Linscombe Farm Newsletter 20th September 2007

We have some visitors coming to stay next week who are cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Presumably they won’t be too worn out by the time they get to us as they have a big chunk of their journey still to do! They are doing this for a number of reasons – all of them relevant to our vegetable business, hence our willingness to accommodate and support them. Firstly, they want to highlight climate change and the opportunities that abound to change your "ecological footprint" and also, interestingly for us, to highlight the possibilities of careers "on the land" for young people, in order to encourage innovative new blood into farming, at a time when fundamental change is so needed. This latter point is especially significant for us as, even after striving for ten years to reduce the physical demands, especially the repetitive or monotonous aspects of the job, we still find it hard to recruit people to work with us to produce your vegetables. True, this is partly a wages issue as margins seem to be tighter than in many other sectors (especially the public ones!) – although we do pay all our workers above the minimum wage, but it is also an issue concerning peoples’ apparent preference to do simple and undemanding work in preference to that which challenges and engages. Even finding the right person to administer and work on the customer end of the business does not always seem as straightforward as we sometimes feel that it should be – see our website for our current job advert – although, talking to other local small business managers, it seems to be a problem shared with other sectors. In theory, of course (market theory that is) this scarcity of potential employees in a time of high employment should lead to higher levels of wages being offered but we then hit the sticky issue of individual productivity and come back to the tight margins that we mentioned at the start. Given that we must produce our wide range of vegetables (few economies of scale for us) at a globally competitive rate, we sometimes feel that we are chasing the wrong beast altogether – especially when one customer recently described our product as a luxury! How can fresh vegetables, which are so vital for our well-being, produced to reduce your ecological footprint, be a luxury?! Aren’t luxuries consumer goods like TVs, DVD players and fast cars? Come on guys, get excited by your vibrant vegetables and shout about your carbon credits with pride! Anyway, see

We attempted to get the potato harvest started this week – but with little success as a small part of the machine broke, which meant all the potatoes were dropping back down through the machine into the soil again rather than trundling along the last metre of the grading table into the bulk bin – not much good when the whole idea is to get them off the field rather than replant them! Also the ground conditions are so dry that the clods of earth which are normally broken up by the machine are coming up over the grading table the size of small planets. Your arms have to work like pistons to get the sheer volume of soil off the table back onto the field so, quite honestly, it was almost a relief when the machine did break! Hopefully it’ll be back in action before the week is out, as we really don’t want a repeat of last year when it was too wet for us to harvest the potatoes. Strange how it can be so dry, yet your worst nightmare is the ground being too wet – the psychology of the farmers’ mind is probably best avoided really, but each week we struggle to resist the temptation to give you an alarming glimpse of it!!

As an aside from vegetable news, having told a customer of our episode with vehicles last week, thought that might as well relay the whole saga to everyone as evidence of our ongoing madness. We have two cars, (now, yes, that’s a luxury!) a supposed "Farm Car" for driving round the fields when a tractor isn’t justified, and a "house car" for domestic use, although admittedly, it’s pretty hard to distinguish between the two – both covered in soil (note, not dust, but definitely soil). Last week on Friday morning took the Farm car up the field to pick the calabrese and whilst driving through the gap between a poplar and willow windbreak, suddenly the car lurched down and would go no further. OK, slip in into low gear and try again, nope, into reverse, nope, definitely stuck and calling for further investigation. Oh dear! Wedged between the back off-side tyre and the car bodywork of the offside rear passenger door, is a poplar tree stump. Mmmm. Resultant text to husband (and forwarded to several friends just to give them a Friday morning laugh) "Car jammed on poplar stump. I know, don’t ask. Only solution chainsaw. Ta." Now, come on, how many women would admit to that?!! Was frantically involved in picking calabrese when house car driven by husband plus twins (not driving but would like to) plus chainsaw arrive. Head down, act cool, what great calabrese this is! Car duly extracted, mumbles about smells of burning clutches noted but ignored. House car returned by husband to yard where he parks it and later husband also parks lorry alongside. At later hour husband then jumps into lorry and drives into house car despite having parked both vehicles and stood next to house car whilst strapping twins into lorry seats! Hmmm. Wife mumbles about scraping metal! A bad car day what with one thing and another. Anyone know where there’s a good horse or two? Enjoy your vegetables,

All the best, Phil, Helen, Tom, David and James and team.