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Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:21 am
by happy hollidays
Does anybody feel the gloom like me? I am usually positive, but having got drowned like a rat today at London zoo, I came home to find the mud has come back. The cows/sheep have been messing about in the gateway and its muddy. I wonder what the autumn and winter is going to be like, has anybody heard? On a more positive note, I hear that we are in for 5 days of no rain in this area at least. I'm going to buy my dogs rain coats and hopefully welly boots at the Edenbridge and Oxted show this weekend to help keep my kitchen clean!?! Do I sound like an moany old bag or what?
Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 8:19 am
by Sylvia
No, just voicing what the rest of us are thinking. Animals poaching gateways in summer, so what will the cross compliance police have to say about that I wonder?
Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:59 pm
by Martin
Estelle, you may be as you describe, but being a gentleman I would never admit to thinking so.
I hope the good weather you speak about is a bit more than five days. I cut 5 acres of grass yesterday and another 6 today and hope to make something resembling hay but it may take a bit more than five days.
As far as the cross compliance police are concerned they can go fish. I did not register my small farm for SFP because I did not want people who know naff all about farming holding me to ransom and threatening to take the pitance that they wish to pay if I decide to cut my hedges more than once every three years.
Martin.
Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 7:26 pm
by Sylvia
I don't want to worry you Martin (and maybe it is different in Wales) but I rather thought they could stick their noses in whether you are registered for SFP or not. Sitting their looking down on all of us by satellite. If I could find enough white stone (quartzite?, I think) I have enough space to write them a nice little message across the fields to liven up their viewing.
Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 8:34 pm
by Duncan MacIntyre
I have taken the same approach as Martin, to hell with subsidies if it means interference and control. Regulations on cutting hedges only 1/3 in any year, for example, are only conditions on environmental grants, and I can cut my own hedges as often or as seldom as I please. There are a few very old and basic laws such as those governing Muirburn in Scotland, I cannot burn heather after the 15th April except by special permission, for example. But not claiming any subs means that I can manage most of the land to which I have access as I please, with no reference to anyone except the landowner. For the most part those I lease the land from are quite happy to leave it to me to keep it all in good order, or at least as good as the economics permits. This year for example I have cut the rushes on about 8 out of 12 acres which if it had been part of a SFP scheme I would have only been able to cut 4. The fact that the ground has been totally neglected till I got the lease of it last year and the rushes were shoulder height and Dexters could not be found in it would not influence the powers that be if it had been part of any DEFRA or SEERAD scheme.
Duncan
Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 9:29 am
by Inger
I fully agree Duncan. What's the point of owning land, if you can't farm it the way you want to? 
We're suffering a very wet Spring here in NZ as well. I hope our Summer is better than yours.