Farmer Diaries

Rambling is a British activity which includes walking on private property in the cold rain.   I exaggerate, but not by much.  For centuries Ramblers have been allowed to walk the fields of England, Scotland and Wales.  There are indicated footpaths, but there are always idiots.  On Sunday, we had the pleasure of another idiot.  Ramblers enter our fields via special rambler's access onto well-indicated paths.  We always post notices that bulls are dangerous and to avoid cattle.  Bulls are territorial and aggressive, especially if cows are in heat. On Sunday, some cretin decided to test that theory and ended up at the hospital.  He was attacked without provocation, but his group of ramblers saw the cattle a long way off but they still walked too close to the herd and one of the bulls took offence.  We have no liability when ramblers cross our field for animal attacks. That's part of the deal.   Once again, the local constable had...

Sunday was the only day we could even consider shopping as we were leaving Tuesday morning, and we have a full day of activities planned for Monday, which is a bank holiday in the US.  We will spend the day in San Francisco. We found everything we needed.  New riding clothing was excellent, and my wife finally found a comfortable helmet.  The gear was almost the same as in the UK, but the volume was another level.  I guess all these clothes are now made in China or India, still, we found what we needed.  More importantly, we found in very little time exactly the ski equipment we wanted.   Tuesday we are flying out of a small airport only 15 minutes away from where our host's home is located.  

Well, I can say with certainty that over the next two weeks, we will not be very involved with the farm.  Time difference is the issue.  The US West Coast is 8 hours behind.  It makes a difference.  So we communicate by text overnight but in reality, Jennifer is fully in control.  In addition, and probably more importantly, this is a farm and not brain surgery.  Issues can wait a few days. What could not wait, was our farm's first-ever surprise inspection which was from the Animal and Plant Agency.  Even Jennifer had never heard from them before.  They were on the farm to inspect our slaughterhouse, but only the waiting penns...it was a short inspection because generally on Monday mornings our pens are empty.  Sunday is the only day off in our meat plant, therefore Mondays are always a slow start.  We will not bring animals to the plant before lunchtime, as a matter of habit, and we don't have enough third-party demand. In addition, it i...

The scale of the United States is hard to understand for a Brit.  Last night we spent some time "watching" the semi-finals (how don't know how many there are) for the American Superbowl.  Not so much us but our host's sons and daughter were watching the game but watching two different things.  The boys were watching the team from Miami and Kansas City and the girl was on her phone texting about Taylor Swift who was in attendance (her boyfriend plays for the Kansas team).  We were mostly sitting outside on the deck enjoying wine and it was funny to overhear the conversation between the three children.  The girl was mostly trying to spot Ms. Swift who was in one of the boxes, while the boys were watching the game.  Considering that it was about 12c (about the same as at home) where we were, it was -22c in Kansas City where the game was played (the distance between Kansas City and San Francisco is 1,800 miles). One son came out and asked his dad how could a fo...

Jennifer has been a Godsend since she started a few weeks ago.  First, she knows the farm since she joined the picking crew in 2021.  So she had tons of good ideas.  Her first idea, we will figure out if it's a good one, is the daycare.  She will finish her analysis by the end of January on our return home.   The second idea, which makes perfect sense is to order the chickens in batches of 250, every two weeks starting in late May.  The reason is that meat chicken matures in 6 to 8 weeks.  They are bred for that purpose and if you keep them longer they tend to die (mostly of heart attacks, no joke).  The impact would be two-fold, first, it would be easier, and at no time would have more than 800 chickens on the farm, we would have four processing parties that would allow everyone to participate, which has been a problem in the past.  It will also reduce taxing the farm's resources and reduce daily workload. Our meat processing operations...

Peter called Friday, he loved my post about their Chinese clients leaving the county.  He said in conversations with other fund managers about clients in China, that the exodus is across the board.  It has proved to be even easier than anticipated.  Peter tells me that there is incredible pressure from bureaucrats and members of the PLA to take over private businesses.  Two reasons, these two groups can see the writing on the wall, and that the massive push to reduce corruption is certain to make civil service and the PLA far less desirable as a career. What is interesting is that these two groups have always tried to infiltrate the Chinese private business.  There were always sinecure jobs for the sons and daughters of party officials or retiring senior members of the local PLA. Peter tells me that over the past 12 months, the pressure has escalated to the point where of his 250 clients in China (he could only meet 100 last time) more than half have already rel...

The United Kingdom's sea power has been a thing for more than two centuries.  In terms of tonnage, it ranks 9th in the world behind France and Japan.  Right now the UK, a very close collaborator to the US has once again supported its ally in the Gulf of Aden, with logistic support in the bombing of Houtie's position following the firing of a rocket towards a US navy vessel. As I mentioned before, the US attacked the Houthie once before in 2016 (didn't go well for them).  Today the bluster from the Houtie stated that they will exact their revenge against the Brits and the Americans.  Big talk for a place that invented sticks and stones... Seriously, Yemen is one of the long-forgotten backwaters of the world, with virtually no resources (no oil and no water).  Its religious fanaticism has killed the country's relatively successful agriculture forcing young men to go to the city to get jobs.  Yemen has been at war for 20 years and no one noticed (including tho...

We landed in San Francisco (two hours late) and my wife's cousins were there to welcome us to the US.  My wife had actually grown up with her cousin in Norfolk, but when she was 15 her parents relocated to the US West Coast for work, her father was an aircraft engineer. They got delivery of their cybertruck just 10 days ago, and considering they actually live in Mill Valley (the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge), we were grateful that they picked us up.  We were not really frazzled, British Airway's first class is really nice (even if it lasted 11 hours).  The flight as far as I could tell was glass-smooth the entire trip. My first impression of the cybertruck is that it's a BIG, and there's tons of room in the back seat, far more than in the other Telsa I have ridden (Y and S).  Cabine is quiet, but there is some road noise, due to their tire selection (which they now regret).   I found out four things I didn't know about the Cybertruck (1) It is the f...

About 10 years ago, Peter Zeihan (global marco forecaster), made an interesting comment that since the early 1990s the US had made slow but inexorable changes to its military.  The US Navy was focusing on carrier groups and downsizing its global military presence.  Aside from Japan, the US military has largely withdrawn from the world.  You have to go back to the early 20th century to see so few US military personnel posted around the globe.  At the same time, the US destroyer fleet was not replaced.  From having nearly 600 destroyers at the end of WWII and even having nearly 400 in 1970.  As of 2023, the US Navy has a total of 70 destroyers, 40 of which are attached to carrier groups.  The destroyer is the primary tool to ensure the freedom of the seas.  The carrier group is not really useful for that, it's like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. Peter Zeihan predicted that cheap global shipping would be destroyed by the withdrawal of American f...

We had our monthly management meeting today, with all the heads of the farm (foremen, farm manager, biologist, ecologist, my wife and I), where we spent two hours over three subjects; the short-term, the medium term and the long term.   The short term is the next quarter; this time we covered anything from seeding, maintenance, fleet, herd growth (or shrinkage) and other field management issues.  As an example, we have five fields where we need better water management.  Of the five fields, two are simple and cheap and three are expensive and complex.  In addition, our biologist and ecologist are preparing planning permission to transform part of a six "field" into a permanent pond and watering area for wildlife. Planning permission application is short-term, and the rest is medium and long-term. Our medium-term issues are threefold; herd growth, long tunnel increase and staff management.  These meetings are not really for discussion but really to bring ever...

2023 revenues were 22% higher than in 2022, which we consider to be a major achievement.  Our milk production has increased dramatically because our biologist tweaked the cow's feed, we have seen a 25% increase in cow milk production (our herd also grew by 12%), whereas goat milk production only increased by 5% (in line with herd growth).  Revenues from our beef operations have risen too, our pre-process weight has increased by about 15% and prices have risen across the board.  We don't set the price of meat, but at our quality level it is set by the wholesaler (he gets a cut).  Our fruits and vegetables business has been a massive success, and we have seen a 55% increase in yields.  Two reasons; we added red shift lights to encourage flowering, and we had the benefit of a full year of CO2 dispersion.  Finally, our ecologist has succeeded in optimizing our intercropping so that we had almost no pests this year (we are organic...there are very strict limits ...