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.

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.

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?

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.

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?