Farmer Diaries

Posts

And now for something completely different

So our youngest son just bought a rather exotic car, I will not name the brand, it's not young about 12 years old, and it was not too expensive. It is also a hybrid, you can drive about 50 miles on the batteries, and then the engine kicks in. Our son paid somewhere around 12,000 pounds. When it was on, I was an occasional fan of Top Gear, and I remember how the three hosts were gushing about this car. Honestly, I owned cars in 2012, and this particular car compared poorly against an average BMW or my wife's Mercedes. Now I get the rarety angle, I understand the attraction of having one of 550 of the type in the UK, but the damn thing should still be good, even if it was a very expensive car then. The ride is just ok, for a "sports car" it handles like an underpowered Ford, the controls are non-intuitive, and were at best "working with some prodding". Worse yet the electric system needs an occasional re-set, like an old desktop computer. Now. all

Spring has been a challenge

To say that April has been rainy would be an understatement. we are really behind schedule now for spring planting. The weather remains unseasonably cold, and our high tunnels continue to need heating at night. I have no idea what other farmers are doing, too busy dealing with ours. There is one thing for certain, drought will not be a problem this year. Every single reservoir or river is full to the rim, and the ground is saturated as we have never seen it. On the bright side, at least for farmers, revenues are up. I have no idea what the government's game is anymore. The additional control for perishable goods is only making prices rise in the UK. I have no idea what they are trying to prove, tomatoes from Spain remain unchanged for the past two decades. One thing we did notice is the average size of tractors being sold in the UK is rising, which tells me that average farm size is also rising. You need a bigger tractor to pull heavier implements. Both the corn

The weather did not cooperate

What a week! To say that the weather would not cooperate would be the understatement of the decade. It has been cold and very wet for the past few weeks, we are still heating our high tunnels, a first for us in April, where usually it is far warmer. We were successful between the bouts of rain we planted all the crops for the summer, and the damp soil will probably help their seed propagation. Our chicks are still in the heated shed because it's simply too cold to put them out. We hope that by the end of next week, it will be better. Spring is always busy on a farm, the goats have been producing kids and the whole process has been followed by the entire farm with interest. Now that the Muslim holidays are over, our meat processing plant is back at full capacity. A few pigs and a whole lot of beef will be processed in the coming weeks. We are also doing some contract work for several local farmers. It is more convenient for them, and it uses up available resources for

Liz's book...

Well colour me pink, but I have to say that Liz is certainly original in adopting wholesale US republican party ideology as something that is missing in the United Kingdom. Let's be clear to play the offended virgin when the Tories have been wheeling the stick for the better part of the last 12 years, is a bit rich. Granted Liz's vision of conservativism is far far to the right. She was always attractive to the lunatic fringe and did well, even got nominated as Prime Minister until the MP realized that she was a little nuts. But, to this day, she remains popular with the grassroots. Her favourite constituents are those who both complain about passport controls when they go to the continent and yet are firm supporters of shutting our borders. The rest was a blueprint from an American born-again Christian right who seems to be unable to understand anything in the bible...granted that is not really how it works here but in Liz's febrile mind it is the blueprint she choos

Pigs pigs pigs

Our pork operations are going well, piglets are putting on the pounds and several sows are carrying new broods. The impact of rooting and clearing out the underbrush has been amazing. The pigs are very efficient at showing rubbish tips created by farmers over the centuries. We think that we will need to cul some of the hurd in July, as the numbers of litters is impressive. Our first forest chickens are now in their own enclosure. We don't see much of them, there is only about 80 chickens, 20 ducks, and four geese, but over time... The planting began this morning.

This really happened in the US a few days ago!

A pregnant woman was rushed to the emergency room after a car accident, the new abortion laws have been enacted in this particular State, and the hospital lawyers sent an emergency request to the State's superior court for an injunction to operate on the pregnant woman, to help her survive the trauma, within 48 hours the hospital got the ruling that they were authorized to operate on the woman (99% certainty that the fetus would not survive -- hence the ruling), the mother in law's lawyers got an injunction to stop the operation, 24 hours later the court agreed with the lower court, but by then both mother and child had died. The short-term impact, the legal dispute cost about $50,000 in legal fees and processing, (both the original emergency request and the injunction). But the hospital and the doctor were in the clear as they had sought permission from the courts, the family lost both mother and child and also got a nice emergency room bill for about $240,000. I hear abo

95% of likely voters do not pay attention to politics until the election has been declared!

For all the big news in the papers, it's easy to forget that the Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Guardian have a total readership of less than 10 million. Many may glance at the political news but unless they are directly affected, pay little attention. Some will know the name or party of their locally elected official, many will not, and a large percentage would be hard-pressed to name the prime minister. That is the reality of the political news cycle. The Tories are in trouble not only because of people like me, but because many Tories are furious that Brexit occurred, and that so many within the party were clearly carpetbaggers. Speaking of carpetbagger, Boris was in the Canadian colonies recently talking to a bunch of conservatives, and one of the core components of his speech was that the Conservatives should have a green policy....outrageous! Seriously, I was at a pub last week, and one of the farmers was talking about "Boris this and Boris that&q

FISA and Iran

Two unrelated issues; the first is the passage (every two years) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Trump is against this law and said so clearly and eloquently on numerous occasions. It is a fundamental tool of the US foreign spying operations, and Trump wanted it revoked. Trump did not get his way, and in a non-partisan vote, the law passed by the House of Representatives and is on its way to the Senate, there is little doubt that the law will be approved there too. A real blow to Trump, who had actively and strongly argued against the law. The second is that this morning, Iran seized an Israeli-related ship in the Gulf of Hormuz. This is the first direct confrontation between Israel and Iran in a few years, both nations have hated each other for nearly 70 years which presents Israel with an incredible opportunity to change the narrative . Iran is actively attacking Israel, effectively declaring war (not exactly but close). The current narrative is that

Why being a contiental power is a problem for China martime ambitions

There are two types of nations, Continental and Maritime. China is a continental power, its strength is its army. The three most obvious naval nations are Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. All three live behind "sea moats". The old India (which included Pakistan and Bangladesh was similar, although they are now a continental power but they were surrounded by moats (in the case of India the Himalayan mountain range). Of course, the reason Pakistan and Bangladesh were created was to remove the parts that were not inside the nation, creating one of the world's most volatile borders. Continental and Maritime nations are fundamentally different, the first is an empire, outsiders are brought in, often against their will, to provide a buffer from invading armies. It worked for the Han Chinese and the ethnic Russians for centuries -- the current problems in Russia are not new, and the same is true for China. In its 3,000 years of recorded history, abo

I don't share comments

To those who read my commentaries please understand that this is a one-way conversation, largely with myself. I have no axe to grind or agenda. There are never any comments posted to my page, which is a choice you are welcome to send me comments and sometimes I read them, other times not so much. If you are rude, I will try to block you. But again, I would say that I read comments once a month, at best. The last comments I read were in early February. Why, again this is not a dialogue, it is a monologue, my blog my choice. Also my subject, sure some of you are fascinated by the fall of China. China is not falling it is declining, not the same thing. China is doing what Britain did after 1945, sinking into irrelevance. The stuff I talk about is bad, but outside of China, it impacts no one. I am very glad to see that a few hundred of you like to read what I post. I am glad that I provided you with entertainment and some good ideas. The funniest comments were about B

Long cycle the false prophet

You cannot invest the long cycle! The market will always beat you. The proper valuation for assets cannot always resolve itself in the short term, and as an investor, you cannot afford to wait out the market. These are simple truths drilled into every single portfolio manager. The one market where this contrarian view of the world did not hold was the hedge fund market, and we now know that either luck, insider trading or even subtle pushes were how they made their money, plus massive leverage. But hedge funds are of no interest to me. When Nixon began opening to China, no one could predict the long-term impact on capital allocation and how profits in Western companies would explode from using cheap Chinese (or Asian) labour. These trends were transitory, the China play is long over. Wages are high and the only reason to remain in China is the invested physical plant, plus the still massive labour force. As a strategist, my job was to see the medium-term trends. I start