Farming - What Would Your Dream Farm Be?

So fructose doesn't make jam or powered sugar?

I'd no doubt hire experts who know a lot more about farming than me to help me since I know nothing if I could do all this just so I could get everything I wanted done, like stocking the shop and selling the crops and knowing what they're doing.

The only reason why I'm not talking beef and milk is because I don't want to be kicked in the head and I'm frightened a cow will kick me in the head, but I love beef and milk.

 

I'd also like to devout acres to rewilding and public access so people can enjoy wilderness here, so less of the farting/carbon emitting cows in the London region with air and road and boat traffic anyway, the better right? - and get some wilderness back in London.

Bring back biodiversity, and maybe eat the wild cow if it's tasty.
Or make leather with it's hide if it's good leather instead.

 

You can make jam using fructose syrup but refining fructose is a complex chemical process.

 

So I'd just find a refinery and sell part of my fruit crop to them and buy for myself from my own produce to keep my farmer's market local when it comes to selling fresh local produce.

I mean, Tate & Lyle are in London too, like the fruit packers, so I wouldn't be too far away from industries who might be interested in my produce who could deliver the things I'd need (flour, fructose sugar and money from selling and supplying them).

I think when it comes to selling in the capital, if I had good quality stuff growing on 1000 acres in Bromley, could find more than enough places interested, perhaps, and maybe my stuff will be 'M25 Fresher' for coming from less than 8 miles away and being on TFL's network too, so local.

 

Can we grow popcorn grade maze in the UK?

I'd be growing sweetcorn in Bromley and I'd want corn flour too.


Lots of stuff I'd grow if I owned and farmed 1000 acres in Bromley.

 

Yes but it's more specialist equipment.
I think you're going to have to win the Euro Lottery to finance your farm.

 

Pumpkins are fun. It brings me joy to watch the kids pick them out. But what I like to grow is watermelon. This hot humid southern weather grows sweet melons.

 

Call Jason Brown

Short version of story:



Longer version of his story:

 

Let's assume in this dream that I'd have the earning power separate from the farm or something, where I was sure of a steady and vast income to rival any 1%'er.

 

Just like Clarkson.
When his farm fails he just records another episode of who wants to be a millionaire.
He's what real farmers would call a hobby farmer.

Farming is a business. Probably civilisation's oldest business.
If your business makes no money but you keep doing it that's a hobby.
Not that there's anything wrong with doing something you enjoy despite it costing you money but that's pretty much the definition of a hobby. It's certainly not a job and Clarkson is certainly not a farmer.

 

It's still a nice life style to have.

 

The problem is the fact that the more you have the more to take care of. My small place has plenty for me to do. The only cash crop I have right now are trees and once gone nothing for 20 years at least. These are old loblolly with a lot of veneer wood. But I will let them be. I could sell them any time. I am old now and look at things in feng sui. I like open spaces with shade.

 

In my back garden I've got an old rose bush that no longer flowers roses but other non rose flowers, and instead of roses now drops rose hip.
I'm tempted harvest those when they drop and maybe boil it up for a jam.

I am tempted to plant catnip but other than that, I do the lawn, kill the weeds attend the roses and lavender, and because of my situation, I've got a bonfire pit on site because the lady who lived here before in the 1960's had to have an old unexploded WWII bomb dug out over 60 years ago and all my life even before I become key holder this was the place for Guy Fawkes Day/Bonfire Night and this house was in the newspapers too for that unexploded bomb when they found it apparently, so I've got a bonfire I can light up which saves me from bagging my garden waste and ordering a collection from the council, just light up a bonfire.

There are metal bins you could buy for this but, I don't need one; I've got a bonfire pit at the bottom of the garden.

 

Yes. Farming is a lifestyle.
If you do it purely for the money then you are the sort of farmer who owns tens of thousands of acres, buys up traditional farms when they go bankrupt and then rips up all the hedgerows and fills in all the ponds and ditches to make huge fields hundreds of acres in size and who cares nothing for wildlife only money.
I don't use hobby farmer as an insult. In many ways they are the best farmers because they care about owls, insects, wildflowers etc and can afford to make decisions that many small traditional farmers can't.
If Clarkson's only source of income was his farm he'd be bankrupt in a year. Luckily he makes about £4 million a year and is worth about £50 million. He probably made over a million from this program alone.
When he ****s up it makes good TV and earns him more money. I suspect many of the mistakes he made were completely deliberate.

 

Hehehe, source of income for a farm;
Teach a willing celebrity how to run it for a year and sell it to Netflix.

j/k.

I wonder if you could buy a £18k small plot of land and sell Netflix the rights to film what you're going to do with it to get some income from it.

 

If I had a farm in Bromley, could I in theory buy a crop duster or is that illegal in the UK?
Would it be easier because of 'London' to just buy or rent a hanger with bottomless pockets and 1% income seperate from the farm at Biggin Hill Airport or something that's close enough and I assume has air traffic controls.
I mean, I know it's more £££ to hire pilots and buy planes and sprays and fill the planes and sprays with pesticide and fuel etc... but... Is there any law against that, because I think being in Bromley, any crop dusting aeroplane would annoy London if I housed it privately and flew it willy-nilly, if I housed it at a hanger and paid any taxes and dues and it got a flight number and shared flight plans, there's an airfield near by, could I then to try and claw back money, hire the crop duster out to farms in the plane's radius, like, IDK, South East of the country at least.

Is there anything stopping crop dusters in England and do we do that anyway?

https://www.controller.com/listings/for-sale/turbine-agricultural-aircraft/70
https://www.controller.com/listing/...tractor-at-802a-turbine-agricultural-aircraft

Even better!
https://airtractor.com/aircraft/at-802a/
(Brand new) I could paint it how I like, make it look like the used one I found above with the same colour scheme maybe.

I wonder what the radius on these things are?

 

There are very strict rules about crop spraying in the UK. You have to be qualified and have a license to do it.
You can't do it when the wind is above a certain strength because of the risk of your spray going where it is not wanted. With our small field sizes, compared to the US, spraying within the regulations would be next to impossible with a plane.
However, there have been trials in the UK for spraying with automated drones. Since they can fly lower and slower than planes they can be more precise and therefore safer.
As far as I know they are still awaiting approval for use with highly toxic pesticides and other poisonous sprays.
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/crop-angel-drone-sprayer-trial-norfolk-1352792

 

I am watching my first episode of Clarkson farm. He has a great piece of ground there. I would go no till if possible.

 

I would cut the old rose bush back severely. We have several we run over with the lawn mower every few years.

 

It's not in anybody's way and it was planted by a great grandparent, so, I'd just keep it.

 

When JC sold his wheat, it was the buyer who told him the price.
In what other industry does that happen?!
No wonder there's no money in farming if when you sell it, your buyer tells you the price of your own crop.

He should have questioned the grain merchant and the entire industry and country when the buyer told him the price of his own product.
What if the farmer needs to pay the bills and the price isn't cutting it?

 

It's all to do with the weather.
In a good year yields will be high so demand is easily met and the price is low.
In a poor year yields are low and prices go up.
It's basic supply and demand economics 101.
The reason the grain merchant tends to set the price is because he is in the best position to know how good yields are in a particular year.
He also knows what price he is likely to get when he sells the grain on to the end user. Remember the grain merchant, or chandler to be more correct, is just a middle man. His job is to dry the grain if required, clean it (or 'dress' as it's known) and store securely it until it is needed by a mill or feed supplier.
Clarkson isn't required to sell it to any particular granary unless he's tied up with an exclusive contract nor are they required to buy it likewise. The price is fairly universal though so you are not going to get much variation in your particular region. It might be worth more in a part of the country which has had worse growing conditions that year but the transport costs are unlikely to make it worth your while selling it elsewhere.
What Clarkson could do if he wants to control the price he gets is build his own grain silos, drying and dressing equipment and hope to sell it to the end user directly at a time of the year prices are at their highest.
This is expensive and risky though with no guarantees. Only the largest farms or Co-ops of groups of farms tend to do this in the UK.
So short answer to your question, Clarkson doesn't have much say in what he gets per ton only in how productive he is and how big his yield will be. If he doesn't cover his costs then tough. Go make another episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire or a second series of Clarkson's Farm.
Most small farmers don't have that option and a couple of poor seasons can bankrupt them.
Farming is not for the feint hearted. It carries a lot of financial risk and many of the variables are outside of your control.

 

No till farming is great in many ways. There is less run off of soil and nutrients and requires less work at the planting stage. However this comes at a price as the soil is more compacted and less aeriated and can result in lower yields.
I'm sure @557 can explain the pro's and con's much better than I can.
I'm not sure of the implications when it comes to spraying and fertilisation.

 

But if you have a hobby farm you can forget about profit and have fun with it. My little plot is where I test different strategies for productive farming on a small scale. None of my latest is planting French marigolds with tomato. So far it seems to work. Few bugs in the tomatoes. I also go no till and will try not to break the surface except to plant seed and transplants. My watermelon were started from seeds in peat pots. Then set out in the garden. This is over an old fire from burning raised bed planks. I set them out, watered them in with miracle grow and let grow. Then I placed an old plastic pot over them and sprayed roundup. This winter I will let the goats eat everything down and let the weeds hold the ground in place during the rainy season then spray and plant.

 

Tractors compact soil. Tilling compacts soil. Breaking soil when wet compacts soil. Tilling also gives a boost of nitrogen from the activation of bacteria that eats organic matter. No till gives me organic matter from weed roots. The winter ground cover keeps soil where it is and stopping erosion. And it keeps the soil cool in the summer. Leaving roots in soil undisturbed loosens soil. Earthworms....well they just be awesome.