My house wants its fields back

[FamilyWiggs]

Carole - I think that is a very good deal for you (or extortionate for the farmer!). That's £4 per acre per week. Maybe it was emergency grazing when he ran low, and so valued higher?

I rent about 15 acres in Flintshire for £900 per year (approx £1 per acre per week), and allowed a local farmer for 8 months to put his stock with mine and got a heifer and a calf less £100, in return.

Them's posh up Lancashire way, clearly!

 

[JoceAndChris]

Joce - I think the 150 acres is a bit of a game changer! That takes you from "landowner" into the realms of the Squirearchy! Think of the outfits you would need to wear in that role! 8) (pics please!)

:lol: Always wanted to be Bathsheba Everdene inFar from the Madding Crowd!

Mmmm, pretty sheep, lovely cows, pea-darlings, none of them ever to be eaten. That's the kind of farm I want. A few giant wooded enclosures for rare big cats too.

The downside is I now have to dodge the poo piles when I walk the dogs

But this is more the reality of life!

Seriously, though Robin, thanks fo the encouragement to try to get a little bit surrounding me, I completely agree with you that to own land, to have it about you, is a primeval need.

 

[Schoolmarm]

Carole - I think that is a very good deal for you (or extortionate for the farmer!). That's £4 per acre per week. Maybe it was emergency grazing when he ran low, and so valued higher?

I rent about 15 acres in Flintshire for £900 per year (approx £1 per acre per week), and allowed a local farmer for 8 months to put his stock with mine and got a heifer and a calf less £100, in return.

Them's posh up Lancashire way, clearly!

Robin,he was running short of grass yes. It was his price too as I was clueless. He left all of them on half for a week then moved them onto the other half for a week.

One field was my hay meadow of thigh length grass

 

[FamilyWiggs]

One field was my hay meadow of thigh length grass

In which case, it sounds like it might have cost you more than £100 in lost value of the hay...

I was equally clueless in my dealings with my farmer - other than his reputation as a really straight honest bloke who will crawl over hot coals to do you a favour (and so he has turned out to be - a real gem). I must admit when we struck the deal I was pleased - but less sure when we went to see the heifer - she'd wintered outside and calved about a couple of months previously, and was the skinniest, sorriest looking sh1t-covered Ethiopian cow you'd ever seen.

However 6 months later she is the most beautiful cow imaginable. Her calf is turning into fillet steak very nicely, and hopefully she is in calf again - certainly I saw the bull paying her the requisite attention recently!

 

[Schoolmarm]

I knew it was all too late for my hay but it was still upsetting to see them munch it all up in one week and it would have lasted all winter as hay.

 

[worms]

Joce,

Buy it! Buy it all! It may never come on the market again in your life-time. Someone may buy it to run a quad-bike enterprise (or worse!) you just don't know. Buy it for your peace of mind. You will get ripped off on the price, but it is worth more to you than to anybody else.

Does it come with a single farm payment entitlement?

You will move from being a householder to being a business. Extra red-tape, yes. But you can then put certain expenses through the books, buy the car on the farm, even feeding your chooks becomes a tax-deductable expense. Plant Christmas trees, let the arable to a neighbour, go into environmental subsidy schemes to improve your surroundings.

You've just got to do it!

 

[JoceAndChris]

:lol: You're brilliant. It is very tempting. The only job I haven't been sacked from is the one I had at 8 years old breeding guinea pigs and selling them on. I had quite a lucrative business actually. I can't work for other people- it always ends in tears of one sort or another.

Christmas trees is a great idea!

And my brother needs somewhere to land and park his plane in Lincs when he comes to visit, he's just passed all his flying exams and is plane shopping. :roll: I want to see more of my nephew and niece.

Not sure about the single farm payment thingy, need to do some research.

 

[Tom]

Christmas trees is a great idea!

Not really. The rate of attack from disease is very high and costly to prevent. Also, believe it or not, theft is rife :shock: We looked into this and dismissed it very quickly.

Jaqy

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Single farm supplement won't make you rich. Our land is worth about 50 quid per acre and it takes somehitng like a million hours to fill in the forms...

Of course if you get into subsidy-gaming with your new land, I heartily recommend using your land to not grow pigs. It is extremely lucrative:

http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/subsidy-watch/commentary/subsidies-not-rearing-pigs

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Michelle73]

Whats the gradient like?
Theres a place in the Lake District that we used to visit called Troutbeck. We always had fun on the hill there which was set up in the summer for a spot of downhill grass Ski-ing.

 

[Flyfisher]

Wonderful link, FW.

Despite my earlier denigration of sheep, I'd be more than happy to not rear them in exchange for a suitable subsidy.
I must look into the possibilities. :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Schoolmarm]

Single farm supplement won't make you rich. Our land is worth about 50 quid per acre and it takes somehitng like a million hours to fill in the forms...

Of course if you get into subsidy-gaming with your new land, I heartily recommend using your land to not grow pigs. It is extremely lucrative:

http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/subsidy-watch/commentary/subsidies-not-rearing-pigs

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Brilliant :lol: :lol: :lol: thats the life for me.

 

[Tom]

Of course if you get into subsidy-gaming with your new land, I heartily recommend using your land to not grow pigs. It is extremely lucrative:

http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/subsidy-watch/commentary/subsidies-not-rearing-pigs

:lol: :lol: :lol:

That's fantastic. At the moment, I would definitely qualify for the top rates payable for Chickens Not Laying Eggs :shock:

Jaqy

 

[JoceAndChris]

http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/subsidy-watch/commentary/subsidies-not-rearing-pigs

Positively Kafkaesque! What is this country coming to!

I need the chicken subsidy fund more than you Jaqy, spent about a grand on my girls and they haven't laid ONE. :lol:

 

[worms]

theft is rife

But at least there is a fairly short and predictable season when theft is an issue!

 

[Tom]

I need the chicken subsidy fund more than you Jaqy, spent about a grand on my girls and they haven't laid ONE. :lol:

You're kidding?! Mind you, don't be alarmed at this time of year. Production DOES slow down as the days get shorter, unless you provide extended lighting for them. Even so, it must be frustrating to have not any at all from your girls Maybe next year

Jaqy

 

[Flyfisher]

. . . spent about a grand on my girls and they haven't laid ONE. :lol:

:shock: :shock:

You see, that old adage is true; "how do you make a small fortune in farming, start with a large one"!

 

[JoceAndChris]

True indeed.

Orpingtons are beautiful, old fashioned and stately (http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/Keeping_Chickens/BlackOrpingtonChicken.jpg) but notorious for not laying, which is why they aren't used commercially. The blues, which I have, have a reputation for infertility. They take a year to mature, they don't lay during the late summer moult or when it's cold, and if something frightening happens it puts them off. When they do eventually lay, despite being a huge bird they produce a very small egg.

Chris is very cross about all this indeed; I love them anyway.

 

[Flyfisher]

You're obviously just a big softie with no interest in the cut-n-thrust of intensive (or indeed, any) egg production. Have you thought about the middle ground? There must be some egg layers that you like the look of. And Chris might be less cross if he went to work on a nice fresh home-produced egg.

 

[JoceAndChris]

:lol: Don't even ask me about my chicken plans, we'll be on this thread for pages. I'll try to summarise it thus.

1)Blue Orpingtons - 2010 installation of incubators, chick nursery, sale of chicks. Clara (sole black Orp, outrageously pretty) to be prepared for The National. Lavender cockerel to be purchased and married to Clara (recessive gene only comes out in 3rd generation), new pen to be created for lavender breeding 2011-2012. Lavenders very rare and valuable.
2) Golden Marans to be purchased and set up for laying of chocolate brown eggs. Chocolate brown eggs (extremely rare) to be sent to London.
3) Silver Laced Araucanas to be purchased as chicks with view to highly sought after blue-green eggs 2011.

Chris can carry on with cornflakes.