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!