 Resting after a long day looking at chickens. I am not obsessed with money it is not something that drives me. It never has been. Keeping up with the neighbours is not something I aspire to. However, money can smooth ones way through life. Farming is a weird one because as many of you know farming is subsidised by the government and ultimately the tax payer in Europe. Everybody will have their own view on this issue but let us say that the money received in subsidy allows the general public access to cheap food. Subsidies also allow farmers to develop their farms in the style to which the political mood of the time dictates. Not all decisions made by farmers are completely in their own control, sometimes permission has to be obtained from the Ministry of Agriculture.  Pasture with trees. Not very valuable....?... So here is a funny thing. We are paid an amount of money per hectare. Pasture farming currently is not deemed as being as valuable as maize farming, so pasture farming gets one of the lowest payments per hectare. The government removes from every pasture that we have the area covered by a tree or a copse or a patch of brambles. So if we have 10 hectares of ground with alot of tees to provide shelter or extra forage when grass has died off, then they may count as a hectare of trees or undergrowth, so we will only be paid for 9 hectares of pasture. Fonciers will be charged on the full 10 hectares of ground, trees, or no trees. As you can see from this example it is more profitable , with regard to subsidies, for a farmer to have clear ground. Which if you think about it again is encouraging farmers to not be environmentally friendly. I hope that with the new drives for regenerative farming techniques that this rather achaic way of looking at farm subsidies will be revised. Administration moves slowly so I am not holding my breath for a windfall or a global revelation. Balancing money, land and activity on said land is a constant dbate on farms. In drought situations you have to ask for permission from the agricultural department to use land that a neighbour might want to loan you in a crisis, which of course means administrative delays. Meaning that as a farmer you have to look to yourself always to risk proof your business. Which naturally means investment to some degree or another. Sometimes subsidised, not always if it is something the administration thinks is not important. As I have already mentioned Administative thinking moves slowly so what is thought to be important by a farmer today, will be thought of as being important by administration in 10 years.  A borrowed picture from Zim to demonstrate valuable land  Which is great until it looks like this... still valuable...?.... When we have a large purchase to do, I get a headache, procrastinate, talk myself out of it, around in circles and then back into it again. It is quite honestly the worst part of running a small business for me. Unfortunately Gavin always gives me the last say, either that or he just waits knowing that I will get their eventually I just need some time to flap for a bit. Debt makes me anxious, even when I know we can repay the debt. I know that if you have a small business your money needs to work all the time. So money goes in and out of the bank rapidly. With a farm that only has crops the money may only go in once a year after harvest, and then out all the time through the rest of the year. Or a wood farmer with income that arrives every 5/10 years.  There are many suicides amongst farmers in France, one every other day, currently. It does not surprise me. Farmers are often isolated, working on their own, balancing money, running a business, caring for animals and crops to enable them to have a good harvest. And quite frankly what support do they get. Criticisms about noise, smell, complaints about not having sprayed there, but "no" you shouldn't have sprayed over there. There is an awful lot of finger pointing and very little help, support or advise offered. I am not an advocate of spraying with chemicals, never have been, but putting boot on the other foot, if you are a conventional farmer who has a debt to pay, and is relying on a successful harvest and has never known any other way of farming, and is halfway through the year, and is about to lose the entire crop to mildew unless it is sprayed then what would you do? People cannot be expected to change on a whim when lives and livelihoods are at stake. Planning needs to come first. Investments may need too be made, help may need to be offered. The general public needs to recognise this and be a little less critical and a little more empathetic. Putting the boot back on the other foot. There are an awful lot of very large, industrial, multi national farms these days that could really do a little more in the way of leading the way seeing as they do have rather a lot of money, rather than using the same old techniques. Oh no that would mean the likes of Monsanto/Bayer in effect putting themselves out of business. Hmmm interesting.
See you all soon Helen
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I have decided I am a slow learner...... After 17 years of being told by my parents to read the questions properly at school, followed by 3 years being told by the lecturers at university to read the questions, there was a short interval when no-one told me very much of anything. Now, I am 24 years into telling my own children to read everything properly. So how is it possible that I missed the important information about the new bins we are having in our commune which require a card and a yearly payment. Quelle horreur!  So I was sitting outside this morning, Sunday, eating my breakfast listening to the merry trickle of cars stopping at our commual bins from all over the commune to fill them up with their own household rubbish. And I was struck by the quandry of moaning about bin abuse to the powers that be, and then being told that it would be so much better with bins that we pay for, as then there can be no bin abuse. What to do???? I am resigned to their bad system where everyone has to get into cars to drive with their rubbish to the 4 points that we have allotted to us in our nearly 36 square kilometre surface area. I shake my head and sigh in vain, not sure which planet they are trying to save with this thought process.  Leftovers Franklin Farm style ;) To amuse ourselves once a month, Alice and I go to the supermarket to buy those things that are more difficult to find at the market, where we do the bulk of our shopping. Sauntering down the "Bio" or "organic" aisle which has been getting larger and larger over the years we reflected on the amout of packaging and where all these things had come from on the planet.... quite a lot of air miles were there, not that the rest of the aisles were much better. It is ironic to think that in an effort by people to reduce the weight of their rubbish per bin collection they are more likely to purchase plastic wrappers as both tins and cardboard weigh more. See you all soon Helenx |
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February 2024
Helen FranklinI am farming sheep and goats on the Dordogne/Gironde border with my husband and our 3 children. We have an on farm butchery and sell our meat direct to the public via the markets and delivery points in our local area |
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