the male calves unfit for beef rearing. Our flock is straight cheviot for their wool and hardiness and we don't breed for meat so both sexes are welcome. I don't know any cattle farmers personally but I think it's mainly beef here; the animal trade had gone down in the past couple of years though. There used to be a huge auction mart in Thurso, about 4 acres of gates and pens for markets but that's closed now and all the trading moved to a smaller mart along windy roads.
Near the start of the programme the journalist was with an old man doing the flesh round, at the end he went home for dinner with his brother. That also struck a chord. Two brothers still living with their mother in their old age. I didn't particularly notice it when I was younger but I notice it more now, the amount of single farmers and middle aged sons staying home to help with the farm. We got talking to the son of a neighbouring farm a couple of weeks back. Divorced three times and there's usually a couple of rumours of the same ilk about other farmers flying around the feed stores. A lot of these farmers marry and their wives don't know what they're getting into and it's too much of a stress on the countryside.
A huntsman in the programme put it very succinctly "there's a lot of unhappy people in the countryside at the moment".
I've got such sympathy for the English farmers. We've not been hit as hard by legislation and nationalisation in Scotland, and individually as a farm because we're an organic sheep farm we also have different regulations to follow. The delay in subsidies for them last year put a lot of them out of business; Scottish farmers got them which was lucky. The offices that deal with applications are very sneaky though. With so many of the subsidies and grants, failure to submit your form in on time will result in the farm no longer being eligible for it. For example, the arable aid one. We’ve got arable fields and grass fields. If we fail to plant in the arable fields and they’re not in a crop rotation, that field becomes a grass field and is no longer classed as an arable field. Even if there’s a big crop of Barley in it, it can’t be returned to arable.
It was heartbreaking to see them killing the male calves unfit for beef rearing. Our flock is straight cheviot for their wool and hardiness and we don't breed for meat so both sexes are welcome. I don't know any cattle farmers personally but I think it's mainly beef here; the animal trade had gone down in the past couple of years though. There used to be a huge auction mart in Thurso, about 4 acres of gates and pens for markets but that's closed now and all the trading moved to a smaller mart along windy roads.
Near the start of the programme the journalist was with an old man doing the flesh round, at the end he went home for dinner with his brother. That also struck a chord. Two brothers still living with their mother in their old age. I didn't particularly notice it when I was younger but I notice it more now, the amount of single farmers and middle aged sons staying home to help with the farm. We got talking to the son of a neighbouring farm a couple of weeks back. Divorced three times and there's usually a couple of rumours of the same ilk about other farmers flying around the feed stores. A lot of these farmers marry and their wives don't know what they're getting into and it's too much of a stress on the countryside.
A huntsman in the programme put it very succinctly "there's a lot of unhappy people in the countryside at the moment".