cotswolds – The Lakeland Auctioneer

It was exactly 40 years ago this summer that a young land management student from the Lake District found himself doing a summer grain harvest on the Southern Cotswolds, a world away from the hill farming he had been brought up with.

Cotswold Brash isn’t really soil. It’s a mix of organic matter, and rock shards ripped from the Jurassic limestone but a few inches below. It may be very rich and good at growing grain crops, but it is very stony and very thin!

Talking of the 80’s this was the time of increasingly bouffant permed hair for the lady and the original “Gerald” mullet for the gentleman. Bring it back I say! And talking of Clarkson’s Farm brings me nicely round to the harvest. All those mistakes that the big man made during his first harvest working with Kaleb, well that was me and my boss Bob! I couldn’t line the trailer up under the Combine pipe, kept undershooting then overshooting. The air was blue from Bob on the walkie talkie. Finally in utter exasperation as another hundred-weight of barley went over the back of the trailer, he said in his thick West Country burr,

“Oi’ll tell you what we shall do. Oi’ll stop the Combine, have me self a smoke, and even you won’t miss the pipe” before adding, “hopefully”. And that is how we worked, just the two of us, for it was a small family farm. Day after day, up and down the roads of Crudwell, carting back to the farm in the summer of 86.

One day I arrived back at the storage barn with my 10-tonne trailer, tipped it up and next to nothing came out. Somehow, I had not secured the trailer door correctly. I had successfully deposited a layer of winter barley deep and crisp and even, along the A429. I got a severe West Country cussing for that one.

With harvest done, we moved on to cultivations. Bob set me off to plough but carefully selected a field over the hill and away from any road. “I’m not having anyone see the mess you’re going to make, they might think it was me”. The very words spoken by Caleb when he set Clarkson off 35 years later. How I laughed.

Up and down those fields I went, day after day, stopping only to stretch my legs at 11am every morning and listen to Simon Bates Love Song on Radio 1. You remember the theme music don’t you? “Do Do Do Do”……..

After ploughing it was disc harrowing, the worst job ever, bouncing across the unforgiving brash. It gave me piles. Too much information? By September my work was done with only two days off in nearly three months. But I had earned enough to be able to enjoy my final year at college to the limit. In fact, I’ve never been as well off since.

How times change. I came across Bob’s eulogy a couple of years ago. He had sold the farm in the late 1980’s. He probably got sick of awful student labour! Working there taught me a basic premise for life “The harder you work, the luckier you get”. It also made me realise that my future lay back home in Cumbria. How fortunate I was to get back home and spend my working life with farming families, their sheep and their cattle, across the Lake District and the Pennines? I have been blessed.

It is November 1984, 40 years ago. The young Rural Estate Management Student is halfway through his first term at the Royal Agricultural College. It is a freezing Friday night on the Cotswolds. The huge Georgian house which is now a hall of residence on the edge of the college campus, is all but empty. Most students go home at weekends. Those left in Trent Lodge are the “Northern lads” and the rugby players.

The house is absolutely freezing. They turn the heating off at 9pm and it barely raises the temperature even when it is on. The young student from the Lake District is lying in a sleeping bag in his bed under a thin duvet watching an ancient black and white TV. It is Children in Need night and there is a very grainy, picture of Terry Wogan and several celebrities of the day including Frank Bruno, Val Doonican and Orville the Duck. Home seems very far away.

Lectures during the day are very much focused on production. Increasing yield, more fertiliser, bigger tractors. Food is the focus, although milk quota’s have now been introduced. When the student gets a proper job in three years’ time, selling and leasing millions of litres of milk quota will be a big part of it. The commission earned covers the young man’s salary and he jokes with his boss that he is working in the auction for free. The boss doesn’t quite see it that way!

Then there is the new 1986 Agricultural Holdings Act which will continue to give an automatic right of tenancy succession for qualifying family members. The new legislation is there to ensure the continuity of family farms and sustainable food production.

All of this is soaked up like a sponge by the student, but those freezing winter nights are so cold. At least he has a stash of cakes, pies, biscuits and other goodies that proud farming grandmother has baked for him in case they might not feed him properly!

Forty years gone in the blink of an eye and the farming world has been propelled into a very different place. “Production, Production, Production” has been replaced by “Nature, Nature, Nature”. Policy is being driven by environmentalists and food is no longer recognised as a public good.

Protected farm tenancies have gone, and the average length of new agreements is only three years. Good agricultural land is being re-purposed into trees, solar parks or just left rank for nature. The hills are being cleansed of sheep.

A broken food chain is controlled by those higher up. The smallest slice of the profit pie (if there is any to be had) remains with the farmer, who carries all the risk and massive investment in a business where even “break even” is not guaranteed each year.

This month farmers marched on London, driven by a succession of deleterious policy challenges. They can see that the world turns in a circle. One day sooner than we think, they will be respected and valued as food producers once again. They will be doing this as well as making our landscapes and natural environment the best they have been in decades. But this will only happen if they are supported sensibly and properly. Cheap food in an improving environment comes at a price. The price must be to properly support successive generations of farmers. Right now, what is being offered is not fit for purpose on so many levels.