Skip to main content

A few dry days -- Recession?

We complain but compared to Thorp or other parts of the county we've had it easy.  However, friends in Thuxton also faced serious water issues.  February has been really wet far more for us than January.  We see it in our high tunnels where there is almost no need to water the plants, as the soil sucks in the dampness from outside.   

Our ecologists and biologists were right, the addition of red spectrum lights (to the blue lights) really helped flowering, which in turn gave better cues to the bees who have been pollinating like mad even in January.  Of course, we are fooling the plants, but we are not changing the plant's rhythm, we are optimizing it.  It also allowed us to differentiate sectors so that the plants don't all begin producing fruits at the same time.  I understand that this appears to be unnatural, but we are just replacing the sun rays that the cloud and polycarbonate hid from our plants.

Our youngest daughter says the farm is almost a closed circuit, although the massive pile of compost, we have been unable to spread on our fields appears more like adding (fields are too soft).  The compost is one of the five outputs that are produced by our biodigesters (compost, water, and three gases).  

I've been asked if we see the signs of recession?  The answer is yes, the price of produce should have been higher in February, we can only attribute the lower prices in the second half to the softening in the market.  Demand for our transformed products has not abated, but we believe that this segment of the market is more protected from the vagaries of the economy.  Ten days ago, Jennnifer and I had conversations with our wholesalers, we assumed that like in January they would be looking for an increase in production from us, between January 2023 and 2024 we have increased sales to wholesalers by nearly 20%, which was a massive endeavour on our part, but we cannot increase beyond that level for at least 12 months.  We assumed that this would be the topic of conversation, but it was not.  They just wanted confirmation that we could guarantee 80% of our current production target, this indicates that they see some market softness.  

Our solution, we increased the quality of produce we send to the wholesalers, and extract more for sale to our transformation businesses.  As an example, only absolutely perfect string beans are sent to the wholesalers, anything with a curve is diverted (reduced quantity but higher rating & price).  This will enable us to increase sales by 20% to our transformation businesses.  

Our pie company, which is/was vegetarian will also be introducing meat pies, now that we will have some pork available.  We had planned two teams of 40 porks (a mix of juveniles and mature animals) but we got a deal from a Welsh farm exiting the pork business, and were able to purchase about 1/3rd of his herd.  So the total number of pigs will not be 80 but closer to 160, twice our initial target.  According to our forewoman, our farm could easily accommodate 300 forest pigs.  Pigs take about 18 months to fully mature.  The additional time is because our pigs are feeding from the forest and not from pig feed.  

Our biggest concern is ramblers that may decide to cross our forests, we have put up signs every 100 meters that the specific forest is home to a team of pigs, and pigs can be very aggressive, actually if not handled with care, outright dangerous.  A 150kg pig that charges can ruin your day.  

Finally, the biggest concern around Norfolk right now is cattle rustling.  Our farm has not been affected so far.  One of the measures we have taken was blocking access roads and adding surveillance equipment to the farm.  Like all our neighbours we have taken active measures to prevent cattle theft.  

So far so good...

Note:  The areas where we have our pigs are delimited with electrified fences.  You would assume that this would be an uncomfortable deterrent...you would be underestimating the bloodymindedness of English ramblers!

Note2:  The additional high tunnels we installed this year are production destined for our processing businesses, we don't count that as part of the wholesale business -- since the wholesaler has no risk, its only a processing fee.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more