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Things are fine -- at least for us!

I have not posted in more than six weeks, mainly because I have no insights to add.  Things in the UK are deteriorating rather quickly, and I am finally impressed with our Prime Minister who seems to have finally found parts of his backbone…  Things on the farm are unchanged, as I said a number of times we are largely unaffected by the moods and changes of the nation, the reality of our business model.   In terms of timing, 2025 we decided with our investment partners to restrict capital expenses on our various businesses, first because the new injections were massive, several of our businesses, if they were to grow further, had to undertake substantial investments, we were by some coincidence at a inflection point for several businesses.   Neither us or our partners were keen on moving ahead, especially with the political and economic challenges.   Boy are we glad to decide to pause our investments now.

It would be a huge lie to say that we "knew" of the forthcoming challenges – the truth is that my wife and I are in our late 50s our children are grown and we already have a massive income with low risks.   There's just no incentive to aggressively expand, rather we recalibrated our output.  Focusing on higher margin business, while remaining very diversified in our income sources.

Now that the first quarter of 2026 is over, I can confirm the following, income from our farm business for the first quarter is a mirror image of what we generated in 2025, when we had the full benefits of the 2022 expansion of our greenhouses.  All our input costs are almost identical to what they were in 2025 Q1, the reason is that rely on things available in the UK.  Notionally, the greatest potential cost increase is fuel, but again we purchased all our diesel in late 2025, when prices were substantially lower than they are today.

Our none farming income also stabilized, as expected with minimal capex and no increase in revenues, we are satisfied with our results, all the business are operating at good capacity, we have slowed down some businesses a little bit so that we don't built inventories, the reason is that because 99% of our inputs are natural, therefore preservation is an issue, our meat pies don't last like the commercial variants because we don't use preservatives.  They are also very expensive compared to the commercially available variants.  We don't care, we don't see the commercial variants as real competition.

Politics wise I find myself changing the channel, I cannot stomach even watching 10 seconds of Donald Trump.  The mess he has created in the Middle East is "biblical" and from what I have been hearing, a lot of fundamental christians are thinking that this is the mark of "end of day", Gog and Magog – as my son says "biblical shit!"   I am glad to say that I have not set foot in the US since my last trip a few months ago, and have no desire to return there anytime soon.  

In other news, the farm has undertaken a massive vehicle electrification program.   All the gasoline powered UTVs and ATV have been replaced by electric variants, thanks to Polaris.   Considering that our electricity is generated by biogas it makes sense, and the distances are fine for the equipment.    We also got a great deal.  Both my wife and I have replaced our diesel powered vehicles with electric ones, my wife bought a Hyundai and I got a Mercedes (I don't use it much), I prefer my new ATV with its massive range…90% of fuel on the farm is either used to heat the greenhouses (biodigesters and waste gases), and diesel for the big tractors…that's unlikely to change.  

Overall, we are fine! 


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