For as many years as I can remember the vast majority of readers in our wonderful farming magazine The Farmer have had great delight in taking the Mickey and being anything but flattering about the way in which we brown rice and sandal boys produce food.

Mention the name organic to the majority of farmers in Britain and even if they are having a bad day you can see a smile of contentment appear across their faces. I know we only represent a small proportion of the British farming world but laugh at us no more.

A report soon to be published by Newcastle University clearly states eating organic grub can add a number of years to your life. The report is going to make interesting reading as it is becoming clearer that the food produced by we organic boys contains far more of the ingredients which add up to a longer life than conventionally produced food.

More vitamins and key nutrients have been found in organic food and don’t take my word for it get a copy of the journal called Critical Reviews in Plant Science. You will then see the whole world turning towards organics. Laugh no more my friends, you may all soon be like me; a brown rice and sandal farmer!

As many of us have just spent two wonderful days at the county show with weather to die for it looks as though it is going to signal the start of the harvest season for we hilly billys in north Staffordshire and the Derbyshire Peak district.

How seasons vary, 12 months ago by May Bank Holiday Monday most of the serious silage boys had finished cutting, yet as we enter the second week in June there has hardly been a blade of grass above 600ft harvested.

At least it looks as though crops are going to be reasonably good and even my organic meadows that weren’t too heavily grazed in the spring by sheep should yield bumper crops in about 10 days time. I’ve learnt one thing about organic farming and that is you have to grow as much as you can from your own farm because finishing cattle at the price organic corn is at the moment just isn’t on.

What we are trying to do using an Aberdeen Angus bull is pile as much weight on the cattle as possible in the fields with no more than 3-4 kilos a day of corn at the end of finishing mixed with what I hope will be some exceptionally good clover leys made into silage.

We brought an Angus bull 18 months ago and I have to admit I am really pleased how last year’s calves are growing on grass. I have always liked the Simmental, which we have kept for many years, because they are quiet and grow into heavyweight beasts.

I don’t want to speak too soon but I have a sneaking feeling that the offspring of Erik, my Aberdeen Angus bull, are going to knock the spots off the Simmentals when it comes to live weight gain from forage. If they cant get fat off grass the days of a suckler herd are numbered at Back oth Brook Farm as the boss tells me every month when she does the accounts my suckler herd is proving to be more than an expensive hobby.

I can’t let this month go by without mentioning speeding tractors and little did I realise that a flippant comment on an early morning Radio Stoke programme would lead to the name Clive Langford-Mycock circulating the world as a mad and reckless Fastrac driver.

You have to be pretty thick skinned to be involved in the world of journalism and I think if nothing else I am pretty bomb proof as many of the comments on the computer chat sites are far from complimentary.

I am not proud of being nicked for speeding and I do deserve everything that is coming to me but a word of warning when you come down Laderidge into Leek and go from 40 miles an hour to 30, it’s not always easy to see the speed signs. Still, no excuses and all I can say  is thank goodness the trailer I was towing had high speed low profile tyres, the lights and the brakes were in top notch condition.

In defence of driving fast with a JCB Fastrac they are built for high speeds with much of the running gear and working parts being the same design as those fitted to lorries.

If nothing else they are a million miles safer on the road, even at high speed, than conventional tractors.