It's very late and I cannot sleep!
In the five years we have operated the farm we've not had a single serious accident. Today that changed; David our lead mechanic was pulling a PTO transmission from one of our large tractors, it gives power to other things than the tractor's wheels.
The damn thing is heavy, about 150kg; when he unbolted it, it fell on his foot and despite his safety boots he broke his foot. He should have used the crane, he was tired it was the end of the day and really he just thought that with the equipment at hand, he could remove this transmission alone....
Yes, we have all the equipment in place, yes he should have used the overhead gantry yes he could have called someone to help him, even if it's just to tell him that it's probably too heavy, but that's why they are called accidents. This happened at 5 pm, so immediately we called an ambulance and the police because it was an industrial accident and we needed a police report for the insurance.
Health care in the UK is socialized and he's already back home (he got there around 11 pm), We were going to shut down the shop for two weeks until the new year. A lot of the stuff that remains now is what we call heavy maintenance, in other words, it's stuff that we do at the end of the season.
A stupid accident that would not have happened a Monday morning, but it did a Thursday evening when David had already spent four hours removing the seized bolts, which held the transmission to the tractor. I could understand his logic, it was dangerous to leave the transmission only partly bolted overnight. At least he was not seriously injured (like crushed). His work boots helped reduce the trauma, still it will be an uncomfortable few weeks for David.
More fun, the kids are arriving Friday night. Adam the oldest is now engaged to be married and his wife is expecting a baby at the beginning of the summer. They will be with us Christmas Eve, and will go to her family for Christmas Day. The other three will be home for Christmas not having any serious boyfriends/girlfriends...although I suspect I am not being told everything, we may have some additional guests, my wife asked that I check that all the guest bedrooms (there are nine) are ready for the Christmas period.
One thing for sure is that Adam and I will be at David's home Saturday morning with a Christmas tree and we will help David's wife with the decoration, David has a young family, and the tradition here is that the Christmas tree is only put up just before Christmas (and not weeks ahead). We will be trimming the Christmas tree at home with the children on Saturday afternoon.
Aside from that, 2023 has been an excellent year for the farm, by far our most profitable, exceeding our revised projection by nearly 30%. The business of consumer vegetable food delivery remained after Covid, it's all run by our distributor, but we only occasionally now allow new sign-ups for our by-weekly deliveries.
I really dislike having a waiting list, but demand for our butter is about three times what we currently produce, our beef is about right and our cheese is fine too, since it can easily be replaced by other providers. Our primary clients (hotels and restaurants) could easily see our production grow by 20-30% to meet their current demand, but there is a lot of supply available elsewhere of equal quality (there are many farmers that specialize like us). Our private clients (we have about 500) are very flexible, it's not like we receive a list from them, we give them what we have, and it changes from week to week depending on what is ripe. When we started this service we made it an annual subscription to justify the expense of doing this, our distributor made it clear that we would supply them with top great fruits and vegetables that we had in hand. Honestly, it's the same clients we've had for the last two years...there has been no change, and every year we receive their payments in early January, Our boxes are expensive, more than others, but our vegetables are usually heirloom types with a blast of flavour, that regular fruits and vegetables don't have.
One discussion we've had with the farm manager is whether we should increase the number of high tunnels. We can have a second site on the new farm or we can consolidate them all in the same area. It will mean a lot of new staff, which is always worrisome.
Something to decide next year
Note: We got the figures for sillage wastage in silos Vs. bunkers and the numbers are not inconsequential. The UK is very wet when compared to the US (where bunkers are popular) wastage is around 12% for bunkers and less than 1% for silos. The cost of a bunker is about 20% of the cost of a silos but the plastic waste is substantial. Something to ponder on Christmas
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