13 June 2016
Everyone said I must meet Nigel and Jane. They work so hard on the farm that it was difficult to find an opportunity to do so, and I felt bad about taking their time at the end of another long day. Their place is just up the Leafield Rd where I am, at the top of quite a high hill (a mere hillock by NZ elevation standards). When I arrived, Jane had a cleaning rag in one hand. She’s running herself ragged trying to tidy up before their daughter’s wedding on the 25th. She refers to a long list of jobs on the cupboard. Their comfortable open plan kitchen looks a lot like a NZ farm kitchen and Nigel and Jane are a lot like the average NZ farming couple. There is newspaper in front of the Aga stove, which has been quenched by the rain dump we encountered driving back from Cambridge last week. We needed the lightning flashes to see the road ahead.
The view west over the valley goes all the way to Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Norton to the North – they might just be able to keep an eye on the Prime Minister’s modest, private residence in the hamlet of Dean. Jane sees an infinite variety of sunsets and changing field-scapes over the kitchen sink.
Nigel and Jane’s daughter and her partner are to be married at St Mary’s in Shipton-under-Wychwood by Anne Hartley, the vicar-mathematician-farmer we encountered in the last blogpost. Anne knows everyone around here, and has tutored many of the young people in maths. Jane points down the valley to the field newly mown for the wedding reception, a pale gold ellipse against the still green wheat and barley (as a Wellingtonian, I am always deeply pessimistic about outdoor weddings).
Their son went to Australia and NZ on his OE. He loved the people he met in the South Island (around Methven) and encountered many young men he had trained with at Harper Adams University in Shropshire. He’s back, and has the opportunity to make a start in farming by renting fields here and there to run 400 head of sheep. One of them is on the Astor’s land at Bruern.
Nigel and Jane are unusual around here. They clawed their way into farming and have slowly built up their business from scratch. They have 260 acres, and an interesting mix – cows, sheep, Christmas turkeys and geese (sold direct from the farm gate), special feed for fussy race horses, hay for less fussy stables, corn, wheat and barley (hopefully good enough to be malted for beer), and the wheat and barley straw goes down to the Welsh farmers . All of these strands have work peaks at different times across the year. Nevertheless, it seems to add up to an awful lot of work, which Nigel does pretty much all by himself. Jane does the accounts and million and one other jobs around the place.
Like most New Zealand farmers’ wives, Jane has always worked. She is a linguist, and has taught French and special needs children at Burford State Comprehensive. She’s got too much family business on her plate to work (for money!) right now, with the wedding, and other things going on. Her elderly, but still independent, in-laws live on the other side of the kitchen door. Nigel’s father has planted the big vegetable garden out the front. That day, Jane had had to take her own father to a rest home – a very hard thing to do, but unavoidable in certain circumstances, as my family well knows.
Nigel doesn’t milk his 40 cows. They grow their calves for supermarket beef. This means the cows can nurse their offspring for 6 months, which seems a much happier way of making a living than having to separate few days-old babies from hormonal mothers. Yes, I realise I’m “anthropomorphising” but can these mammals be that much different from humans in their reproductive instincts and emotions (I’m half way through an extensive interview with expert on farm animal welfare, Professor David Mellor of Massey University in NZ – I’ll let you know what I conclude). Incidentally, this morning I listened to a podcast of an interview by Kim Hill with Canon award-winning agri-columnist, Rachel Stewart, a former regional Federated Farmers’ President (11 June). She reckons New Zealand will have to reduce its national herd from about 7M to 1.5M, back to 1990 levels. She equated their current volume of excrement to a human population of 90 million – one without a sewage disposal system.
The all-powerful UK supermarkets now set a limit of 400kg for animals, and will not pay for any surplus kilos. This is a response to the changing market – smaller families want smaller Sunday roasts. Noone wants to eat cold meat or make cottage pie, which was the standard Monday night meal in NZ in the 60s. The grey mutton chew was zazzed up with Watties tomato sauce and topped with grated cheese. I can hear the sound of Mum’s metal meat grinder that never attached to the kitchen bench securely. There really was nothing to look forward to on Mondays back then. For Nigel, this societal shift means raising calves for a shorter period, closer to one than two years.
We get onto Brexit and the immigration situation briefly. It is impossible to have any conversation these days without discussing Brexit. Nigel comments that immigrants often favour different cuts of meat, providing a market for the parts of the beast Britons no longer eat or know how to cook. An interesting lens.
We discuss the trends in land ownership and community make-up. Intergenerational farming ends here. All the farms up for sale around them have been snapped up by hedge funds. Nigel acknowledges the benefits of this new investment. They have the money to maintain the buildings and infrastructure, and pay professionals to keep the land looking good. They rent out pasture to young men like their son.
All these part resident/absentee owners don’t do much for community or street life, however. The villages are pretty dead during the week, says Nigel. I have been to the Church in Shipton-under-Wychwood, meetings of the Wychwood History Society, Milton-under-Wychwood Library, the Choir, and Women’s Institute, and the average age is about 65. Not many young people would be able to afford the house prices around here. All the pubs are flashed-up gastro-pubs, and quite expensive. Alfred Groves Ltd, established 1660, the second oldest building firm in Britain, must be doing a roaring trade with all the weekend and commuter cottage do-ups, but there are very few shops or small businesses. Blessedly, there are no American take-aways for miles around. The only one I have seen is in Witney. Their dearth is reflected in the much slimmer people here. By the time I return to New Zealand, the total weight of the population will have increased by thousands of kilos, excluding new immigrants and returning NZers. Perhaps we should impose a body weight limit.
Nigel and Jane’s farm is on a tract of land that was cleared of forest and scrub by a small army of men and boys in the 1850s. The once enormous Wychwood Forest – the jealously guarded hunting ground of kings – all but disappeared. Twenty years later, in NZ, the Scandinavian immigrants were tasked with felling the giant trees in the forest around Norsewood, where my grandparents farmed from 1913. They spent the first few years pulling out the tree stumps.
In WW1, governments in the UK and NZ requisitioned land to distribute to returned servicemen. Eventually, the running of these smallholdings was taken on by the country councils in the UK. They were responsible for interviewing candidates for the farms, and then making sure they were being run and maintained properly. It was one of these “estates”, on the edge of Shipton-under-Wychwood, that Nigel and Jane applied for. They were not easy to get and the newly-married couple were quite surprised when they did “land it”. Not only did they spend their honeymoon writing the business plan in preparation for the interview, but they did not have another holiday for 20 years. They have gradually expanded, diversified, and were able to buy their current farm farther up the hill in 1992. Like all farmers at present, they are suffering from the current downturn. “Arable is dire,” says Nigel. A very poor reward for working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, I’m thinking.
Super low commodity prices, and super high land prices on the other hand, are accelerating the end of inter-generational farming and drive to industrial farming and synthetic production. If this be the end of family farms – it could also be the end of rural communities as we know and love them. They will be dormant retirement ghettos and tourist theme-parks, maintained by contract gardeners. Who will teach the children maths and French, marry them, run the Church, look after the special needs children and the elderly, and conduct their funerals with personal knowledge of who they really were?
PS I’m pleased to report that the Aga stove is back up and running, in time for the wedding.
