Farmer Diaries

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2024 Q3 preformance

2024 will probably be our best year ever. The numbers for the third quarters are now in, and while prices are on track with 2023 figures, the budgeted volume is almost 25% higher than last year. Undoubtedly, the increased volume of produce and our new-ish high tunnels have had a major impact. Demand from distributors remains strong and we are entirely satisfied with this segment, but where as in 2022 it represented nearly 80% of our volume, this year it was down to 45%, excluding the business that is channelled via our wholesalers but is destined for our subsidiaries. One thing I had not counted on was the quick reproduction rate of our pigs, first pigs are very very good at reproducing, and that has increased our labour costs, but our direct-to-consumer business there has proven very successful and the 44 hams we have aging, are looking delicious. Not the AAA equivalent to what the Spanish produce but a very attractive solution at a fraction of the cost. Our current 44 ha

when green energy gets in the way

So for some bizarre reason our farm has become a bit Of an outlier, what happened is that our farm is no longer tied to the electric grid. The reason has little to do with the cost of energy electric in particular and everything to do with our slurry and waste treatment plant that has become a bio digester. The new European rules on clean water are such that when we built our farm installing a bio digester was a very reasonable solution to a ongoing environmental problem It was not so much out of conviction that green energy was better, but we needed to transform the slurry into something that was useable and non-toxic, especially we need to make sure that the water was clean before it went back into the water system That is a big advantage of a Bio digester The reality is that all our cattle produce enough waste at our farm, produce enough waste that it made sense for us to have some redundancy and two bio digesters with the waste gas we heat our high tunnels, the houses, and all the

governing is choosing

we were in London last night, enjoying dinner with friends acquaintances, and it turns out friends of friends who are not our friends. We were having dinner in a relatively well-known eatery in Soho when the friend of a friend starting talking about the greatness of the American healthcare system, needless to say this front of a friend is loaded. He thought that the NHS Was a tyranny and that the public sector was no good to provide healthcare The interesting commentary was that his only experience with healthcare was a boob job and a nose job for his daughter He had always been healthy, and therefore no experience of the healthcare system that didn’t stop them from having an opinion on everything The questions becomes Do you answer to such ad hominem attacks or do you let it go and leave early? That’s the question in the end we chose the Latter and went home early. My wife asked me why I didn’t Confront this hard I told her that I didn’t feel like getting to an argument with someone

The reinsurance market

for nearly 200 Years the reinsurance market has been the place where regular insurance company have come to protect themselves again catastrophic events. In the last decade or two that market has proven to be harder and harder to be profitable Some very good friends. I’ve been involved in the market for over half a century. They have said they have not seen things as bad as they are today ever. Names are quitting the business right left and center. There is a seven year Exit window in the Lloyds insurance market. Names are quitting as they see that the last decade or so have generated no profits. The catastrophic weather destruction of the past few weeks in the United States are largely absorbed by The reinsurance market, And when the Payout exceeds premium by nearly 200% this is not a good business. Watching the destruction in North Carolina and today in Florida, just confirm what has been known for a long time that this is an insane market that is in and not an acceptable Risk. The

The death of Twitter

Twitter was never great. It was a place full of rumours innuendos and stupid stuff. However, it was still a place where experts were local people could exchange information that could be valuable was not always valuable but could be valuable. Twitter is no longer that first it’s called X and not Twitter anymore, but it seems to be only there to amplify the crazy thoughts The crazy talk and devoid of any useful purpose. When they only voice you hear in the public Square is fire fire fire you stop paying attention. The evidence is overwhelming that X Is something new but is it something anyone has any use for? The funny thing is how much of the Internet is now useless. Most news aggregators are full of nothing. The news is the headline and the headline is the news. There is no analysis. Nobody no thought clearly all produced by robots. All this is is to show that the Internet is finally growing up. Paywalls are back at full strength. After years of not paying for the news, the news is

listening to Trump

I dare anyone to listen to any random speech given by Trump in the past two months to afterward things that this is a sane and coherent man. Never mind the fixation on Hannibal Lecter, or more recently the reenactment of the movie the purge the man makes no sense. It’s not one speech. It’s all of them which speaks the question or what basis are people supporting him? He has no policy on inflation, healthcare defense, except that he’ll make things better in terrible terrible world that’s his policy. He’s got a great idea and he’ll tell us as soon as he elected. It begs the question how can he be still so popular after being so insane? The only answer I can come up with is that there is a large fraction of the population that Is so angry with the establishment that they would like to elect someone who is completely crazy who would destroy everything and give them blank slate not really understanding of caring the implication of this.

Mexico has a new president

Claudia Sheinbaum starts her term as president of Mexico today. She was selected by the outgoing president to replace him in his quest to make Mexico in the image of Venezuela. Some readers will believe that I’m exaggerating when I’m saying such a thing but I’m not that’s exactly what he has said in numerous speeches. in the past six years, the Mexican federal government has spent nearly $100 billion on vanity projects a new airport in Mexico City replacing a nearly completed airport a tourist train in the Yucatán for more than $20 billion. A refinery is still not operational despite being open for 18 months. all this has come to the expense of the people who supported the most this is possibly the most amazing thing to witness. The people who got screwed the worse by the current Mexican administration are the ones that support him the most education legal reform, all issues that concerns, poor Mexicans the most have been basically ignored or defunded. The new president challenge is

grassroots

Any shockingly close election considering how insane Donald Trump’s rhetoric is it is amazing to watch the ground effort that is being deployed by the GOP. For some obscure reason, they have been relying on third-party professional get out the vote gimmicks instead of using volunteers and local people. It’s not entirely clear why the JP is doing this, but considering it seems to be a widely used tactic clearly comes from the top. My American acquaintances involved in GOP politics tell me that they’ve been cut out by These professionals. this is the first time anyone has seen such a thing it is normally expensive. It is hard to see how we will work. It seems part of the problem. Is that a lot of people inside the GOP who organize the GOP as opposed to doing the groundwork art deep disenchanted with Donald Trump‘s candidacy, his policy and his sheer madness entirely possible that the GOP head and brain thrust has decided that they local GOP cannot be trusted to deliver the votes on the

at least his movie reference are more recent

for a while on the campaign Trail, Donald Trump kept on referring to Hannibal Lecter, the character in the movie silence of the lamb as a real person. Over the past few days he’s now being referencing the movie the purge which is a 2012 movie where basically the world goes to hell, the very least Donald Trump’s movie reference are getting more in the millennial zone instead of the baby boomer zone. What is fascinating is that it seems a campaign is not even trying anymore to rain in his more wild and crazy opinions. The man talks about flies in the middle of speech and no one finds that strange. The unhinged and incoherent message out of Trump would be on the front page of every newspaper if it had been uttered by Joe Biden, and yet no one pays attention to the orange one. The truth for most of the media is that Trump is his own worst enemy, and they see no reason of discouraging his crazy talk even this week. He was furious at Fox News for airing the speech by Kamala Harris, who is

it’s raining again!

Well, this year, at least the United Kingdom has lived up to its reputation as been rainy and wet the whole year we have been battling wet fields and trying to cope with excessive water. All creeks are maxed out. Ground is completely saturated and we are luckier than most as we sit on a bit of a hill. Thankfully, it’s not as bad as the spring. We had a pretty dry August, but some of our neighbours are still finding it difficult as they tend to have a bit of flooding in their stables our biggest challenges that we have only just recently. Harvested the wheat we planted with our neighbour we fulfilled our contracts and generated Modest profit it could’ve been worse. It could’ve been better. I’m not sure gonna do this again, but we did have the Free land and it was very low cost operation to us. it’s amazing to think that virtually 3/4 of the year is over as far as the farm is concerned, our revenues are much more spread out than other farms. We are less dependent on summer crops. If an

exploding pagers

when you first hear the story of the exploding pages the first thing you think of is, this is a bad spy movie storyline. Unfortunately that is not the case. It is a real thing and the odds that the Israeli Secret Service are behind. It are probably very near to 100%, Hezbollah Has relied more and more On Pages to invade Israeli bombing runs, however the fact that all these Hezbollah fighters were in Lebanon as opposed to being in Palestine education that the very least the conflict is about to grow, I am almost certain that the White House is furious with this escalation but the White House does not run to show up there The truth The conflict was always going to grow Hezbolah has made it clear that their intention is to drive Israelis into the sea. The leader has said so in so many words Israelis have no interest in being driven into the sea, and therefore a fight to death is predestined. The question is will the fight grow and include Iran and America directly or will it remain prox