Waste

Am I the only one who thinks that Sam Mitchell on Eastenders is a really weird looking women? I don't know why people keep going on about how beautiful she is, to be fair there are much better looking women on Eastenders. Although the Totty standard has dropped in recent years. Gone are the halycon days of Dawn Swan. Tanya Branning is the only remaining eye candy worth noting (I don't count the Mitchell sisters - they are not the Duckman type) and then Tanya is only really a 7/10 on the best of days. But I am jaded, ever since 'Dee' (they never found the body - how did that work, she had a fine pair of built in life preservers?) drowned in neighbours, no other soap opera babe has been able to compare. I live in hope.

I visited a farm today that was storing about 3,ooo tonnes of rice. it was kept in one big heap on a shed floor. this was then being processed and will end up in Uncle Bens and supermarket own boxes all over the country. It was very impressive. But I couldn't help thinking that it could feed a lot of people in the third world for a long time, but sadly a lot of it would end up being chucked in a bin. Do you realise that we waste about 40% of the food we produce in this country? when you see a pile of food big enough to literally ski down it puts things in perspective.

November 15th

Have you ever heard the saying that its the second mouse that gets the cheese? well, I have been the first mouse several times. Obviously I am speaking metaphorically, otherwise I would be dead. Maybe I didn't learn my lesson well enough first time? or am I just thick? - maybe its a combination of the two? answers on a postcard please!

Those of you that know me will know that I have been rather unfortunate with my last two business ventures, and that since then my confidence has taken rather a big hit. However I am now starting to feel my self belief returning just a tinsy bit, the clouds of self pity are starting to clear.

But this time I will not be that first mouse. On a side note, when I was trying to catch a particularly noisy mouse I used mars bars as bait after several weeks using cheese, they seemed to prefer that. Then I discovered that they like peanut butter just as much which was good as I ate the mars bars. Frankly its a bit stereotypical that mice like cheese, this is the naughties and mice have more metropolitan tastes now.

I guess you are wondering what my idea is? keep reading my blog to find out!

Im Pooped!

I am as knacked as a small worm at coffee break time after a busy morning dodging the early bird.

In the last four weeks I have worked an average 75 hour week, with the exception of two days at the Nuffield conference where I had the undescribable pleasure of a 7.30 lay in. However even this minor relief was stolen from me by late nights in the bar and 4 hour drive either way!

But I cannot complain, there are many people worse off than me. I still have my looks, wit and charm. Actually, putting it like that I am in the proverbial!

I am looking forward to the weekend. Its my eldest sons (Master G) 8th birthday on Sunday. Wow. It is amazing how the time has flown by! a couple of weeks after that it is Mrs G's and i's 9th wedding anniversary. Ideas for romantic surprises will be gratefully received. don't let your suggestions be hampered by thoughts of the credit crunch. Just remember that I am a cheapskate!

Now I have completed my Nuffield Scholarship report and presentation I am a little unsure where to go from here. How do I develop this further? I don't want to put the report in the drawer and forget about it. maybe a sideline in agricultural motivational speaking?

Top class public speaker available for hire!

Last weekend was the Nuffield Winter Conference, where all the brightest and best young minds in British agriculture go to present there hard written reports for 'peer review'. The rest of us went for the beer and to catch up with our mates!

Two full days of sitting listening to other scholar reports gave time for my nerves to build up to a level similar to a fifteen year old boy on a promise. I had decided to approach the event with a less technical, lighter presentation, as I thought most people would be out to impress with deeply intelligent, well considered and balanced reports. Obviously that path was not open to me, so I had to rely on my good looks and charm (not my strongest points either to be fair, so i was kind of out on a limb) In the end I settled for humour to make me stand out. After much care full thought I left out most of the knob jokes and all but one of the terrible puns.

Unfortunately Mrs G had found something more important to do, rather than attend my presentation. When I spoke to her before I left she said something about being busy alphabetising our DVD collection.

Before I knew it I had given my report, and sat back down to thunderous applause, probably caused by the cessation of my pain causing puns, or because it was very close to lunch time, i am not sure which but my ego lapped it up all the same.

if anyone is interested they can view my full report at http://www.nuffieldinternational.org/reports/report.php

Just to boost my ego my report was 'Highly Commended' unfortunately this does not come with a life changing cash prize, or the sort of public accolade that leads attractive girls to throw there underwear at me in the street and beg me to ravish them. However again, the ego accepted it and was duly boosted.

Back in the real world, my grain trading career has yet to reap me a British bank busting bonus, (about 35p i would imagine) however I have just submitted my first ever expenses claim form. I don't have illusions to political office, but if I ever did I feel very confident now about my expense form filling skills not letting the side down.

Random meaningless title

The Duckman is now an office boy. But I guess that except for some special interest groups, an 'Office Boy Diaries' would not be a very exciting blog!

I hope not to be an office boy for too long, as once I am trained a large proportion of my new job will be out of the office and on farms dealing direct with farmers, building relationships (not 'Office Boy' special interest type of relationships) but trading relations with farmers, purchasing there hard won produce. So if you farm in Royston, Thetford or the Colchester area you will be receiving a introduction letter from me and then if you are unlucky a visit.

Lots has happened since my last blog, which I appreciate was back in the dim, dark past. Happy days when the pound was strong and MP's where honourable and true. Well maybe not that long ago! Anyway, I have been fishing to France at least once since last blogging. Which was great for me, not so great for Mrs G, and even less great for the Carp.

I have to give my big Nuffield Presentation in a couple of weeks to the whole Nuffield organisation at the annual Nuffield Winter Conference. So far my speech notes consist of reading out my study title and a couple of knob jokes. I am working on padding it out a bit but I have run out of knob jokes. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

We now have two new additions to the family. They are small furry and very energetic. before you start wondering why we have Welsh miners living in our house, I should point out that these are in fact Guinea Pigs. I bought for little Miss G's 4th birthday a couple of weeks ago. I am open to new culinary experiences and am very keen to delve into the unexplored world of Peruvian cuisine, but I really cannot see the piglets (as I affectionately call them) tasting that good, way too boney.

friday feeling!

Its been a while since I last blogged. I apologise to my reader, (sorry mum).

Busyness has been happening. I have been offered a job after three interviews, which i have accepted. The general opinion is that I will hate working. but I am not so sure. I think it will be nice to let someone else do the worrying for a while. The position is as a farm grain trader, buying crops from farmers on behalf of a trading firm. We will see how it goes! I will keep you informed.

I will still be the duck man, in fact if we get the planning application I have processing at the moment we will have more ducks than ever, with the capacity to produce 90,000 birds a year.

in my personal, non-business life Mrs G and I have bought bikes. This is with the aim of keeping fit. I managed a 5 mile cycle Wednesday. I must be honest and say that it nearly killed me. I had to stop twice to catch my breath and rest my wobbly legs. I was a little disappointed as I had not Even got out of the front drive by that point. All I can say is that improvement should be swift. I have decided that living on top of a hill is not great for a budding cyclist. The fun part (downhill) is at the start when you are fresh and (relatively) fit. the rubbish bit uphill is reserved for the final leg home when you are just a hairs breadth short of cardiac arrest. also the last leg of the journey is the busiest bit with cars hooting at me (mainly due to my shorts keep riding down revealing a little too much of my tidy whiteys). I need to get some proper cycling shorts, not for comfort but to avoid causing a major accident.

Sorting the junk

Mrs G has told me to write about how great and understanding she is in letting me go fishing in France again. I have done it Mrs G, stop hitting me now! one day i will tell you the story of when she stabbed me. But not today.

To give me a chance to raise my marital Karma levels (which must be fairly low I reckon) Mrs G offered me the opportunity to spend the day filling a skip she had ordered for tidying the garden and immediate house surroundings. I was under threat of death that I was not to put any farm waste into the skip, just house stuff. I was absolutely amazed at the amount of junk I found lying around. to add to my fun I got out my old oil drum incinerator and burnt any flammable waste, obviously only waste for which I had a waste exemption licence to burn (just in case any EA officials are reading) smashing up junk and burning it is a great way of releasing pent up frustration. There must be a way of marketing it, I just have to think of one!

I must say I got a little worried when the 20ft flames where licking the wooden trellis/archway above our garden wall. Everybody including myself got very worried after the third massive explosion, even Mrs G was worried, it must be said that Mrs G is normally rather indifferent to any personal injury I may cause myself. It turns out that it wasnt the rapture signalling the end of the world but that I had accidentally put a bag containing a pigeon scaring 'Thunder Rope' onto the fire, there was three major explosions followed by about a dozen smaller bangs (which I guess was shotgun cartridges). My ears have been ringing ever since.

I could draw a deep and meaningful theological conclusion about sorting out our live by getting an 'emotional skip' in, but I wont as that would be boring.

A new challenge! ideas please

Terrible, life shattering news. Readers Digest is going bust. Shock horror! what will I and thousand others like me read while in the loo? how will I increase my word power or discover how eating 15kg of asparagus a day can ward off testicular cancer? Can I live without Laughter the best medicine and Humour in uniform?

To fill the gaps between adverts for stair lifts, hearing aids and incontinence pants (which suggests to me that I am not the target demographic) Readers Digest has tasters of new books and specially commissioned articles, usually of an adventurous or biographical nature. This months edition was no different with a piece where the journalist spends a whole week in silence with humorous observations resulting from this. The writer draws witty and thought provoking lessons from his experience to enrich and challenge the reader.

One book that was previewed in the Readers Digest has been turned into the new Jim Carey film 'Yes Man' where Jim Carey's character can only answer yes to every question, the film was inspired by a Danny Wallace real life book where he discovers how liberating it is to actually take every opportunity.

This got me thinking, I have some spare time and fancy a challenge. What crazy challenge could I undertake, then write a book about it and then sell the rights to Hollywood for millions of pounds? though to be fair I am not sure who they would get to play me, Hugh Grant I think, though he would need to work out a bit for the role.

Ideas for challenges I have had so far:

• Change my name to 'Jock McStrap' and wear nothing but a kilt and subsist on a diet of Haggis and porridge for a month (the only downside I can see is that it may traumatise the ducks whose eyes would unfortunately be below kilt level. also there is a strong risk of excessive flatulence)
• Travel around the country with nothing but a twenty four can pack of Asda's budget baked beans with which to barter for transport food and accommodation. (also runs risk of flatulence)
• In the style of Yes Man and the vow of silence challenge I could undertake a grammatical challenge along the lines of only using words with the letter P in for a week or refusing to use vowels. (conversation would be limited to sentences involving fly, sty, my and pry - it may be hard to write a book about it)
• Travel around the world staying in 5 star hotels and sleeping with beautiful women every night. (I am not sure what the challenge is but I am actively seeking a funding sponsor)

Mrs G had a few ideas as well but hers where mainly along the lines of my doing all the washing up and housework everyday or giving up sex for a year. Her ideas obviously have no artistic or literary credibility so I will therefore disregard them.

Any ideas would be welcomed! In tomorrow's blog I will tell you what happened when I was fencing yesterday and unknowingly put a post into a wasps nest, with hilarious consequences.

sad times

The end of my arable farming career passed yesterday without celebration. As the combine completed the last strip of wheat that signalled the end of harvest on my land, I was not sure how to react. normally I am very pleased to finish harvest and have all the crops in the barn, but not so this year. The combine will be cleaned and serviced and delivered to its new owner, the rest of my kit has been sold and will leave the farm shortly.

Next week someone else will till the soil and plant the seed, next year someone else will anxiously watch the weather forecast, and next year someone else's combine will harvest the corn. Obviously as a big tough farmer I do not show emotion, but somewhere inside of me, a little tear was shed. Sad times.

As a child I used to love playing in the crops, or sitting on my grandads lap in a tractor and helping the men feed the pigs. My favorite photograph I have is of me as a toddler with a little red cap on feeding the pigs with my grandad, he used to scold me if I gave one pig all the food so i could watch the other pigs squeal trying to get to it, but nonetheless he still bought me a little child sized feed scoop so that I could help him. Good times.

These things and slowly the people too, are just memories now, a haze in my past. Golden rose tinted images flash frozen in my mind, which sadly grow fainter with age and all too soon the reality will be blurred with the fog of time.

I wonder what if any farming memories I will leave for my children? are they are too busy with ipods and computer games, and too young to realise that the world is irrevocably changing around them, or is it just my world that is changing and I should just accept it?

Are they forming there own memories that they will look on when they grow old? what are they? I hope they are good ones, Its always the little things, like the Winnie the Pooh wallpaper that I had as a child or my grandmas fry-ups, at the time they where not important but there significance grows with teh passing of time.

On Tuesday night I completed my first public speaking engagement, giving the after dinner speech to the Agricultural Valuers Association's agm. I came away hungry as unfortunately the speech was actually after dinner and I was to nervous to eat much beforehand! I thought though that asking for a doggy bag to eat afterwards would give the wrong impression.

My talk seem to be well received, in fact one person commented to me afterwards that most people give talks about how brilliant there businesses do and how clever they are, he though it most refreshing to hear about how somebody has cocked everything up and is actually a really rubbish farmer. My audience left cheered up hopefully that however bad there businesses may be coping during the recession at least they are better farmers/businessmen/consultants/advisers than I am.

I am available for speaking engagements, I just ask that my fee be paid in the form of double helpings of pudding, payment due immediately on completion.

Okey dokey

right then, first off an update on the job search, after my first job interview on Tuesday I received a call from the recruitment agent to say that the company loved me passionately and would like me back for a second interview on Thursday, and that basically he thinks they are going to offer me the job. Wow, this raises several dilemmas, I have had several positive responses from other companies, including agricultural banking for a major (and fortunately solvent) high street name. Is it good to take the first offer? should I ask for 10k more and demand a page three stunner as a personal PA? obviously I will need a expenses account on a par with a Labour MP or the gross national product of a small developing nation, but then that goes without saying.

I have had a busy day today, completing a haymaking job for a horsey client in the village, rather embarrassingly and quite unlike me I was reminded on completion that I forgot to bill them the previous year for making there hay, and that they would appreciate it greatly if I would forget to bill them again this year! No wonder I have to get a job! Mrs G will never get her indoor pool and sauna complex if I forget to bill people! its makes me think what else I have forgotten!

I then wrote some notes for a after dinner speech I have to make on Tuesday night to the Agricultural Valuers Association's AGM. These guys are professional farm consultants who help people do the tedious paperwork on farms and consult on farm developments. I am supposed to go and tell them about developing farm diversification's. which is kind of like taking coal to Newcastle or teaching sex education to Essex girls. I am working on some cracking jokes, most of which so far are completely unsuitable, mostly involving essex girls, but very funny in my head. which is where they should stay. Forever!

busy busy!

Unfortunatly I have been to busy harvesting to write the blog for the last few days, however a wet day today has given me a bit of a break.

A wet saturday gave me the time to take the kids to the circus, which was an experience that I have not had for a long time. there was a troupe of 5 stallions, camels, elephants and best of all five (unfortunately) well trained and beutifull tigers. I must admit to being just a tinsy bit sorry that the tigers did not eat the trainer and that the elephents did not break free and rampage around the big top with deadly consequences. admitidly it would not have been great having the kids in the same tent with wild tigers and elephants eating people, especially with me being so plump and tasty looking. fortunatly that did not happen, though maybe if i had not been so tight and had paid out for front row seats the tigers may have had there appettites piqued.

I had my first interview for a job yesterday which was an interesting experience. Entering the corporate world will be a novel and new experience for me, one that I am excited about but am also, if I am honest, very nervous about as well.

combining at last!

Right, a proper farming post. On Tuesday we started combining in winter wheat (Einstein for the arable nerds reading this) yields are not great at around 8 tonne a hectare but better than nothing! another good dry day today helped and we are now over a third through the wheat. Ironically it started raining as we where driving the combine home, the black clouds where threatening all day but they behaved themselves and did not open until the day was done.

My ginger mate is off to France fishing tomorrow. Without me. Its the first time that he has been and I have not gone with him. so when I am sitting bored on my tractor waiting for the combine to fill up, I will be able to think that I could be fishing in France with him.

As I am sitting in my lounge writing this I can hear the rain thundering against the windows, so I will just turn up the volume on Eastenders (thank you Sky plus!) and probably fall asleep on the sofa.

Your Fired!

Mrs G and I are sitting watching 'Young dumb and living off mum' a programme where a load of slobs are stuck in a house to try to 'improve' them. Its not worked with me yet. or the kids. They are going to work on a farm tonight, I have seen the trailer and it looks funny.

Its time to come clean. I was under a publicity screen whereby I could not discuss it, now though it is time. I wanted to be a TV star, I thought the would should see more of Farmer Gage (no, not centre spread in Playgirl magazine) but alas TV fame is not going to happen, unless i one day end up on Crimewatch.

I went to Manchester to be interviewed for the next series of 'The Apprentice'. People say why would I want to look like an idiot on national television in front of the whole country. I am just bored I guess!

Anyway, I went to the interview and was duly led into a large room to stand in front of three judges, X-Factor style. This was done in a large group of fifteen and we all had thirty seconds to say why we should be the next apprentice, I was inspired to wear my tweeds and go for it 'farmer' style, ending my thirty seconds with the tag line 'Its time for this country mouse to come to town' this went down great with the guardian reading, torn jeans TV executive types running the interviews. Naturally I was selected out of the group of fifteen to go through for an individual interview which I thought went really well, the interviewer even suggested i should keep using the 'country mouse' line. However it obviously did not go that well as I was not ultimately selected for the programme. It is British Broadcasters loss I assure you!

New ducks, new start

We have had some new residents move in on the farm yesterday, so I have had a busy night tonight. They need to have there little water trays filled up every three hours. Its a hot sweaty job as it is around 29 degrees in the shed and 80% humidity.

We have guests staying for the weekend but I have found it pays not to drink too much on duck day, the ducks tend to get under you feet a bit, sober you can skip over them - but tipsy you tend to crunch them. a two ounce duck will never win an argument with a sixteen stone guys foot.

I have put my name into some agricultural recruitment agency's, seeing that I now have not a lot to do on the farm. I have been getting a few responses, mainly grain buying/trading positions. The trouble is that I am not sure what I want to do myself. I need to do something interesting as I have a low boredom threshold, the trouble is recruiters see my CV, and say I would be great, then they say why do you need a job? and it all goes downhill from there... But I am sure that something interesting will come up eventually. I reckon Gordon Browns job must be on the vacant soon, how do I apply for that one?

Im depressed.

In Wilbur Smith's latest book Assegai the auther describes money as being like the tides of the sea. well at the moment my tide is at low water. Over the horizon in fact. It makes low tide at Southend seem like a flood.

This situation is somewhat depressing me. I was thinking earlier today as I was preparing my ducks for there final journey this evening, that I wish that I was a character in a novel. The hero always suffers some terrible personal disaster but always ends up Prime Minister or something equally grand after a few hundred pages. In one of Wilbur Smith's earliest books the heroine is stranded after a shipwreck on a desert beach in East Africa, penniless, without food or supplies and facing a certain death within hours. With hyenas circling, her future could hardly be viewed with much optimism. However, to prove my point, after a hundred pages she discovers (after being rescued by San bushmen) a massive diamond in what turns out to be one of the largest diamond fields in Africa and therefore the world, making her one of the richest and most powerful women in the world. Bully for her. I should start looking for diamonds, Its about time I found my own diamond field!

I used to believe that what does not kill you only makes you stronger. I am starting to think that I got it wrong. I am starting to that that what does not kill you straight away is slowly chipping you down and will get you eventually.

Anyway. I apologise to my reader for being depressing. I am sure I will have cheered up by the time I write my next post. Who knows, I may have found my own Diamond mine by then, I think I will go and find my spade and start looking! That or go to the cinema, buy a large coke and a massive bage of M&M's and eat my sorrows away.

Digging for diamonds sound like hard work.

Bath time and pure mathmatics.

Tonight in the bath I had an Einstein moment (don't worry this is a 'clean' blog).

Or really it should be a Newton moment. I have realised that fatties like myself help reduce global warming and have a lower carbon footprint than 'skinnies', this is because in the bath us fatties require a lot less hot water to fill the bath than other slimmer and therefore more polluting members of our species. Therefore i can eat my second portion of pudding safe in the knowledge that i am doing it for the environment and my children, and my grandchildren's future. I should develop a technical, pure mathematics equation to illustrate and explain my findings, publish it and make myself famous. But I am too thick.

Farming wise we are waiting for the rain to stop and the sun to shine. Our rape and wheat are still a few weeks off. We have never been so ready for harvest, the barn is clean, the combine serviced, the trailers have even been washed out! normally we are running around like headless chickens when the combine starts running.

The farming media always cheers us up while we are waiting to start harvest, with stories of those super efficient farmers who have already got there crops in the barn and have sold them forward at double the current grain price, while I watch mine spoiling in the field safe in the knowledge that when I do get them in and sell them the market will have plummeted and i will be lucky if I make enough money to put a slice of dry bread on the table for the kids supper, let alone keep Mrs G in the lifestyle to which she is accustomed.

Breed your own clients!

I am on my own on the farm this week. Little Dave (my right hand man) is on holiday so apart from Cheryl in the horses, I am left running the farm alone. As I am possibly the worst ever tractor driver and mechanic, I always have a feeling of trepidation whenever I start a tractor related job, as does Dave, as he probably spends 25% of his working life repairing things that I have broken, one bonus is that my ineptitude at tractor driving helps keep the unemployment figures down. Gordon Brown should thank me.


I am such a bad tractor driver that after failing my MO1 (tractor skills) test for the forth time at college my tutor in all seriousness suggested I take up building as a career and forgot about farming altogether. In hindsight probably a good idea.


We had our first foal born at Barnley Equestrian Centre this week (its a new marketing idea of mine to get new liverys by breeding them). 9.30pm on Tuesday night little Trilogy was born. We used to have a lot of animals born on the farm, Trilogy was the first for a long time, it has been really nice. So congratulations to the proud parents!


Little Trilogy with his mother Geneva. Our first foal at Barnley!

I have spent today repairing bust drinkers and cutting grass. We seem to have a wave of stupidity amongst our equine guests at the moment. they are grabbing there field drinkers and playing tug of war with them. The winner gets a cold shower as the water fittings explode. I have had three do it in the last two weeks. Idiots. I used to say that it was the owners that caused all the hassle and the horses where innocent. I am starting to change my mind.

home again, home again, jiggardy jog.

i apologise profusely for the lack of posts this last week. i have been away fishing in France.

To escape from the stresses of duck farming i like to go to France for a week and just sit by a lake and fish 24/7. It is amazingly stress releasing though it does have points of high excitement. for example i hooked a whacking great carp after losing several over the first few days. It managed to swim into a weed bed about ten feet out and get itself stuck in full view of me and my mate Gaby who was fishing with me. the only was to extract it from the weed was for somebody to physically get in the lake and get it. Gaby was delegated as the fish retriever (as he is smaller than me and therefore lower in the food chain) he raised the valid possibility of drowning, which i countered with the certainty of being beaten to death with my fishing rod if he did not get in. to give him credit he overcame his fear of drowning and went in the lake (assisted by my right foot). the fish was released from the weed and duly landed. at 51lb it is my third fifty and second best carp.

An intelligent people weekend

The three hour drive to Hereford took me 5 hours. but eventually i arrived at the 2009 Beckett Nuffield Scholar Reunion, a weekend event with fascinating business visits, which is organised by my scholarship sponsors, Alan and Anne Beckett, for all the people they have sponsored over the years. long may it continue!

All my fellow scholars are highly intelligent and motivated people (the Beckett award being the Entrepreneurs and Innovation Award) with businesses ranging from multi-award winning online retail enormous farm shops. I felt a little out of my depth to be honest, As said in previous blogs my comfort zone is approximately level with a duck.


Our guest speaker for the Saturday night formal dinner was an entrepreneur called Ian Brown see http://www.leemoor.net/ he has developed various rural businesses and a growing hospitality enterprise. So if you ignore the fact that he is a successful businessman, we did have several things in common, a love of the thrill of enterprise, a passion for developing new concepts and a willingness to have a go at anything.

Ian has developed a consultancy business and a speaking career based on sharing his experiences, this has led to many new experiences and contacts. A career path that i am keen to follow myself as a little side line. I have come home inspired to boost my profile which Ian has done by creating a massively self promoting website, because to be frank, if you don't sing your own praises to raise your profile and gain clients nobody else will! Self promotion is a very strong trait amongst entrepreneurs, just look at Richard Branson!

hungover again

I had a great night last night. I had two Nuffield scholars pop over for drinkys and 'sophisticated, serious talk' if you can believe that! those of you that know me will appreciatte the problems that I have when dealing with serious situations, however I have learnt that when in the presence of superior intellects just nod with a slightly quizzical look (its a fine line between quizzical and dumb) bearing in mind that i spend most of my time with superior intellects (ducks) i am quite good at it.

I spent an hour on the phone with my water supplier this morning. the water meter into the farm developed a leak at some point in the past six months and even after they accepted responsibility and fixed the meter they still billed me a 2000% increase on my normal bill! what can you say. actually i said quite a lot, mostly unrepeatable.

The front room looks stunning now that the new floor has been laid. it is 'antique oak' and has been done very professionally, so obviously not by me. Although Mrs G was shocked to find that they had left three Stanley knife blades on the floor which was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Which raises the question, what level of injury would you be happy to sustain in order to receive a large compensation payout? personally i would be happy to loose some toes for £20k, especially if they where Mrs G's. What do toes do anyway? she would fit in her pointy shoes better so she probably would appreciate it anyway in the long run.

After days of confusion Mrs G had to explain to me that the comment on Mondays blog that referred to Mrs DM was actually Mrs Duckman. why did i not see that? i think it is my age catching up with me, now that i have turned thirty.

Mrs G stripping

Times are hard down on the duck farm. As the troubles in the economy start to bite i have been forced to send Mrs G stripping. Actually it was her idea. I volunteered to do it as i am developing a nice pair of moobs, but Mrs G said nobody wants to see them. Not even her.

After a tiring evening working the streets Mrs G had achieved her aim. Strictly speaking it was not the streets, more like are front room, and while her stripping was dirty it was not sexual - more grubby from the old wall paper. there ended her involvement, except to panic when the heating pipe split in the night after i took off the radiator, resulting in half an inch of heating fluid soaking the carpet leading to me being forced to rip up half the concrete floor to fx it.

Four days later i have filled pits, painted the ceiling twice, glossed the picture rail twice, the window frames (twice) covered three of the walls in 'Nutmeg' which is kind of like a pinky beige and guess what i did them twice. the 'peice de la Resistance' is what Mrs G says is technically known as the 'accent' wall. Its a lovely deep red which is creatively called Ruby Starlet. like a demanding movie star the 'accent' wall insisted on having 5 coats to stop it looking like a dried hanky after a nose bleed. I wont say what Mrs G called it as it was so disgusting, even my very loose inner appropriatness alarm went off.

I would report on what has happened on the farm but i dont have a clue as i have been decorating all week. However on tuesday i and my right hand man went on a 'Animal Welfare' course run by the proccessing company i grow the Ducks for. I decided that i did not agree with my Tom-Tom Satalite navigation aid and ende up adding at least 10 miles onto the journey, come on we have all done it.

hungover still

I don't know how long your hangovers normally last but mine is still going strong. I slept half the afternoon on the sofa, as well as most of this mornings sermon in church! - a little tip, if you where wrap around sun glasses in church nobody even knows your asleep. Though snoring will spoil the illusion!

i am afraid this will be a short blog as spending a day sweating out the gin while laying on the sofa does not create exciting blog entries. i thought about making it up but i have never been good at faking it. i will have to ask Mrs G for some tips.

After my travels everybody keeps asking me what the next big thing is going to be. apart from my gut and my overdraft i am not sure what will be big in farming in the future. if anybody has any suggestions leave a comment!

anybody who is reading this and has a facebook account please feel free to join me on http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=776379876&ref=profile i have no idea if that link will work, otherwise search for andrew gage in haverhill, UK.

Worshipful Company of Farmers and the smallest pub in Britain

what a great couple of days. I spent Thursday manning the Nuffield stand at Cereals, which meant regular wondering trips to find the best hospitality stands. I can report (after extensive research) that Bidwells had great bacon sandwiches, Openfield had an excellent free bar, but it was all excelled by Lloyd's lamb spit roast. its nice to see that despite losing £10 billion recently they still appreciate there farming clients.

last year i attended the Worshipful Company of Farmers advanced business management course. if anyone needed to do it, it was me! having cocked up royally in my last major project i was determined to educate myself as much as possible.

The last two days have been our second annual reunion. After checking into the Angel hotel in Bury and spending the days visiting local farms, the nights where spent in local drinking establishments.

Purely be chance we discovered the smallest pub in Britain, is in Bury st Edmund's. it measured about twelve feet by five feet but we still managed to fit in 16 farmers, there wives, three American airmen (who introduced us to chewing tobbacco) and a blind man with a guide dog. the pub may have been small but the rounds where expensive! i am a lightweight at the best of times and after a bottle of red wine and then 8 G&T's (yes i do drink girls drinks, but only when no-one is looking) i was anybodies. however nobody wanted me so i went back to the hotel.

this morning we visited a large arable farmer. 4900 acres with only one member of staff! he had lovely big shiny kit. By big and shiny i mean enormous and expensive! it was reassuring to see that despite being a £180,000 machine it still had baler twine holding a hydraulic pipe up. where would British agriculture be without red baler string!

there was a marked contrast between that farm and ours, which the group visited this afternoon. however everybody was very gracious and did not laugh too much!

£400/hr!!!!!!

you have to feel sorry for solicitors don't you? i had one in my front room today, plus two land agents (total cost about £400/hr - ouch) as he walked in i asked him how the soliciting trade was coping in the current economic climate, to which he replied 'you make me sound like a prostitute, i prefer to call it the legal trade.' Fair enough i thought, but you still screw people for a living!

He was complained that due to the credit crunch they where down to a four day working week, he was not cheered up by my pointing out that his hourly rate was almost the same as a minimum wage workers weekly income! my heart had stopped bleeding for him as his Bentley pulled out of my driveway two hours and £500 richer later. (on principle i did not offer him the ginger crunch biscuits, he should bring his own)

After filling in my highly qualified and overpaid companions on my financial disasters this past year it was decided that the business fared best while i was travelling abroad and not spending money on the farm, so it was decided as a cost cutting exercise, and to help the farm deal with the credit crunch that i will spend the next six months in Hawaii. i expect whoops of joy from the staff, not to mention the wife! (no please don't)

tomorrow i am helping man the Nuffield stand at the 'Cereals' show near Cambridge. if my farming reader is going come and say hello! i am the plump one.

As this is the Duckman Diarys i should mention the ducks occasionally. They are now 6 days old and doing well. six and a half weeks to pay day.

welcome to my three new followers!! who are you? please introduce yourselves by leaving a comment. if you are a hottie i might even reply!

highs and shattering lows

i have experienced a day of dizzying high points and plummeting depths. I had some very nice comments on facebook (please be my friend!) email and other farming forums about my blog and my Nuffield Scholarship Precis i posted on here yesterday. my ego appreciates all comments! in fact it positively encourages them.

high points of the day include, another follower for my blog! welcome Chas! (your not my mum are you?) then when having a slow puncture on my car repaired at a local garage the mechanic told me not to worry about paying for it as the computer is broken, so £15 saved! woop woop! i phoned the wife and told her the kids could eat tonight, maybe life is not so bad. Next i met up with an old friend in town and spent a very pleasant hour in one of his coffee shops discussing a possible forthcoming business venture, so as you see us duck farmers can live the high life as well.

i then walked back to my car, still on a bit of a high and my wife called to say she had two people quoting tomorrow on laying new flooring in our house (woop), even that could not spoil my pleasant afternoon. Then i see the present on my car windscreen (no not a gift from my feathered french friends) but a little yellow package telling me i was four minutes over my parking ticket and the pleasure of those four minutes was going to cost me £50 but there is good news, if i pay it in seven days it will be only £20! joy of joys.

so the natural balance of my life has been restored. for an hour i was £20 up. i will savour that moment for a long time.

fencing and a very long boring bit

today i have been mainly fencing. the ground is so hard. we bust five posts trying to get the strainers in, then we had to resort to making a metal post that would not shatter in order to create a pilot hole for each post. the land owner then comes over and says 'when i was a lad i fenced this whole field by hand on my own, don't know what your moaning about it being hard'

he very narrowly avoided having a new 'pilot hole' created in his backside, the only thing that saved him was that i had bust all my spare posts! especially after he moaned that some of his horsey clients wanted to pay him in kind not cash (wink, wink) why after six years of having horsey people here has nobody offered to pay me in kind? am i that ugly? should i put my rates up to encourage lateral thinking?

update on life aims:

1- hair is all still there, the shower plug was slightly blocked but they were long and brown. definitely not mine.
2- slightly less solvent than yesterday as still have not had cheque for last fencing job. (you know who you are)
3- no carp. though have not been fishing so not surprising really.
4- still married
5- no horsey people murdered

so really progress on two out of five, i think i should count number five as a neutral result, no murder is good but then again it is a horsey person so probably nobody would moan about it anyway.

by the way if you like my blog feel free to become a follower by clicking the button to the right. it will give me great encouragement that somebody is actually reading this!

out of interest to nobody in particular i have cut and pasted a precis i have done for Nuffield to go in there annual report and to encourage people to read my main report. so if you have trouble sleeping at night read the next 1846 words and i am sure you will have no trouble!


Surviving the Learning Curve of Farm Diversification

My Background

My background was not in farming but after growing up in the commuter towns of London, I eventually took over my grandparents’ farm at the tender age of twenty-one.

At sixteen I left home and moved to my grandparents’ farm in Helions Bumpstead, Haverhill, as a young farmer on a one hundred and thirty sow pig farm with three hundred acres of arable land.

I have done my best to increase farm income by diversifying the farm – my projects to date have included a fifty box livery yard, a duck farm producing sixty thousand meat ducks a year, private storage, commercial and residential property, equine fencing, contracting and a double glazing business. I also spent two years developing (rather disastrously) an indoor Tilapia fish farm.

What excites me is the prospect of making a business out of nothing (like the ‘Pea and Poop’ concept you will read later on), or creating an income from redundant or previously underperforming assets. All farmers have underperforming or even completely unrecognised assets on their farms; you just need to see them!

The aim of my Nuffield Study is to create a resource for farmers to use which will hopefully help them identify and develop alternative income streams. I want to give prospective entrepreneurs encouragement through the experiences I have had on my travels and through my personal projects, that this is achievable, and to make people realise that actually everybody does have opportunities regardless of their location, financial position or current skill set.

Developing a new enterprise can be very challenging. You will face many obstacles along the way. Some will cause you to just alter your plans, others will lead you to completely change your whole way of life. ALL obstacles you face will develop and grow you and your business, whatever the outcome.


South Africa

I started my tour in January 2009 by visiting South Africa. My thinking behind this destination was that if I wanted to visit farmers who had been forced to overcome obstacles, who better to talk to than farmers who had to cope with a difficult climate both political and environmental, and a limited export market. This forces farmers and entrepreneurs to closely identify the needs and demands of their local markets, something we are only really just starting to learn in the UK.

It was a very interesting country to visit with its diverse cultures and environment. Most of the diversification projects I saw where specific to South Africa, however the lessons I learned were extremely relevant.

Bernard Wooding and Lindsay Hunt (Hunt Africa) saw that the rise in game farming, eco tourism and big game shooting in Africa as an opportunity. This boom has led to massive rises in land values across Southern Africa. Bernard and Lindsay realised that people travel to Africa to see the ‘Big Five’ - elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and cape buffalo. All these species could be bought and shipped onto new game parks except for the buffalo. This is due to the prevalence of TB in the areas holding wild stocks of buffalo and wildlife movement laws which forbid the transportation of TB ‘at risk’ buffalo into areas free of the disease. Bernard and Lindsay learnt that to get a buffalo out of a diseased area they needed to get hold of the animal before its mother exchanged any bodily fluids with it and then raise it on a jersey cow until it could be licensed as clean, not as easy as it sounds!
Anyway after ten years of successfully moving and breeding they have a herd of over seventy-five TB clean animals which are in massive demand all over Africa as they can be moved anywhere. They are so successful that they could sell all their stock forward for the next five years! They are so successful that they are selling twelve buffalo a year and are in profit after the first two! And at >R500,000 per buffalo it’s not a bad earner!

Even though ninety-five per cent of farmers I met complained about the effect of outside investors buying up farms to create game reserves resulting in a dramatic increase in land values. If they could only look at the problem with a positive mental attitude then they could see that there is a whole wealth of opportunities out there as a direct result of game farming, like the buffalo example given. In the UK a lot of farmers moan about various things like being overpopulated or busy roads that, with a change of attitude, could result in a great business opportunity.


Australia

I chose Australia as a second study country as it is a very similar market to that in the UK. The population has a similar lifestyle and aspirations to the UK. Also, I had seen a concept in South Africa that was being heavily developed in Australia, so a trip there allowed me to investigate this opportunity further.

While in Tasmania I visited an extremely inspiring business called ‘Pea & Poop’ which was completely unexpected as I was lost and only stopped to ask directions! This farmer, in a very remote location in Tasmania, had spotted a demand for compost mulch. He had identified that he had two valuable waste products in pea straw (which decomposes very fast making it ideal mulch) and stock yard cattle manure. He decided to experiment and mixed the two together with the addition of a small amount of water resulting in a very saleable product once bagged. His entire production equipment consisted of a broken down cement truck to mix the product, a trailed forage chopper to chop the pea straw and blow it into the mixer and a loader to manoeuvre the straw bales. The mulch is hand bagged and then delivered to consumers and retailers all over Tasmania. Sounds like a simple business plan doesn’t it? Well it is.

This example shows the true value of an idea; in this case it is £80,000 profit per annum! How many people have access to similar facilities and raw materials? Most would I imagine. I found this business truly inspirational.


Lessons Learned

In all I visited approximately sixty different businesses ranging from very small home based enterprises to multi million pound agribusinesses.

The first thing any farmer should do when trying to develop an alternative income is analyse their own personal motivation and skills. This is essential in helping to identify what kind and scale of enterprise would suit you best.

Personal Analysis

Decide what you want from your business -Establish your aims first, and remember them during your future planning.

Analyse your strengths and interests - Appreciate your strengths and work with them. Accept your weaknesses and strive to improve in those areas!

Get over your failures! - We have all made mistakes in the past, get over them. Remember that’s why they put erasers on pencils! (Quote – Lenny from ‘The Simpsons’)

Develop Strong Foundations

Once you have analysed your skill set and understand what motivates you it is important to ensure that you are developing from a strong foundation within your core business. Don’t forget to actually identify what is your core business. This sounds obvious, but if you run a mixed farm and you do just one set of accounts, are you sure that you are not just subsidising one enterprise by another? Maybe you would be able to increase your income to meet your aims (if they are financial) by just re-organising or scaling up your existing business. For example contracting out arable land to concentrate on a livestock enterprise, or even selling it to release capital for an expansion project elsewhere.

Develop from a position of personal strength - Develop yourself concentrating on your weaker areas. Establish strong relationships with your staff, colleagues and partners.

Ensure your core business is strong before developing onwards - Secure your core business; make the necessary decisions, however hard they may be, to allow you to go forward confidently and strongly.

Make difficult decisions early which will make life easier - Reduce liabilities if necessary, change core enterprise structures in order to meet personal aims and create firm foundations.

Diversification Preparation

So once you have looked deep within yourself and your business and you have come to the point where you can develop your ideas, what do you do then?

Research your ideas well, remember to think laterally - Failure to prepare is preparing to fail! Time spent in research will save a lot of time and money in the future. It is better to find out things before you start rather than when you are heavily invested.

Investigate your business associates - Don’t get any nasty surprises later on. Learn as much about your associates before you go into any new partnerships.

Develop strong partnerships - Remember that two heads are better than one! Try to establish links with people who balance your skills and weaknesses.

Plan for positive and negative outcomes - Always ensure you have an exit strategy before starting any project. It is easy to plan before you start how you will spend your new profits, but remember to think of all possible outcomes!

Look for opportunities around you - There are opportunities everywhere. Think laterally and be open to new ideas, cultivate an open mindset to opportunities.

Don’t ignore problems - Don’t stick your head in the sand. Face up to problems as and when they arise. Remember the old maxim, that the first loss is usually the least!

Employ in the skills that you may lack - Don’t be too proud to accept your weaknesses. Surround yourself with people who have the skills that you don’t. Employ consultants to assist in the short term.


Conclusions

During my travels I have seen many different businesses and different situations that farmers have worked through. I have learned from the ways they have coped, or in some cases have not coped, with their individual problems. I have learnt a lot more than I could ever put in my study (though please read it as there is a lot more in it!) In my report I have done my best to give an insight into how you could develop your enterprise further and some of the pitfalls that you should avoid. I hope that you are inspired to go out there and find and develop your own projects.

For me personally, since returning I have listened to my own advice and dramatically restructured my business. I am also developing a consulting business to help other farmers develop concepts on their units. Feel free to contact me to discuss any ideas that you may have.

Andrew Gage andyg125@hotmail.co.uk

anybody read this far? I bet not!

My birthday has finally arrived! i waited thirty years for today. i am now feeling an old man (not literally though)

I thought i would stay in and have a relaxing day in front of the TV. But just my luck, the first day i get to relax in front of the box for ages we have a three hour power cut! Middle age has not started well. i then had to spend the afternoon keep checking the generator in the ducklings to make sure it was still working as two day old ducks don't like being cold, they tend to die!

i think at this milestone in my life i should set some targets for the rest of my life.

1. Keep my hair
2. Try to stay solvent.
3. Catch a 80lb carp
4. Stay married
5. Try not to murder any horsey people

in thirty seconds thought they seemed to be the main ones!

since my second post i have had several people ask why i blame the french for the pigeons. It is very simple really. i have a theory that all pigeons are french, and i think you will see why when i explain my thinking.

imagine you are a pigeon. (not so hard for some people) now say something in pigeon, i guarantee you will say it in a stupid french accent like the french policeman 'officer crabtree' from 'allo 'allo. if you disagree let me know and we can have a fight about it.

birthday treat planning

firstly i apologise that this blog is late! i had a day out yesterday with my Nuffield Scholar group and did not get home until gone 1.30am, and then i still had to see to the new ducklings that had arrived in the day!

Today i visited a couple of inspiring farms, firstly fellow Nuffield Scholar Ben Stanley at Blackbrook Longhorns (a bit boastful i thought, though his fiance did look happy and was quite a hottie so there must be something in it) see his farm at http://www.blackbrook-longhorns.com/

I had a full tour of his fantastically tasty looking longhorn herd. Am i the only person out there who when they see rare breed animals think they would make a nice rug? when i was on safari in South Africa earlier this year i could not help but think how all the animal would look hanging on my wall. I don't think i would make a great conservationist, i just want to eat or stuff the most interesting animals. my point was proven when Ben cooked up some Longhorn Beefburgers for lunch and they where the best i had eaten for a long time, at least since the BigMac i had on the way up to his.

seriously though it is a fantastic breed producing truly superb English meat, for sale direct to the public. i came home with a superb looking rib joint which i am looking forward to eating!

next we visited an amazing dairy farm (Nottingham University Trial Farm) where the cows are milked by robots. it is spectacular. the cows are free to enter the machine whenever they like to be milked, the robot recognises each cow, feeds it, cleans and milks it (using lasers to find the teats!) it got me thinking, after spending some time in Addenbrookes newborn special care unit with our first child and seeing the new new mothers struggling to express milk to feed there premature babies i could see that an adapted robotic milking unit could be money well spent in there!

As part of my Nuffield Scholarship i have to produce a 25 page report which will i hope will encourage other farmers to have a go at developing their diversification ideas and increase there farm incomes. I had eight fun weeks traveling around Australia and South Africa visiting farms etc. Quid pro quo though its not a bad deal, i did manage to eat sheep brains on toast, which are surprisingly not as nice as they sound and dive with great white sharks which was fun, though the signs telling you to keep your arms and legs inside the cage where completely unnecessary.

i was told yesterday that i have to produce a precis of my study to be published in the annual report so once i have done it i will put it up here for my farming reader. i still live in hope of one!

on a lighter note Mrs G has been nagging me about what we are going to do for my birthday treat, (as it is tomorrow) I suggested possibly as it was going to be my birthday, leaving the lights on during 'snuggle' time. however it turns out that she wants my treat to be something we could both enjoy. She then pointed out that i did nothing special for her birthday, to which i took great offence as i had made love to her twice on her birthday. it turns out that was what she meant by nothing special. Nice.

Pigeon love

As a farmer i split my time equally between sitting in the office paying bills (also known as playing solitaire on my laptop) and chasing pigeons off my Oil Seed Rape fields. over the last few years the pigeon numbers have blossomed creating a plague of almost biblical proportions, on our farm at least. Personally i blame the French.

This is despite pigeons having possibly the worst 'after loving' attitude i have ever witnessed. i know this because today i saw it for myself, after feasting on my spring rape field, two particularly amourous pigeons decided to burn off there excess energy and highlight there dominance over me as a farmer by procreating on top of my tractor. After the act was done they alighted from the tractor and flew to the top of my grain store where they sat next to each other looking down on me with distinctly smug looks on their faces. as i was watching them (and debating in my head whether to get my gun and have the last laugh) one pigeon, who i can only presume was the male, started pecking the other, making her edge along the roof untill she was forced to fly off to another perch.

was this a case of post-coital remorse? had, once the testosterone fueled haze of pre love making cleared, he realised that she was actually not as attractive or witty as he first thought? or was it, like i suspected, and which proves men all over the planet correct that we blokes do not want to talk after doing the dirty, we just want to go to sleep? we dont want to hear what your friends sisters holiday plans are, or what you may look like with a different hair cut. We may act like we care beforehand, but afterwards there is absolutly no reason to do so.

farming-wise for my agricultural reader (i live in hope of someday having one) today we have been preparing for a batch of 10,000 day old ducklings that are coming tommorrow, and apart from me tripping over the drinker lines and landing on my face, absolutely nothing humorous happened.

Boldly going where no Duck has gone before!

welcome to my first blog post!

My inspiration for starting this blog came a few weeks ago after a night out at a comedy club in Haverhill, Sitting in the front at a stand up show is never a good idea, especially when you are (as was pointed out by my good friend and comedy club veteran Mr A,) slightly on the chunky side and wearing shorts and sandals and a purple t-shirt, sure enough within five minutes the opening act asked my profession to which i naturally replied 'farmer' the conversation went a little like this,

C -'what do you farm?'

Me - 'ducks'

C - 'No seriously, what do you farm?'

Me - 'ducks'

- long pause -

C - 'Really?'

Me - 'yes'

- Another long pause -

C - 'Ducks?'

i think you get the gist now. he did eventually recover from his shock and at least the first ten minutes of his set was concentrated on me, in fact each of the three acts managed to include me in some way. the manager of the venue was to later tell me that he had never seen a comedian completely speechless before. I do tend to have this effect on people!

I am for the next four days at least, 29. i have been married for the last 8 years to the long suffering Mrs G. we have four (at times) delightful kids aged 1, 3, 5 and 7.

Over the last few years i have farmed pigs, ducks, livery horses, Tilapia (a type of fish) other business i have or have had are storage units, commercial units, double glazing firm, equine contracting, consulting and i am sure there are others that i have forgotten! this last year i have been awarded a Nuffield Farming Scholarship which allows me to travel around the world studying farming and to research my particular subject which is titled 'Surviving the Learning Curve of farm Diversification' i have this year toured South Africa and Australia visiting entrepreneurs and farmers.

I am, and it comes as no surprise to those who know me, an absolutely rubbish farmer. Things i look after (apart from ducks) seem to die. My ability to write cars off with a teleporter is legendary, two vans and a clients 4x4 have so far fallen foul my reversing skills, worse still is the fact that i actually parked the vans myself thirty seconds before running them over, imagine filling out that insurance claim form, driver of vehicle A - er.. Me. Driver of vehicle B - er... me again. the box 'who in your opinion was responsible for the accident' was actually surprisingly easy to fill out!

I have found that farming gives me the amazing ability to make myself look very silly without any trouble at all, but it also gives you a very different outlook on life to people who are crammed in an office for eight hours a day, i may have to deal with moaning horsey girls (the idea when i started the equine business of having a farm full of hotties in jodphurs was very quickly dispelled) but i also get to be my own boss and spend my days in the beautiful British countryside.

i will bring you the highs and lows of farm life in my future blogs so please read and enjoy!