Jamie Blackett: Preserving Family Farms: Countering the Threat Posed by Starmer. [15 min listen]

Voices of the Countryside

One of my favourite sayings is, “Live as if you will die tomorrow; farm as if you will live forever.” And I have tried to follow that policy as far as my finances have allowed.

There is always a temptation to think short-term and scrimp, or take a shortcut. To avoid thinning a young plantation or re-establishing a grass ley, or carry out building repairs with cheap materials that won’t last, or use manky bits of wavy pipe without much gravel for drainage jobs rather than twin-wall pipes with gravel to the top of the trench. But something always tells me that my grandchildren will be grateful one day, if I do the right thing and look after the soil and the trees and the infrastructure of the estate, even though I don’t yet have any, grandchildren that is, not trees.

It is the idea referenced by the great farming scribe of the last century, AG Street (who would certainly have been a Scribehounder had it been around then) in the title of one of his books: ‘The Endless Furrow’. Although ploughing has rather gone out of fashion, so we don’t talk so much about furrows these days. And, if you read the book, it turns out not to be as endless as all that.

The thought that my son, who is getting married next year and is coming into the farming partnership with me, will carry on my work here and that of those who have gone before us, is a big part of what gets me out of bed in the morning. But...