As I write, it’s a beautiful Monday morning. The skies are blue and, though there’s a breeze coming in from the east, it’s pleasantly warm. These then are the ideal conditions for getting out there and getting stuff done. So what am I doing in the kitchen writing this?
The truth is I was up very early and, after a boiled egg and a cup of coffee, I pootled over to the farmyard to get cracking. But I couldn’t. I just stood there, utterly overwhelmed and feeling as if I was the centrepiece in one of those contra-rotating Hollywood shots in which the hero spins one way and the camera whizzes round him in the opposite direction. It’s used to convey panic and disorder.
The problem I have is this. After a year of farming Diddly Squat the way it has always been farmed, I got itchy feet and decided that rather than growing wheat, barley and oil seed rape over and over again until I fell into a bit of machinery and became mince, I’d introduce new stuff. So I got sheep, then cows, then hens and then pigs. And then a brewery for my spring barley. And then I started growing mushrooms and cricket bats. And a few months ago I embarked on yet another new project, which is so massive and so time-consuming that sleep is as distant a memory as smoking.
All of which takes us back to 1977. For reasons that are entirely unclear, I decided that I should study economics as an A-level subject, which meant I had to spend several hours every week listening to a man talking in a language that was pure Gerald. Which is why I shifted the dial in my head. He was broadcasting on 94.7 and I was listening on 98.3. It was just static and that enabled me to do what I really wanted to do, which was the Melody Maker crossword.
In two years I learnt pretty much nothing because while he was droning on about Keynes, I was trying desperately to remember who played bass in Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Somehow, though, one thing did lodge in my head: that there was a chap in the 18th century called Adam Smith who argued that to survive you had to specialise. Subliminally this is probably why I decided to devote my entire life to nothing but motoring journalism.
Advertisement
What’s more of a certainty is that I should have paid more attention, because in farming it seems Mr Smith may have had a point. Birds Eye don’t do beef for a reason. Warburtons don’t do vegetables. And at no point did Bernard Matthews ever say, “Let’s try our hand with venison.” So what was I thinking of when I woke up one morning and thought, “Yes! Wasabi, that’s the answer.”
And why I am growing — not counting the regen enterprise — three different types of wheat? A decision that meant that yesterday — yes, on a Sunday — we had to start work on yet another grain store. So that’s another thing to think about. Where should the spoil go? How much hardcore will we need from the quarry? Can I really afford to spend two whole days carting waste, or would it be better to employ one of Kaleb’s lads?
And if I don’t cart the subsoil, what will I do? Top the rides (translation: move the nettles in the paths in the woods), put up signs asking shop customers not to block the field entrances, drill the rye grass. Or simply stare in despair at what looks like a meteor landing site but which, one day, will be a new wildlife pond.
In short I’ve overdone it. My enthusiasm for new farming ideas when it’s ten at night and I’ve had some beers is starting to be a serious problem.
You don’t have eye surgeons saying, “You know what? I think I’ll try my hand at picture restoring today.” I did, though, and that’s why I stood for an hour in the farmyard this morning doing nothing at all, and it’s why I decided in the end to come inside and write this. Because this is my comfort zone. My laptop is my blanky. Writing is the moat I use when life’s confusing and I don’t want to think about anything else.
Advertisement
Soon, though, this column will be over and I’ll have to go back into a world of decisions and questions and bureaucratic hurdles. But all I really want to do is shed some of the load and focus on just one thing.
And now I’ve found the thing. Back in the winter, giant machinery came to our woods to remove maybe 50 per cent of the trees in there. This will get more light on to the forest floor, which will promote new growth and, so long as we can keep the deer numbers in check, that’s excellent. Plus, of course, the tree trunks have been sold to make electricity and that’s obviously excellent as well. But I have been left with a simply staggering amount of what foresters call brash. And what we call branches. There’s a pile maybe thirty feet high and getting on for half a mile long and after I went down to look at it the other day with a bottle of what I call “thinking juice” and you call “Hawkstone”, I realised that much of it could be used to make… walking sticks.
The main initial problem is that I have an even bigger mental block when it comes to trees than the one that clogs up the system when I think about economics. This means I don’t know what wood is best suited for walking sticks, and whether I have any in the pile. But in my mind I do.
It’s much the same story with the manufacturing process. Apparently I need a steamer to make the wood curved at the top and a doweling machine to make it straight at the bottom. Sounds pretty simple to me. All I need to do to finish it off is fit a bit of metal to make a sturdy tip. And I’m thinking of using Cornish silver. Which, again in my mind, is still a thriving business.
Some people have said to me that there’s no demand for walking sticks any more and that’s probably true. In the same way that there was no demand for the iPhone until there was an iPhone. I walk regularly with a stick, not because I need it but because it’s a comfort. And there’s more. You can use it to point at things and lean on. And it can be used to stop yourself falling over and to catch an errant sheep. And you can bang it on a tree to make a pheasant take flight, and you can have a collection and a favourite. Like you do with your hats.
Advertisement
Forget mushrooms. Those were a flash in the pan. Walking sticks. They’re the future of farming, and best of all you can’t eat them. That’s important to the government these days, so I’ll probably get a grant.
