No fool like an old fool

By Clive Langford Mycock, regular columnist for The Farmer. Clive farms in the Staffordshire Moorlands at Waterfall

There is no fool like an old fool and the missus has been giving me a hefty nudge over the past few days that you should never go out and spend before you've got something to pay with.

I am reaching a time in life when I am eligible for a few perks, like the odd bit of pension here and there and a few lump sum handouts. Trouble is, I have been splashing the cash to refurbish the farm with a 10-tonne trailer, pedigree cattle not to mention a ride-on mower. You can imagine what a shock I had when the day of my 65th birthday came and went and there was no sign of anything to pay for the new goodies.

My very good friend and accountant, Alastair Kennedy had suggested that I should leave the old age pension alone as the country was probably worse off than I was but take a bit of money off the NFU Mutual who I have backed and supported all my life. But getting the money out is not quite as simple as it seems. After numerous telephone calls having to prove who I am and whether or not I am still living I now hope there may be a bit of money on its way before we are declared bankrupt!

An old sheep farmer who has seen more lambing seasons come and go than he cares to remember reckons 2011 has been the easiest lambing season in living memory. The fine dry weather throughout the last six to eight weeks is better than money in the bank when sheep are lambing and suckler cows are all giving birth. The old boy was quite right when he said we shall never know how many lambs will survive this year which would have normally died but millions of lambs are merrily grazing away that in normal times would have either died of dehydration or hypothermia.

I don't know whether it will mean lamb will be cheaper in the autumn but it would be nice to think that the good folk who are forking out an absolute fortune at this moment of time for a Sunday joint of roast lamb could see prices easing back a bit making the Sunday roast a bit less expensive.

I've been quite shocked this spring how the difference in price between beef and lamb has been. I was only reminded a few days ago when one of our customers that we regularly sell organic beef to reminded Jackie that beef was still the same price as it was two years ago. You certainly don't have to be a brain surgeon to work out how much profit you will be making when corn has doubled in price over the same period.

I know some people are beginning to moan about the shortage of rain and my mates in the lowlands who are growing corn are getting a bit desperate but at Back oth Brook Farm the grass is still growing quite well and I could do with another two weeks of fine weather to get lambing and calving out of the way.

I wrote a few months ago saying that I was going down the road of trying to sort planning permission out for a wind turbine. After attending a conference at the Royal Show ground, I am now beginning to have a change of heart and looking at solar panels and water driven turbines instead.

I am totally convinced that with the very lucrative guarantees renewable power has to be treated seriously by all of us in the farming industry.

What I did find interesting and very surprising at the conference was that of all the systems the most expensive and inefficient was the use of slurry.

Apparently, slurry on its own without something like maize silage being mixed with it is not very effective in producing methane gas. The word of caution that I would say to anyone looking into these new enterprises is that most of them have had little or no field trials to prove how long they will last.

I had quite a shock when I spent a couple of hours at the wind turbine workshop. Though manufacturers talked very glibly, when you ask most of them for a site visit their complexion turned white. They are stumped for words because there are so few wind turbines out in the fields.

It was a similar picture from companies who reckon they can harness water using a drop of no more than a metre of height to create a power plant. Good in theory, bad in practice! Another stumbling block is the cost and whether it be solar panels, water or wind you have to spend a minimum of £100,000 just to get off the starting blocks. Still, I don't give in easily and it is my intentions after lambing is out of the way to do more research into the energy market.