Voice: There are many issues around farming I don’t understand

It started with some spruce logs which had been sitting around for a while, which had caused the knots to become very hard. I’ve cut timber like this before, but this batch was particularly hard and although it was sawable, I had to be very methodical, gentle and smooth.

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I decided to half the blades’ running time and double up on sharp blades. Under these circumstances you have to concentrate intensely and nothing can be rushed. It resulted in long, sustained periods of concentration which, as a consequence, has made me a little tetchy at times and intolerant of stupidity or silliness.

This brings me onto the next job which involved cutting oversize Douglas, which turned out to be even harder than the spruce. Again the timber had been windblown and lying for a couple of years. Cutting involved the constant changing of blades and it was hard to work out if the blades were blunt or sharp. On a couple of occasions when I changed the blades the replacements cut no better than the ones I’d just removed and so this resulted in a couple of weeks of stop-start production.

To keep the rest of the staff busy, I had the resaw loaded so that during the blade changes, while battling these hard, unforgiving logs, they had a backup job to which they could switch. After all, there’s nothing worse than trying to solve problems with people in the way.

Thankfully we are through this batch and onto easier logs to cut, but as the order books aren’t bristling with big orders and we can’t be choosy, we are working our way through a series of smaller orders. This raises its own challenges, but talking around, people are generally seeing things go quieter, due largely to inflation, although strangely commodity prices have dropped by roughly 30 per cent.

Last year I was worried about diesel costs when I was stopped from using ‘red’ in the generators and machinery, yet I am now paying the same for white diesel as I was for red. The latest interest rate rise by the Bank of England really seems to have hurt the economy and could even cause a crash. Everyone else just seemed to be adjusting to a spate of rate rises which was putting a lot of pressure on mortgage holders.

Rather cynically I thought it was the bankers giving their mates in the city yet another cash bonanza while putting two fingers up to Joe Public, but having thought about it maybe it’s the retailers fuelling inflation. I personally dropped my prices when round timber prices fell, so does that make me 0-per-cent inflation or even in deflationary mode? Agriculture is also in an odd place, with prices rising. Around here are some very slick operators and yet up to 25 per cent of their land is ungraded, with farmers just topping the fields and leaving the grass to rot.

I did some topping last year for my in-laws with instructions to do the same again, but this seemed crazy and so this year we bought some bullocks to fatten on the same land.

The largest and fattest of these creatures has big, dopey eyes and a blonde mane, so we’ve named him Boris! Hopefully Boris will be ready for Christmas.

There are many issues around farming I don’t understand. Why are farmers not farming? Retailers are blaming costs on the war in Ukraine and a decline in grain supplies and yet the land-based subsidy system seems to pay farmers to mow their grass and leave it to rot. Bizarre!

I’m not a farmer, but I’m trying to manage the small area of land I have and with a little thought I’ve been able to bale 630 small round bales off two small pony paddocks which would have otherwise been wasted. With our unpredictable climate it required a little planning and slick movement aided by my old Massey 65 and a baler I bought on eBay. I keep getting told by farmers that it doesn’t pay, but you don’t need a massive Fendt or John Deere for a smallholding. The old Massey 65 used one tank of diesel and with some mechanical nous on my part to keep the baler working (made in China) I was able to do the entire job.

On the subject of the baler, people are being economical with the truth when they say ‘assembled in England’, which it may well have been, when really it means all the parts came in a box from China. The biggest problem with my assembled-in-Britain-but-made-in-China baler was the chains which drive the rollers, which kept stretching and needed constant adjustment. I will change these next year for some good-quality motorbike chain. Also, the string for tying the bales needed constant delicate adjustment and had a habit of not always dropping into the rollers. The temptation here was to push it in with my fingers while the machine was in operation, which was obviously a no-no!

I can’t for the life of me understand how dangerous machines like this are allowed to be imported, especially as these products are aimed at the amateur market like smallholders or equestrian centres.

On the subject of safety, as young lads growing up we often used to play in the hayfields and most lads in the neighbourhood, whether from farming backgrounds or not, learned to drive little Fergies or David Browns. On hot days all hands were needed and a young lad would be plonked on a tractor to turn hay or row up.

I probably started driving tractors when I was about 10 years old and quickly progressed to a baler, which at the time was regarded as a much more skilled activity. Discussions at school would centre round the pros and cons of different engines; the merits of the four-cylinder Ferguson as opposed to the three-cylinder Perkins engine with more torque.

We’d also share tips like freewheeling on the highway which was dangerous and ill-advised, especially if you only had one independent brake that was working. Also things like how to get the tractor back into gear, the trick being to match the speed of the cogs in the gearbox, so if the tractor did 16 mph flat out you had to judge the speed as the tractor slowed down and then pull the throttle right back so that the cogs in the gearbox would engage without the clutch. A newby was easily identified as they would always try to engage the gears with the throttle shut off, hence the sound of grating and grinding.

Doing this small amount of haymaking this year has resurrected a lot of these old memories and in particular one involving a wuffler. Once the grass is cut it has to be turned and agitated so the air can dry it out and turn it into hay. This year I used a hay bob for the first time, which is brilliant for this task.

Back in the day we used an ‘acrobat’ which turned the hay and a ‘wuffler’ which aerated it. When I was about seven years old we were playing in the hayfields and the farmer turned up with a wuffler. We all retreated to edge of the field to watch but noticed that a boy called Paul who had been with us had disappeared. As he only lived a very short distance away we naturally assumed he’d gone home. He hadn’t! Instead, he’d decided to hide under the hay. We watched in fascination as the wuffler clattered its way along the rows and were horrified when the small naked body of a child was jettisoned from the row. I’ve seen a lot of hay wuffled, but never a human body!

The wuffler had ripped off all of his clothes and the tines which shook up the hay had covered him in hundreds of lacerations, but in a criss-cross fashion so that he looked like a ’70s alien from an episode of Doctor Who. Other than the embarrassment of being naked and some hurt pride, he was perfectly okay and remains the only person I ever saw ‘wuffled’!