WM AGRI WINTER BLOG

Cold mornings, dark nights, cuddling up together with the wood burner… and that’s just Will & Marmite..

The cold weather beckons, but in all of the time which I can remember I have never known the land to be so wet and water-logged. Delivering to a customer recently in the Northern part of the country, I was diverted from joining the A1 because the Environmental Agency had chosen to flood the ground beneath it to avoid putting Newark-On-Trent underwater, which apparently is a precautionary measure when the river Trent bursts its’ banks. Whether we were fortunate or remains to be seen “unfortunate” to be drilled up by the first week of October with the ongoing worry of having the winter crops at the risk of rotting in the ground, the contractor has certainly left his mark in the guise of his self-propelled sprayer with ruts at least three to four feet in places after applying post-emergence fungicide, I have the greatest sympathy and concern for the poor farmers and customers who have as yet managed to get any crops into the ground.

We were at the Newark Showground for the Midlands Machinery Show sharing a stand as per last year with our dear friends Harry West this last week; where the weather was as cold as you could bear as was the mood of people which can only be described as “ambiguous” with regards to wanting to spend any of their hard-earned money in anybody’s direction, nonetheless, we did have some reasonably good enquiries particularly with the Trak-Jak which we had both live and static displays of and also the newly launched at Agritechnica last month, the Holaras Tiger 200-230, a 2 metre long version of the ever-popular Tiger silage clamp scraper, which we have been involved with the development of in the U.K.

The West boys Jim and John were displaying the new Maelstrom Rear Discharge 18 Tonne Muck Spreader and were very busy with some very positive enquiries and potential sales, and we were as always very grateful for their support and more importantly, their warm exhibition trailer which was gratefully received to keep the freezing temperatures out!

The future of farming is understandably a very much a contentious subject as indeed is the dreaded ” B” word, which someone on social media pointed out it had been excluded in the inclusion of the Oxford Dictionary as it was “unlikely and never to have ever or likely to even exist!”.

Whether you are a stoic Brexiteer or a Remoaner sorry REMAINER, there is no doubt that we all face a very challenging and tough time ahead with our industry and all aspects of our everyday working life, and we need to be prepared to face them with a positive attitude otherwise the Latin saying ” illegitimae nul desperandum” will surely win the day!

With so much ground not drilled, prize and huge value crops not even harvested or not even having the remotest chance of being recovered, we can take solace in the fact that we are not alone, Mother Nature is cruel: with the fires in Australia and the adverse weather conditions in Canada and the earlier floods in America, every country has its battles to deal with and situations to bear the brunt of, the upside of this we all need farmers to provide us with food and in order to survive, we need to take stock of that fact and show more and more appreciation of them and our wonderful hard-working industry.

As my dearly beloved late grandmother used to say ” There always is and always will be someone in this world worse off than you, be thankful for your health and what you have compared to other poor souls in this world” a very poignant reminder to all of us living today in Great Britain today.

The pressures of the “non-meat” eating fraternity continue to berate our efforts as one of the world’s most traceable and well-cared for animal producers and purveyors of the best quality meat, with our local University deciding to “ban” beef on its menu, it really does concern me as to where this country is heading.

Keep eating meat I say, it certainly has never done me any harm!

So as we move into the Festive Season I think we all need to be thankful for what we have and be appreciative that you have your health and a loving family to care and look after you, remember some people don’t have that luxury, and what will our country’s outcome be after the 12th of December, well that will just have to be dealt with as and when it happens!

Wishing all of our customers, past, present, and future, a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy & Healthy 2020, here’s to you all and God Bless.

Will, Lou-Lou, and Marmite and all of the WM Agri Team