It is hard to complain after the massive support we recently received from both APHA and DEFRA. Jennifer has been using, since she started, an App that follows her daily tasks so that she can observe where she spends most of her time. Clearly, there will be outliers, sunday was a perfect example. She was "on" from 6 am till almost midnight when she completed all the tasks required by APHA's protocol. Jennifer told me last night it got stranger when CID showed up at the farm. They wanted to speak to the Vet and also get a copy of the tape of the three "eco-terrorists" coming into the goat pen.
For the non-British reading this, CID is the UK equivalent of the US FBI. Not the same but the analogy carries. Frankly, I think they are making too much out of three idiots, but still, I get their concern, and I guess it's also a form of training. What better way to create disruption than to contaminate the food supply! I know I understand, it sounds like the plot of several low-budget movies, but still, it's something CID takes into consideration.
Back to the tracking App, Jennifer was able to confirm that about 3 hours a day are spent on paperwork of which about 50% is government paperwork and the balance is accounting and other internal requirements. I want to note that about 99% of the government paperwork is now digital, and Jennifer's job is to sign off on the data. Because the farm is so young, there was no transition from paper to digital, what has changed is that over the past two years, and largely because of Covid, almost all government documents are now digital, which means that Jennifer's office almost looks unoccupied, as virtually all her correspondence is digital.
Jennifer is from a farming family, and she commented how her father would spend his evenings working in his office near their kitchen. She said there were always boxes and boxes of paper. Theirs' was also a commercial farm, mostly sheep. Jennifer made the comment because when she got to work this morning, her office was as clean as it was Friday evening. Except there were a few emails... almost 100, most of which are automatically generated reports from the farm, that track everything from employee hours to milk production to hundreds of different variables.
Then there were the emails from APHA and DEFRA that required her attention, and that of her foremen. The usual stuff after Sunday's event. Jennifer mentioned that there's a piece of software she wants to buy that fills forms, about half of the forms we receive from the government require the same generic information, that Jennifer currently fills in. She tested the application for the past 10 days, on a free trial basis, and now wants to buy it. The funniest thing is that it's not even that expensive.
Sunday was a great day of skiing the weather was fine if a little cold, but both my wife and I have these electrically heated ski clothing that easily met the challenge, and we kept some Hothands to keep our hands warm. Today, we will start skiing around 10 am when the thermometer rises. It should be above freezing this afternoon and sunny.
Comments