Annual Report LI - 2024: The one with the purple trousers
At the age of 83, with rapidly worsening health, the death of my Dad on July 14 was both not a shock and a huge shock at the same time. Although I don’t believe that he wanted to die it was at least some sort of relief; his life had not been very enjoyable for months, if not years, beforehand. From my perspective there was at least one silver lining; being an intrinsically lazy sort of guy, I now have the opportunity to recycle the eulogy I delivered at his memorial a few weeks ago, saving me the trouble of writing an introduction to this report from scratch. Apologies if you were there to listen to it in person as well - you can just skip over it and I’ll never know.
A little article about OW
Two days after my Dad died, I was taking a mental break, and went climbing at a gym in Cambridge. Whilst I was there, an email popped up on my phone, from the editor at Farmer’s Weekly. He wanted to know whether I would consider writing a short tribute. My initial thought was no, not really interested. I continued climbing. The thought had now been planted however, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Within about 20 minutes, I decided to go home, else I risked bursting into tears half way up a boulder. On the journey back, of about 25 minutes, I mostly decided what I wanted to say, and just had to type it out when I got to my office. This is what I wrote - a slightly abridged [worse] version was published in Farmer’s Weekly shortly afterwards.
Annual Report L - 2023: S Club 7, hose pipes, and the Leporidae
One good wheeze that I came up with in the late ‘90s was that, instead of driving tractors at harvest, I should instead learn how the grainstore worked. On the face of it, this was a good idea. The old manager, Dave Gould, had been doing the job for many years. No one else knew nearly as much as he did about the weird and wonderful intricacies that come with operating the Frankenstein’s Monster of a cobbled-together, decades-old, pile of junk that is our grain handling and drying system. In actuality, I had seen the TV in the mess room and figured watching that would be more relaxing than driving back and forwards to the fields all day.
Annual Report XLIX - 2022: Are we rich?
This was the question I was asked by my just-turned-ten daughter, back in the middle of August. Given that we were sitting in a holiday home on a private island off the east coast of the USA, it seemed like a fairly ludicrous question from an adult’s perspective. Thinking about it more, how should she know? Yes, we live in a big house, but it’s not fancy. We don’t eat off gold plates, drip with jewellery, or drive posh cars. Of course, the answer had to be ‘Yes’, but this did seem like a moment ripe for further discussion: did Elyse know why people are rich - us or anyone else?
Thriplow Farms Annual Report XLVIII - 2021: The Legend of Zzzelda
The year was, I would guess, 1998, possibly 1999. I was around the age of 16. A letter arrived at the farm, addressed to myself, from the boss of Claas UK. It asked me whether I would like to go to Germany, to have a tour of the factory at Harsewinkel - of course I would, never turn down a freebie. I assumed that my dad had organised this, but he claimed ignorance, and I accepted the invite.
Thriplow Farms Annual Report XLVII - 2020: The F Word
What I am doing now, in early December, is not unusual; I’m sitting at my desk, writing the annual report. The process is generally pretty quick, because over the preceding weeks and months, I’ve already come up with the germ of an idea about what I’m going to write, and it all flows from there. But this year something is different. I cast my mind back and wonder - what of note has actually happened this year? I’m drawing a blank - was 2020 the most unremarkable year of my life?
WTFIH @ Thriplow Farms, June 2020
I never wrote one of these articles in May - I suppose there must have been something else going on that distracted me. It has been a really busy time on the farm, with the weather just about holding up as we would like it. The wheat crops are now looking really good, and even those that had looked thin and uneven all year have picked up, and are also looking highly respectable. We have applied all of their fertiliser, and the first batch of all-important fungicide.
WTFIH @ Thriplow Farms, April 2020
For most of the time since my article last month, not a lot has been happening on the farm. The combination of cool weather and the constant topping up of soil moisture levels has meant that we haven’t been able to get on with as much field work as I would have liked. That is not to say we have done nothing though - all of the oilseed rape and winter wheat has received their first batch of nitrogen fertiliser.
WTFIH @ Thriplow Farms, March 2020
I definitely can’t say yet that Spring has Sprung, but we are just starting, as I type this, to get back onto the fields. The first job of spring is always to begin applying fertiliser onto our oilseed rape. We want to wait until the plants have started to wake up and grow again, otherwise they cannot use the fertiliser, and there is a risk that too much rain will wash it away - wasting our money and also possibly causing problems further along in the water system.
WTFIH @ Thriplow Farms, February 2020
It’s the middle of winter - but it really doesn’t feel that way. There have only been a couple of frosts so far, and they have all been pretty minor. Cold weather is actually an important part of the farming year fo us, as it stops the cycle of some pests and diseases. Aphids and slugs are both sensitive to the cold, but perhaps more important is are the fungal diseases, particularly on our wheat plants.
Thriplow Farms Annual Report XLVI - 2019: Red Numbers
I suppose that as a Last Day, it could have been much worse. With harvest having been rained off the previous day, Saturday July 20th found myself, Sabrina, Elyse & Maddie heading off to London for a peri-harvest outing. First stop was Kulu Kulu, a kaiten sushi place that I’ve been going to since I was a kid, and now my two love it as well. It wasn’t a vintage visit though, as on the weekends there are fewer people in there, so the food sometimes spends longer than ideal on the conveyor belt.
