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!