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.