It is truly amazing to realize the amount of data produced in farming, from real-time health monitoring of our milking cows to herd positioning to keeping track of the meat we produce (and its specific origin). Everything produces data, even our field where we grow about 80% of our cattle feed, either in the form of corn silage or hay, produces specific productivity data in amazing details, so that we can calibrate soil use (we only use organic fertilizers -- so there's a real limit as to how we can tailor or fields' character).
It would be nice for everything to be 100% "natural" but grasses sometimes do not provide enough calories to our herd. It has something to do with the type of grasses in each field, we provide additional salt and minerals that cattle need and have aggressive (natural) fly control systems. In addition, we don't finish our cattle with grains and minerals near butchering, we only provide them with balanced feed in winter, about five months of the year cattle are in barns, as the pastures either don't provide the necessary calories or we don't want the roots to be damaged.
We have the ramblers and others who, in the UK, have the right to cross your land. Fine, but twice last summer we had ramblers injured on our property, one fell and broke her leg in a ravine, and the other was charged by a goat, from what we could figure out the rambler decided to take a kid (baby goat) for his child to pet, mom was not too happy and charged the guy and managed to break a rib. He left the farm in an ambulance the police were called, the mom and her kid were re-united and the gentleman's daughter and wife spent a few hours in the local emergency's waiting room. That too is data. This is not the first time that ramblers have been injured on our property, and certainly not the last time.
All this data is sent to the government. There are specific formats, nothing too challenging, but it is something that we had to set up a few years ago, we don't even notice now, since the data is sent automatically, every few years the government will change the format, but this has not affected us...yet.
When living in London we only went to church, for the usual wedding, funeral and I never set foot in our local pub. Now every Sunday we go to church, and the 40 minutes at service is nothing compared to the information available from your neighbors in the forecourt as you leave. Call it social media for grown-ups! All kinds of local information; who has had problems with pests, who is looking for workers, and who has children who are looking for employment...and then there's the pub. I am not a drinker but at least once a month, on the third Thursday of every month, most local farmers congregate at one of our pubs (we have three locals) where important political and economic issues are discussed. There may be 40 or 50 of us there, from the local constable (drinking a lime cordial) to the local MP, which provides the pulse to the area. Living in a rural community is completely different than living in the city. It does not matter that we live in a "mansion" we are considered farmers, it also helps that both our families are from the area.
Auctions have changed too. I bought a narrow tiller for certain of our hard-to-reach fields, I bought it from one of my neighbors (on FB marketplace). One morning I walked into our main shop and there was my neighbor welding the narrow tiller he had sold me at the beginning of the season. My neighbor is renowned in the area for being an excellent welder, one of his sons works for me and apparently told his father that some of the welds on the tiller were cracked. His father came to the farm, with his own welding truck (he thinks my welding gear is junk, and told me so many times) and fixed all the cracks. I was planning on thanking him, but by the time I got back to the shop he was gone. We met a few weeks later at our Thursday pub get-together and I thanked him and asked him why and how much. He said: Nicholas call it an after-sale warranty!
I was schooled in what it is like to live in the countryside. You work with your neighbors when they need a hand you provide it freely because for us it is insurance. At first, when we left the farm for any reason we were concerned about leaving our children on their own (our youngest were teenagers), but my wife arranged for a neighbor to be there for the entire three days we were away, on top of that our foreman made sure that homework and chores were done. This last summer, our elderly neighbors "inherited" for the summer four grandchildren, at first everyone was happy, but after a week, the children moved to our house, our neighbors had overestimated their stamina and the parents could not return. It was funny to have those four young girls (8 to 12) at breakfast every morning, especially since we both suffered this year from empty nest syndrome, as our youngest son is now at University.
Back to data, earlier this year thanks to Elon Musk we were able to install real high-speed internet throughout the farm. We had some internet capability already but it was rarely very rapid and would often hang. You cannot run a 21st-century farm without the internet. Especially in a country like the United Kingdom. We don't sell any milk, but we do sell some milk products (cheese and butter), and therefore we need to provide a lot of data to the government. Our cattle monitoring system works a lot better now and everything is stored "in the cloud". BTW we only produce goat cheese the milk cows are for butter production, again focused on hotels and restaurants...
Note: I had a comment yesterday as to why we differentiate between meat and milk cattle, the reason is simple, the meat cattle we keep for no more than 30 months, the milk cows we will keep for many years, some are nearly 7 years old because older cows are generally better milk producers.
Comments