James & Clare Holdstock

About

Interviewed by: Louise Rasmussen
Date: 19 July 2015

Transcript

Louise: Could you just start by telling me a little bit about your farm here, about Elbridge farm?

James: Well, it’s a long-term family farm. My grandfather came here in ‘bout 1900, having been farming nearby before. My father carried on and then I’ve carried on from him. It’s grown quite a bit over the years. I mean like a lot of farms over the last 50 years, they’ve either grown by… by taking on more land, either by buying it or by renting it off other farmers who want to retire. Like that,…what else is there? It’s a very mixed farm… I mean 50 years ago we were still growing hops and fruit and vegetables, grass for beef cattle and we still had sheep then, probably a few pigs, you know most farms were very mixed 50 years ago. The economics of scale have pushed people to, you know, you need to do bigger areas of one crop, otherwise you can’t really make a living out of it. And, I mean the land we farm now would probably have been, could’ve been a living for 10 farmers 50 years ago, and probably 25, 30 a hundred years ago. Cause you didn’t need many acres of hops or fruit in those days to provide quite a useful standard of living. But whether the sort of, most fruit commodities have now become world commodities, I mean it’s still quite a push for people to buy local, and a lot of consumers like to buy British, but the base price for a lot of food is, like wheat for bread making, is a world price now and they’ll bring it in from wherever it’s cheapest, so that limits prices quite… I mean the, for instance, the price for wheat at the moment is about the same as when I started 40 years ago, but that was probably a high at that time and it’s quite low at the moment. But on the other hand we’re growing double to three times the amount per acre that we were then. So we got more efficient. So, most farms, to survive, had to get much more efficient. And a lot, especially with a bit of family labour, are employing very few now. I mean 50 years ago we would have employed about 20 people here. And the farm would have been about a third the size it is now. And now we’re 5 or 6 with family labour. Right, a bit more direction, where do you want me to go now?

Louise: You said that the farm used to be more mixed in the past…

James: Yes, well, I mean most farms were because most of the, a lot of the product were sold fairly locally, or vegetables and fruit all sort of went to London, probably, and then perhaps from London markets it might have got shipped up North but they would have gone through a London market, whereas most produce nowadays is – for the supermarkets – is grown to supply direct to the supermarkets, it doesn’t go through a market. And there’s a few very large growers now providing most of that sort of produce. And the risk of just growing a crop, which you haven’t got a bit of a market for… do you understand growing on spec? You know, if you say, oh, potatoes could be good this year, I’ll stick in 20 acres of potatoes. But then being able to sell them is quite difficult if you’re not already knowing who to sell through and all the rest that… So, cause…do you do any marketing and sort of economics?

L: No.

J: It’’s anthropology, is it?

L: Yeah.

J: Which is? Study of people and civilizations really?

L: Yeah, cultures, hm hm.

J: Yeah. So, one of the main things for East Kent was originally hops, that’s why there’s a big oast house here, did you notice the tall kilns? Nearly every farm around here would have grown some hops, so… and hops often, the rest of the farm would always wait. If something needed doing to the hops you did that first cause it’s a very high value crop for beer. And I think there’s only about half a dozen hop growers left in East Kent now. You know, and as I say every farm there would probably have been 200, well, no, not that many but there would probably have been 50, 50 years ago and I expect a 100 years ago there would have been 100 or more in East Kent. And everybody had a few stock you see, cause most farms had, still grew some grass, which they want, needed eating by cattle or sheep. You know and probably the animals were sold through local markets, they… do you understand cattle market? or Livestock market?

L: Yes:

J: That’s, there used to be one in Canterbury 50 years ago. There used to be one in Sandwich,…And Ashford. But now Ashford is the only one left in Kent. It’s a much bigger market, you know, they’ll cope with 200 cattle, 4, 5000 sheep a week, on one day. And people are coming down from well up the country, sort of as far as Nottinghamshire, Norfolk to buy stock there and take it back again, and then the next major market is probably the other side of London, and then there is one in East Anglia, but West country has a lot more livestock markets cause that’s where most the grass is grown now, there’s many more livestock in the West of England than around here. So, there’s still various people with sheep around but any, really nowadays anything, any land that’s good growing land is ploughed for an arable crop. Something like, you know, wheat, potatoes, barley, peas, and…and the hops have dwindled back just to a few core growers as I was saying earlier, and the fruit growers have become much, much bigger. Those that used to grow fruit would have had a little pack house on the farm, put together, I don’t know, 2 or 3 palettes of fruit to sell, and that might have been enough for a few days, whereas the big pack houses now are probably filling half a dozen artics [articulated lorries]. a day. Probably even more some of them. I expect, I don’t know, I expect you’ll probably go to one or two of them. Maybe, it will be quite an interesting comparison. We do still grow a bit of fruit but we don’t store it on the farm or sell it, we grow it and then it goes through another farm the other side of Canterbury called Newmafruit. But I mean I know they, at harvest time for instance, they’re taking in well over a 1000 bins of fruit a day, into storage. And then obviously, over about a three month window, most the fruit is picked, but then it’s sold throughout the year cause it goes into cold stores and things. And things like that, the cold stores that have improved and allowed fruit to be sold over a much longer period – now, English fruit is available from August till April, into May really, it’s coming to the end of season now, and then the fruit you see in the supermarkets starts to be from the Southern Hemisphere for a while; South Africa, New Zealand fruit – but, because of the cold storage, the season has been able to be extended…and enabled more fruit to be kept properly, whereas before it would have been, 50 years ago there would have been cold storage, which would hold it at a certain temperature, probably say just a few degrees, 4 or 5 degrees, and that would be considered quite good then, but now it’s a controlled atmosphere so it actually restricts the speed and… cause all fruit has to breathe, you now, to stay alive, otherwise it goes rotten. Even when it’s in, sort of cold storage, so by manipulating the temperature and manipulating the gas around it, you can keep it much longer, which is why, you know when you buy an apple this time a year, an English apple, that was, could well have been picked last September. And, whereas if that was just put in a, I mean a lot of people used, like an old farm house used to have cellars in the old days, you’d pick a, some apples, and you’d put them in a cellar, the coldest room you got in the house and they would keep till, probably into January, February. They’d be getting a bit soft and you know, probably one you’d discard if you try to buy it nowadays, but that, you know, when, in those days, 50 years ago you didn’t have that much choice, and 100 years ago obviously very much so. The cattle, I mean, we’ve grown our cattle a lot and we’ve started cattle and we got quite a lot of arable…and we do a small amount of apples, pears and we grow some potatoes – still. But we’ve given up all sort of field vegetables, we used to grow sprouts, cauliflowers, cabbage, different sorts of cabbage really, for summer, autumn, winter, we used to grow runner beans, 50 years ago for market garden, for selling to local markets, sweet corn we used to grow. So basically a lot of farming has got much, much more specialised. Most, you know, there’s, some farmers are all arable so they grow, everything they grow will go through the combine. You know when I’m saying combine harvester? And that, you know that has a very cer… they’re very busy, once they combine it, they’re very busy combining it and then drilling next year’s crop and then they just look after that, and you can run a very large acreage with just one or two people nowadays cause combines and tractors have got so big. 50 Years ago what would have been our biggest tractor? I mean on this farm, our biggest tractor 50 years ago would have been 40-horse power. And there were probably, I mean there would have still been the odd farm with a horse left on it, I suspect 50 years ago. I don’t think we would have had one then, but I mean, yeah, our biggest tractor would have been about 40-horse power then, when our biggest one now is 220-horse power, and that isn’t big by what some of the arable farmers are running 4…500-horse power tractors these really big ones you see. And they can do in a day what somebody would have taken a month to do, you know 50 odd years ago. So it’s been a… It’s a bit like corner shops going to supermarkets or, you know, everything…. has become…much more…production based really, to survive we’ve had to get much more efficient. And because of that there’s a lot less farmers around, I mean, there’s quite a lot of, well retired farmers, but I think with every ten years, I mean I’ve noticed it over the, I’ve just been 60 so, 50 years, I was only 10, but I can just about remember what it was like when I grew up here, when I was 10… As I say we had sheep then and various other things. I think that the drawback to all of this is that the general population has got, is much less aware of what farming is nowadays. I mean they think, you know, it’s all big cuddly lambs in the spring, and you know, and all the nice things, but you know I went to a school, talked in a school, primary school and you know, some of the children don’t even know where milk comes from, you know, that it comes out of a cow, you know, and yeah, what grows on trees, what, like potatoes grow under the ground, and because 50 years ago a lot more families were, even if they weren’t, had anybody involved with a farm, probably their parents or grandparents were involved cause so many, a much higher proportion of the population was related to people that worked on the farm. And that’s what we notice now, especially when you’re trying to recruit new people that, you know if people come out of school and it’s not anywhere on their agenda thinking of working on a farm… Which is a great shame really, cause it…if you like nature and all the rest, it’s a much better job than I can think of being on a desk…you know, everybody thinks of looking on a computer these days, don’t they? And then, that would drive me up the wall really. And, bad for your back, bad for your eyesight…You know, but I mean, everybody was a lot fitter, cause a lot of farming now is driving you know, you have forklifts to move, everything is handled in bulk and, you know, none of us is probably as fit as we used to be. But because of our livestock I still walk a long way, in a day, checking animals and things… but… ah, I’ve rather rambled on now haven’t I? Is there anything else… in there that you’d want to build on?

L: I was wondering a bit about why you chose those three or few specific crops that you have now?

J: Well, we’re a farm that… a lot of our ground, we have flooding marshland down by the Stour, you know which comes from the river that comes through Canterbury. And also the little Stour, which is the next one over, so we’ve got nearly 500 acres that can’t be ploughed, so once you’ve got grass, you then got a choice of, well, something needs to eat it really. It’s not in one place, if you have a big block of grass you could think about having a dairy farm, cause obviously the dairy farm is based on one set of buildings where they come into be milked and housed in the winter. So, if you want to have a dairy, you gotta have a big, they can’t, you, and if they’re being milked twice a day, I mean a lot of dairy farms milk three times a day nowadays. You know, you can’t walk ‘em for an hour either side of them being milked to get ‘em to the grass that they need, because, I mean, the dairy… I don’t know, are you going to a dairy farm at all, do you know?

L: I don’t know yet.

J: I mean dairy, I mean that has changed enormously. I mean 100 years ago every farm would have had two or three cows that you just kept for getting milk for the farmer and the people on the farm probably and we’d milk by hand. And then milking machines came in sort of probably just before the War, well no, in the 1920s I would think, I don’t know that for sure. And then gradually, but I mean when I, 50 years ago a big, a good size dairy herd would have been 50 cows, 70 cows. I went to Agriculture College in late 60s, early 70s, you know, and a big herd was over, or got to a hundred cows. I mean I went to, there’s one at Ashford, a new farm, which is, has a very big parlour, which works like a big, like a big merry-go-round, the cows come on and stand on it like sections and this merry-go, well, we went to look at this, and it’s very impressive and then when they get right round, practically where they came on, and then it turns very slowly, and then they walk off having been milked and utters cleaned, and all the things that have to happen with a milking cow. Well anyway, I counted the number of places, and there was 80 places, so when I was young, the whole herd wouldn’t have filled up this thing and they were milking 11 or 1200 cows through this one building twice a day, and it just give an idea of scale! I mean, this rotating thing would have been diameter twice the width of this house, you know if you imagine you gotta get all these cows on it and the whole thing is moving with cows on it, it’s quite an amazing bit of engineering really. But, so that the milk, so things have changed enormously. Not that we’re in that, but it just sh…, you know there are very few much bigger dairy farms, very few bigger fruit farms, potato growers are now growing, might have only grown 5 or 10 acres are now growing, I mean we only grow 50 now, we used to grow nearly a 100. Probably we won’t carry on in potatoes much longer because the cost of equipment, to grow any crop you have to have the equipment to do it, well, like a new potato harvester is about a 150,000. And then you gotta have cold, the right cold storage, the trailers, everything else you need the plot right planter to put the potatoes in the ground. And that’s what, why a lot of gradually give up crops cause at the time their equipment gets old, they think, you think, can I afford to buy new and carry on with this or is it something that I can drop? And that’s why, if you got, so once you get to the stage of growing like a crop that goes through a combine harvester, you know, up to a point you just keep buying a bigger combine harvester. I mean, we put about 700 acres through ours, and probably when I, 50 years ago, we were doing around a 150 and 200 acres through a much smaller combine. But I mean some people are putting 2 and a half thousand through one combine now, which is, you know… And, so you sort of buy, if you, or you share a combine with another farmer now, if you, you either have 2 medium size and have 1 each or if you can get on well enough, but of course the trouble with that is you get some bad weather and you can’t comb…it’s quite a weather related thing harvesting crops. So, get a nice day like today and you haven’t been able to combine for a week, you both wanna do it the same day and of course that’s why a lot of farms, if you can justify your own combine, you do. Cause you make the most of every dry day. It’s the cost of the equipment has, is forced to change us while… and so everybody… we are quite a rarity in that we’re, you know, still doing 4 or 5 different things really; we’ve got the combiner who crops the grass, which is all through the beef cattle, and then the fruit and the potatoes, but we’re quite small in both of those, but they’re high value crops, so we’re still growing them but we’re relying on somebody else to sell them really. And if they go through a pack house they go through their pack house. Is that sort of understandable?

L: Yeah. Do you, you explained a bit about why it has changed from mixed farming to being more specialized. Could you maybe develop that a bit more, about why that has changed?

J: Well a lot, I mean most,…here we got everything from grass by the river, which can flood a lot of the time, if the river comes over you know the cattle have to come off, so that stays in grass. And then there’s, then we got better land, which will grow anything from potatoes right through, which we keep for the best arable crops, and then our top land on the tops of the hills is very gravely, so that isn’t really worth ploughing cause it gets very droughty in the summer. So what I’m getting at is the soil on the farm drives what you end up growing to a certain extent. And again, 50 years ago, if people wanted to grow potatoes they probably didn’t worry, they knew some fields grew potatoes better than others. You know, and you’d always do that, but you know, they were grown, a lot of people would have grown potatoes on land that now you probably wouldn’t think of using because you wouldn’t get a good enough crop. And of course, the other thing that’s changed is the consumer demand, is that you don’t like buy…consumers don’t like buying potatoes, which are, you know, covered with ugly skin. You know, the fact that you peel the skin off normally, and there’s nothing there that you can’t eat, I mean you can eat, erh, there’s various diseases that make the skins look unattractive… I don’t know if you ever really look at potatoes yourself?

L: Sometimes, yeah.

J: You know some look much more nice, some are lovely and clean, and bright, aren’t they? Ehm… And, so that limits what you can grow, and of course, and probably, you know, in the later, or after the… food was short in the early, in the 50s, 60s. 70s… So most, whatever you produce, there’s normally a market for. Now if you grow a potato that’s really unattractive and, you know, you can struggle to find a market for it. So you’ve had all that cost of planting it, growing it, harvesting it, and then even end up with a nil return. So you’re trying to, so what I’m getting at in a roundabout way is the soil type affects, so certain parts of the farm will grow certain things, and in our case most of the poorer ground is in, we leave in grass. Now, I mean we go out, we rent quite a lot of grass of other farms cause in their situation, they may have, you probably work in hectares rather than acres, do you? Are you? Doesn’t really matter?

L: No, that’s alright.

J: Anyway, they, you know, if they got 50 acres of grass on the end of their farm, they don’t want to bother with just 10 or 20 cattle to do it, so they rent the grass to me, and I, so I can carry more cattle here, and then I go and graze their grass in the summer. And so, we have … 6 farmers I think, other farmers that we actually graze their grass for them. Because they don’t want to have their livestock themselves. And it’s again, it’s again a specialised so … we…and again, 50 years ago, I could look it up but I would suspect if we had 50 cattle running around we probably would have had, a couple o’ 100 sheep at the time, but now we got, we have 700 cattle altogether, which we push out in different directions for the summer. They all come back onto the farm for winter, when they need housing, and you know, winter hay, and silage and feeding, cause the grass stops growing in the winter. And it’s just … as I say, it’s just another example of specialization… if the ground is ploughable over, not just around here, over the whole country, in the South of England, most people put an arable crop in it, you know, there’s… or seed rape, which is the yellow flowered one. Peas…winter beans… wheat, barley, oats, and that’s what most farms do and, but I mean, Kent always used to be called the garden of England, I don’t know if you’ve heard that, and you know, so that’s why we used, or the farms used to have the fruit and the vegetables and everything. Partly, cause of its proximity to London. And because of that… and we’ve also had a lot of small farms… Whereas if you go West and North, a lot of the farms are still part of the big estates so they were set up with one big farmyard even though they were quite a big acreage. And so, but here, we, see we got 7 farmyards now, because they were small farms that we gradually added in, and then you have to decide what, do you keep it as a farmyard. But a lot of farms and farmyards, especially like oast houses, you know, now if it can be converted into housing that’s what’s happened. Often farms in the past would have, if a farm comes up next door, I mean it’s always been quite a difficult thing to buy an adjoining farm, cause land is quite an expensive thing, especially now. But, over the years, now, I don’t think any farmers ever thought land is cheap at the time of buying it, even, you know, cause it’s a bit like houses lately, agricultural land has rocketed up in value. So it’s a big thing to take on an adjoining farm, or often to help that, people would say well they’ll buy the farm, but we don’t need another farmhouse for instance, we don’t need extra cottages cause we’re doing it with less labour. So a lot of farms, small farms were bought and then the houses would be sold off, but the land would then join the other, the main farm, you see. If it was big enough and the buildings were good, the buildings would probably be kept and utilized. And that was the way that people financed expanding the farm. Have you got…It’s like a lot of businesses really that…It’s very difficult to stand still as a farm in terms of what you’re doing. If you don’t keep growing the business, you are in fact going backwards. You see what I mean? You know, because you’re getting less competitive and you’re less able to sustain the business and re-invest for the future. I mean I just got two children who are coming back, have come back, 1 two years ago and 1 about a year ago, onto the farm. So hopefully there’ll be another generation of us floating around. But I’m the 9th generation farming around Canterbury of our family. But we’ve only really owned anything for the last 120…started buying things around 1900 I think. And before that most farms were all tenanted anyway, you know. We used to have farm at Ickham, which is, do you know the local area much, or?

L: No.

J: Well, it’s a village about 4 miles over there and I mean, I think…and people just used to say oh I don’t like that farm, that farm is coming up for rent, I’ll go and put in for that one and get that one and give the other one up…

(Mr. Holdstock’s daughter comes in the door)

L: Oh, sorry.

J: This is my daughter Verity, …

…

J: (Mr. Holdstock continues) I mean it’s interesting, I went to – changing tack slightly – I went to Agricultural College in the 70s, early 70s, and then came fairly straight home. But my daughter for instance she had 5 years with Tesco’s and was a Technical Manager for apples and pears within…bringing fruit into the country. And my son’s, well he did…So they’ve both done degrees, they’ve both, my son was an economist with the…He did economics at Edinburgh and then has been an economist with the Scottish government and has just given that up to come farming. I sometimes think they’re a bit mad cause they both had good, well-paid jobs, but…It’s, it’s…I mean farming is a wonderful way of life if that’s what you want to do, but it’s…Cows have a very good habit of getting out on Friday nights and Sunday mornings when the last thing you wanna do is rush of and sort them out. So it is quite a tie, but it’s the livestock part, if you haven’t got livestock it’s much more easy to have a ‘normal’, with italics, way of life and sort of plan what you’re gonna do a bit. Obviously, harvest you work 16 hour-days anyway, but a lot of the year, you know, like now, I mean, most, a lot of our people are doing 12 hour days, just while the good weather, is good, getting things planted for the spring while the weather is fine and things like that. Now, where was I going with all that?…

L: You were talking about the major changes…

J: Major changes, yeah. So, that’s really why the fruit, this is a very good fruit growing area, the weather, climate is good for fruit. I think something like 60, 70% of all English fruit is grown in Kent – still. Partly cause having so much sea around it does, you know, sort of stabilize the climate. And, cause obviously fruit, the big thing with fruit growing is the frost risk in spring, when they come, things come into bloom, if you get a sharp frost it kills all the flowers. So, you want, you, it tends to be warmer here than it does sort of once you get higher up. The higher you go on, basically, and the further away from the sea you go, and the further North you go, I mean higher vertically, it gets colder, the further North you go it gets colder, and the further away from the sea you go it gets colder. So that’s why you get a lot of intensive farming quite near the coast, cause it’s that little bit warmer. And it’s sunlight, we get quite high sunlight levels here, which again is good for putting colour on fruit, another reason why fruit growing… I mean I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a, my favourite thing is that I like livestock, I mean I like all aspects of farming but I mean some people really don’t like working with livestock and that’s why they’re, as farmer’s, they’re very happy not to do it anymore. And the potatoes again is another high value crop that we’ve stuck with, but I think we’ve only got about 400 acres that we can grow potatoes on, but potatoes like a lot of crops need to have quite a long rotation. Do you know rotation? How often you grow them in the same ground?

L: Yes.?

J: And we used to grow them ‘bout one year in five, well, now we consider we’re going to about one year in 8, one year in 10. Cause you, if you do that you get a much better crop, better skin finish, better and more attractive potatoes. And when you grow them you’ll get a bigger crop, and not, you know, you might get 10% more per acre, well that, if you get a bigger crop, you don’t do anymore work to get that crop, you got the same work to plant it, dig it, harvest it, all the rest. So obviously, you can grow at a slightly lower price because you got a bigger crop. So it’s all little things like that, that keep you going, really. But if you go up into East Anglia, the whole thing is much more clear-cut, you know, big farms, 1000 acre farms, all they’re doing is salad crops for your mixed leaf salads and things that you pick up. And then, I mean, have you been to Thanet Earth, the big glass houses?

L: Yeah.

J: I mean, when they were built, they added over 20% to this country’s glass area. That one unit. So, I mean Holland and places that, there are other big units, but I mean, they are an enormous production capacity. And that is there, why they put it there is because they need water, and there’s plenty of water they can draw up out the shore, they want lots of sunshine, for the same reasons we were saying just now, and as I say Kent coast is some of the highest sunshine in England. They wanted it to be in England because then they can call them, they are English tomatoes, English peppers, English cucumbers, I think that’s mainly what they produce there. Because a lot of people like to buy English rather than foreign. Otherwise, I would all be in Holland probably, or other, or Spain, for the early market a lot of salads come from Spain, as well. Again, it’s not, farming is very limited by climate, and the soils you’ve got. And it is limited by tradition slightly. As I say, if you go to the West of England it’s a lot wetter, a lot of the West country will get more than double the rainfall we would, which means that they can grow grass all summer because it never gets dry. But they can’t, they couldn’t think of growing potatoes on their ground because the ground will never get dry enough to dig them up, you know, things like that. So the climate does have a huge effect on who does what and where. I mean what’s interesting now is not quite around Canterbury but there’s a few vineyards starting to appear, you know, which, there were vineyards in Kent I reckon 4 or 500 years ago. The monks used to have vineyards didn’t they? From the Cathedral… You know, and because we got chalk here, scarpments quite like there is around Reims where the Champagne is made. There’s some big, big people looking to plant and produce an English sparkling wine and they can’t call it Champagne, but, cause it has to be, Champagne has to be produced within … I don’t know 10 miles of Reims Cathedral or something. It’s a certain area that they are allowed to call it Champagne. And that’s why when you, if you buy bubbly wine and you get Prosecco, you get Cremants, you get…what’s the other one, Spain, Asti is it? There’s various different ones but they’re all similarly made to Champagne, but they can’t call them Champagne, but they’re a lot cheaper normally. So yeah, if you can find one you like it’s a much better value really. … So that’s really why we are where we are, I mean in another 50 years for the youngsters, I don’t know what we’ll be doing. I mean, I think we’ll still be doing something with grass, we gave up, partly cause it…we used to have sheep as well, but you know you need different things to handle sheep and…So we majored on cattle rather than sheep. But funny enough, we’re just thinking that, you know, if we can get a bit more grass, we might start sheep again because it, grazing ground with sheep and cows, you do get more production cause the sheep graze neater than cattle do. And also you can grow crops, sort of winter crops, which keep the sheep feeding on the arable ground in the winter and that helps organic…from their dung, putting organic matter in the soil and…it’s all a matter of trying to increase your fertility for the next crop, or hang on to your fertility at least for the next crop. So you know that’s why the cattle, the straw after the combine we bail and then it goes into the farm for the winter, then it’s either fed to or the cattle lie on it and dung on it and then that comes back out and makes a sort of compost, it’s manure, and then we put it back on the land again. And then that is the basis of the fertilizer for the growing of the next crop. So it’s quite an intricate sort of circle on most farms of producing and staying where they are. But I think, I mean, looking forward, finding good people who want to work on farms, certainly within the last few years it’s been quite difficult. And … just because I think, you know, when people leave school it’s not on, it’s not really even in the careers department of a lot of schools, and unfortunately it’s often, it is thought of for people that are academically…struggle academically, that’s my way of putting it probably, you know, and it’s quite good, cause often people that aren’t particularly clever do seem to be very good with their hands, you know, and do a manual job. Not to say that you can’t be clever and good with your hands. But most of the mundane jobs on farms have all gone really. You gotta be prepared to get dirty and wet and all the rest of it, but…Always makes me laugh, all these iron man sort of things that everybody is paying a 100 pounds to run, swim up a dirty river and, you know, fall out of a tree or something, and climb a… you know and they’re paying a lot of money to do what we do everyday really. Anyway…What else?

L: Now in the beginning for example, you mentioned that you went to a primary school recently. So do you do any other things apart from farming?

J: I haven’t done that much…My daughter’s a teacher, other daughter’s a teacher, and she asked me. I did three classes that day and I found, by the third class I knew at what level to pitch it. I mean I expect you find that meeting us that, depending on your knowledge of what we’re talking about will improve with each farmer you probably interview. … (talking a bit about the interviews) And obviously…when you sort of look at a class full of 6-year olds, you know, you just don’t know quite how, what level to pitch it at unless, why people have training to be primary school teachers. I mean, we have farmers clubs when we go, I normally go on a farming trip to the continent once a year with another group of farmers. So you try and keep abreast of what’s going on, on other farms. Bit like a lot of professions, people like, you know, teachers, I don’t know what you’re planning to do, but teachers often, are friendly with teachers, doctors are often friendly with other medics, which is a bit sad really cause you, you know, it’s actually quite nice to, I mean I like…I have a group of friends who are all good cyclists, and we, they go abroad once a year on a base and cycle round the area and get to know it. And I go along and I basically go as a just a driver, and you know everybody says, oh, isn’t that just a bit boring, but I mean, I’ve seen some amazing scenery going down to the Pyrenees, and round the Swiss-German border and down the Loire Valley, and you know, I get them started and I go and look at a château then see them for lunch, then look at another château, you know and it was a … For me, it’s a fantastic way of… I can stop and look at the farming and as I do it, it gets me off the farm, cause a lot of farmers aren’t very good at taking holidays. Partly cause we enjoy what we’re doing so much, partly cause of the, once the weather gets nice there’s always work to be done.

L: Do you feel you have more time nowadays to do these things than in the past?

J: No, I mean the last 10 years we were, Claire and I, my wife and I were saying, you know, we’ve got busier and busier cause we’ve grown the business quite a lot. We have a holiday house on the farm now, which we let out, so that’s turning that round once a, sometimes twice a week if we have a weekend stay and a week stay, it’s quite a big job, mainly for her, she looks after that. And we have a livery yard on the farm, which we,

L: What’s a livery…

J: With horses… Where they can ride round some of the farm, and we don’t actually run that ourselves, we rent it to a chap who runs it, but he buys the hay and straw off us, and then we have the dung back, but he has to deal with all the horse owners who can be a bit difficult, which is quite nice really. Cause running big stables can be quite, people spend all their money on their horse if they can, but sometimes they’re not too keen on handing it to the person who’s actually, land they’re keeping it on. But that’s probably a bit unkind, but…So this is all, in our terms, it’s called diversification, I don’t know if other people…So we’ve diversified, we got a livery yard as I say, we got the holiday home, we let out, some of the farm buildings we now let out for other usage. And the last thing we’ve got now is we’ve got a solar farm, you know, solar panels? So that’s been quite an exciting extension.

L: Is that around here as well?

J: Just up the road here yeah. We only, again, it’s a big investment, all we’ve done is lease the ground out for 25 years to another company, but I mean it was a 17 million to build it. So it’s quite… It produces enough power for 4500 houses. But doesn’t at night obviously. I mean it’s quite green and that’s partly why we’re thinking of getting sheep because there’s grass underneath them and we graze the grass in between them and underneath them, you see. So that’s another thing that…But I’m to old to start chasing sheep, so I have to have one of the two youngsters to take that on. But we’ve got other places we could use a lot of sheep better, so…we shall see. And one of the things we keep thinking about is whether we’ll have a farm shop or not. But again that’s a whole new ball game, you gotta have enough, you know, foot fall, like any other shop, you know, whether that…so on. But there’s no doubt, you know, we’re very fortunate a lot of people do like to buy local, and it, you know. I think there was a wave of about 10, 15 years ago with organic, and I think that is now fading gradually as people realise there isn’t really much difference. But local I think people like the idea of it not charging round the country in various lorries and …you know. I mean for instance if we sold meat to Tesco’s, that would go from here, I think it’s either West Devon or Cornwall to an abattoir, then it will go to somewhere probably in the Midlands to be cut up in a big butchery plant, and then it will be spread right over the country, you know, which is a huge amount of lorry movements, isn’t it? And I think if we can avoid all that cost and try and keep some of the benefit by selling locally, why not, you know, it’s good for everybody really. So that’s why sort of like farmer’s markets have become popular. But it’s actually…depending on the size of your farm, you know, we sort of looked into that, you can’t really afford the time to go to a farmer’s market and staff it, unless you can do it in such a way that you’re producing enough, you know, if you got a very small acreage and you’re producing, you know, a small number of eggs or something, it’s a very good way as a small farm to get rid of your production. But as soon as you get to a level that you got more, so you’re going into the sort of the wholesale markets to get rid of it, and also, you know, if you’re in Canterbury selling eggs there you’re not on the farm doing other things. So you got that cost relationship of, I know, if you do get to a certain size and you got a good employee, but you know a lot of people like, what people like about local produce being sold locally, is they actually like talking to the farmer. You know people like to think, you know that you’re getting something extra with what you’re buying I think, which is lovely, really. So that’s why often you get the actual producer at farmer’s markets who are actually there selling it, or their children. It’s quite a good thing when you got children coming home if they haven’t got enough to do to sort of get…to expand the business by, you know, because normally you’ll get a higher price for what you’re selling, but you need that to cover the cost of getting there, setting up, staffing it all day, perhaps not selling it all when you should and then you gotta get rid of anything that doesn’t get sold and…So it’s…the whole marketing thing of produce is very complicated really, you know, having big enough produce for what the country wants…It frightens me when you read supermarkets, isn’t it 20 per cent fresh produce never gets eaten? Partly cause people buy ‘buy 1 get 1 free’ offers and then don’t actually bother to eat them. It amazes me because, but then…I think it’s slightly a generational thing, I don’t mean it unkindly, but I think, you know, my mother would never have thrown any food away. Even if we ate the same thing for a week, we would have eaten whatever she had. Nowadays there’s so much more choice in the shops, you know, you can buy strawberry all year round, but it will come from somewhere in the world. And I mean again, it’s something …I’m trying to remember from college but I think 50 years ago probably the average person spent something like 30, 35 per cent of their income on food. And I know, recently that’s been juggling along, above or below 10 per cent. You know, far more people’s income has been going on mortgages and housing in recent years. Which again has put pressure on food prices and farm incomes, and things like that. But, yeah…What next?

L: Where does your produce go?

J: When I say… the corn basically, we mainly grow bread milling wheat, wheat, so that mainly goes somewhere like Tilbury in Essex, they’ll go for a big flour mill there. The beef we mainly sell, cause we are pedigree beef, we sell some animals for other breeders to keep for their herds, but most of it goes for meat, and most of that gets sold through Ashford market where other butchers will buy it. Our meat is an old native breed. Do you understand native breed? So it’s quite, they have a … it’s a tastier beef than your average dairy that, you know, an animal…the calves from a dairy herd, which get fattened up for meat, and we like think that the sort of continental breeds like the Charolais, Limousin, have you done anything on breeds of cattle?

L: No

J: Well there’s lots of different breeds of cattle; a lot of the continental ones all came over in the 70s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and they’re faster growing than British breeds. And probably…But they carry less fat on them and so there was a huge thing in the 80s, I think, probably 90s, against eating animal fat. You know, that the red meat is…everything got leaner and leaner and leaner, so more red meat less fat, but on the back of that though the beef got less and less tasty. If you’re cooking a nice bit of meat, you really want a bit of fat with it. You can cut it off if it’s on the edge and don’t eat it. But have you heard of this ragout beef? This Japanese beef?

L: No

J: Well, that’s the in-thing at the moment, and that is, has a very high fat content; they feed them on beer and all sorts of things to really push them… And it’s supposed to – I’ve never tasted it – it’s supposed to be, you know, really succulent. And probably a lot more unhealthy for you, but…you know, I think we went right away from flavour and good to eat, thinking you know, I really wanted just red meat and didn’t want the fat, and now it’s swinging back. And the British native breeds like ours, which is the Sussex, the Hereford’s and other well-known one, the Aberdeen Angus, you probably heard Aberdeen Angus beef, Scotch beef? It’s most…normally linked to Aberdeen Angus beef. And the supermarkets for instance, I mean, Waitrose, if you look on their labelling, you’ll see Aberdeen Angus beef, most of what they sell is Aberdeen Angus. Morrisons, I think they’ve gone for short horns, long horn, the Sussex has been quite a small breed, haven’t got enough to supply a major supermarket, but a lot of the old fashioned small butchers will always aim to buy a Sussex animal to kill for a local butcher. Hedger’s,…where do you live in Canterbury?

L: The West Station.

J: West Station, you know Hedger’s, do you know where Hedger’s, the butcher? Just by Saint Dunstan? He normally sells Sussex beef, just by the Sainsbury’s now. I don’t know whether he has, he probably won’t have it if you go in there now, but…From a friend of ours who supplies him. He’s an old-fashioned butcher. And that’s an interesting insight that, you know, you hear of everything going to supermarkets or the rest, and he’s been there a number of years, and then that new Sainsbury’s opened up only 2 years ago I think, probably less, and you know, you’d think well, that will kill him off really, but it hasn’t, it’s increased his trade. Cause people come to the supermarket, but they go to him for the meat because they’re walking past his shop. So it’s actually been a boom to him to have the supermarket next door. Well, that’s quite interesting isn’t it? You would have thought as soon as you get a supermarket, people buy everything, but proportionally, supermarkets don’t sell the amount of meat…Obviously they sell…people buy to super, you buy your loo rolls, your baked beans, all your big things, but you know, often people will go to a old fashioned baker if they can find one for bread that tastes a bit different or to a butcher for some meat that tastes a bit different. And perhaps get a bit better service, but a lot of the supermarkets now claim to have their in house butcher behind the counter. But it’s not actually quite the same as somebody that’s been there for 40 years. And if people want to get to know more about what they’re eating, you know, you can buy much cheaper cuts, you don’t have to buy good steak every time or good lamb chops, there’s stuff that’s really tasty in a casserole in the winter, and, you know or meat for burgers, I mean there’s, you’ll find there’s a huge difference in, I don’t know what you, are you in your own accommodation or are you in a …

L: eah.

J: You know, if you buy burgers, you can buy Iceland burgers, which are sort of probably half sawdust, or you go to a high-class butcher, you know and it will be 4 times the cost for a burger, but the taste…well the size will be bigger probably a bit as well, but you know, it’s totally different. And you’ll see, I mean, it’s quite a rise in burger restaurants again isn’t there? Specialist burger restaurants, and so that market is coming back to us, them looking for better quality meat to go into those burgers, one hopes. So there’s quite a swing to the old-fashioned type of animal because it’s slower growing and a bit more fat in it, but it produces a tastier meat. The same thing happens with apples really, certain varieties, the old variety that was always very popular in England was the Cox, you heard of that one? Well that, used to, I mean well over half the dessert apples produced would have been Coxes 50 years ago, probably more than half. But now, it’s dwindling quite fast because people have gone to Gala, Braeburn, Jazz, Kanzi, various other new ones, which are, they’re a bit crisper and…But they’re still…The older generation still likes Cox cause that’s what they’re used to. So the varieties are changing gradually, and the varieties also change because they’re more productive, you know, if you like a variety of apple…Cox is quite, it’s output is very variable year on year depending on the weather, and it’s quite, the disease, it’s quite prone to quite a lot of disease, so tends to have more chemicals thrown at it to keep the apples healthy and the tree healthy, whereas some of the newer apples are much easier to grow and much more reliable on having a crop every year. So that alters what, you know, what’s being produced as well as… from the other side, you got the people, the shops coming back and saying well, we want these cause it’s what everybody says they taste the best. So you got the two things and just doesn’t always quite meet up that farmers say well, this is easy to grow … and then of course the consumer say we don’t actually want that, we want that one because it tastes better. But you gotta obviously grow what people want but, it’s a balancing act really.

L: How about EU policies, how have they affected you?

J: … We got quite a big environmental scheme linked to the EU payments, which we set up nearly ten years ago. And if I knew now what I knew… If I’d known when I started, I’d probably wouldn’t have done anything as complicated because you have to, you know, put land to one side and then try and grow wild bird cover on some bits we’re growing pollen net to mixes for insects, butterflies on other bits and sometimes these bits aren’t very easy to establish, but then you get an inspector comes around and, oh that isn’t good enough, and they deduct some of your payment and…for the hassle factor of running the business, I think I wish I hadn’t done some of it now. I’m very keen to encourage wildlife on the farm and cause we’re a mixed farm, the amount of wildlife levels are very good anyway because we got quite a lot of forestry, quite a lot of grassland tends to be very, species diverse anyway, and hedges, we got quite a lot of hedges and all the rest. What’s silly, from the EU you get, there’s the Natural England side of, it used to be all under the Ministry of Agriculture it used to be called, now it’s all part of the Environment Agency. You got Natural England who are encouraging us to do all these things on one side set up these schemes, but they don’t actually police it, you got the Rural Payments Agency that says whether you can have the money or not coming round and saying whether you’ve done it properly or not. And the two don’t seem to talk to each other sometimes. So they say you haven’t done this right, I go back to them and say, and they say oh yes, I think you have and then you go backwards and forwards and then hopefully you get your money in the end but…There’s quite a lot of toing and froing and extra, what’s the word, bother, really… But I mean the easy subsidies are, I mean I know they’re contentious, a lot of people don’t…I mean they were designed initially in Europe for lots of smaller farms. I think England has about the biggest average farm size of most countrys in Europe. And it was designed partly as a social thing to support small farmers on their farms. Well, with the best will in the world I think, economics is probably a bigger driving factor than the EU policy to a certain extent. You know, that the value of being efficient, you’re weighing that up with, you know, what the policies…and they keep coming up with lots of new ideas and limiting us. This year, are you aware there’s huge problems with the claim forms this year.

L: no

J: We have to…We’ve got another week…We’re supposed to fill in forms for May the 15th every year. And everything is mapped and you have to mark on the maps where there’s any land that isn’t croppable in the fields and things like that, and it was going quite well, the scheme was going… and then last year, and a lot of people…and they started doing it over the internet, so the forms you could download the forms, fill in your application, and then just send it back over the internet. Well, this year they decided that to redo the maps, redo how we fill the forms in, and they wanted it all done over the internet, which is, which was crazy really because, I mean, our internet is pretty slow here anyway, but in the West country, there’s places that just haven’t got it. And I mean I’m lucky I’ve got the two youngsters, I mean I’m not particularly, I can use the computer but I wasn’t brought up with it, you know like you are…You know, a lot of farmers just can’t do it. Anyway, it ended up that the whole system couldn’t cope anyway, so ‘bout 3, 4 weeks ago the Ministry said right, we’re going back to the old system and doing it on paper. So even those of us who have been doing it on the internet for few years can’t do that anymore, it’s all gone back onto paper. And the whole thing is chaos this year, but hopefully by next year it’ll be sorted out again. But that’s all down to somebody in the EC saying well, we gotta change this, do this, do that without actually thinking it through too well. And…I don’t know if, I mean, are you a political person? Well, if you follow, you know, the Conservatives are very keen to have a vote on being part of Europe, and UKIP are obviously even keener to get us out of Europe. And the vast majority of people just don’t want it to happen, really. And there’s a huge amount of ignorance on how much of our economy needs…I mean if we could still trade freely and openly and take a backward step on some things, I mean…Everybody talks about immigration all the time but…I mean Europe on the whole cannot do anything on immigration, can it? Cause the borders aren’t there. It’s only the fact we got a bit of water round us, gives us…you know, but I mean they don’t even record everybody coming in an out through the country do they? At the moment… They don’t know who’s here and who isn’t anyway. And that will be the first step to do, I mean, and like all these people flooding over from Africa, I mean, doesn’t strike me that’s not going to stop now that’s started, is it? What do you think? I think the more that come the more are gonna follow until their own countries are somewhere safe to live again. I mean it’s terribly sad but you can understand it, can’t you? And… quite how the EC is gonna cope with this it’s…was it 8000 last weekend alone I think? You know, Italy can’t cope with it on it’s own, they’re gonna have to…Anyway, that’s not exactly your subject, but…The EC does, I think the Commission, which runs the EC has got too all powerful and although I don’t agree that we should vote and…The danger is the same way that UKIP have got a lot of support, a lot of people don’t understand all the pros and cons, and forget about, you know, how Europe has been a safe place to live for…70 years now, since the last war. And there’s a lot of good things to do with Europe, but the Commission don’t seem to like saying right, this isn’t quite working, we need to go back to the different governments and change things, do they? … I don’t know, as you get older you…a lot of people…you don’t sleep as long at night and on a Sunday morning, I’m sure you’ve never seen it, but between about 5 and 6 o’clock, there’s a very interesting programme on what’s gone on in the EC parliament. Now, have you ever seen a programme during the workday, where they actually…You know, we all have to vote in European elections, but you don’t get any information, do you? You certainly don’t get any information from the Sun or the red top newspapers, and then they expect people to take a vote on something as important as this, when there’s, nobody’s got the knowledge really. I mean it’s hard enough picking a party for our own election, isn’t it? But anyway, that’s my hobby horse… A lot of people perhaps don’t want to know what’s going on but… A very interesting stat came out; we had some meetings, local farmers on, cause the UKIP thing, you know, they’re pushing for coming out and things…Do you know, Farage, who’s, you know, he’s standing for Thanet South, that’s the local…He was elected onto the fishing committee as a European MP, I don’t know, 4 years ago or 5 years ago, whenever he was last round. And for us, that’s a very important committee for this country, because, relatively we got far more fishing waters than obviously, hardly any…Spain obviously has got a big lump, France but…you know, for most countries have hardly got any fishing rights. Anyway, he was supposed to go to this committee and, you know, stand up for our farmers, our fisherman, and I think he only went to 2 out of 52 meetings, apparently. He just didn’t bother to go. Probably drew the money for all his, you know…And you just think he would not exactly, he wasn’t even attempting to try and help England, was he? If he didn’t bother to go to the meetings. And that’s not just hearsay, that’s a fact. But you just don’t get that sort of information coming out, do you? Anyway, that’s not farming around Canterbury, is it? Sorry…

L: Well, how have these things then influenced, say the farming practices in your everyday life over the past 50 years? Because they have introduced a lot of policies such as the CAP and so on.

J: Well we’ve got far more…I don’t know whether a lot of it would have come anyway, I mean every cow has a passport nowadays, you know, an individual number. So once it’s born, you apply and you get a passport and then wherever that, if it gets sold between farms it goes with it, and every movement is logged with a central database. That’s partly cause of, have you heard of foot and mouth disease?

L: Hmm.

J: Last time…I mean, that is right across Europe now or should be. And I think, you know, it’s probably helped with things like battery cages for chickens. Policy on environmental things, I think…And also some, it’s probably hastened the demise of some agricultural chemicals that are perhaps a bit more dangerous than others. Organiphosphases, have you heard of those?

L: No

J: They’re very effective…DDT was a big fungus…insecticide after the war. And it was incredibly good…for mosquitoes in Africa, they used to fly it on by plane and it did wonderful things for reducing malaria. But unfortunately it’s incredibly long lived and it does have some side effects so… It got banned here, I don’t know, 25, 30 years ago. But it’s a group of chemicals, and basically they’re nerve agents, you know, so there’s a lot of work goes into checking whether these chemicals are safe or not. And nowadays I suspect any chemical we’re allowed to use is you know, as safe as it can be, really. Cause nobody really wants to buy an apple with a maggot in the middle do they? and things like that. … Skin finish on fruit and veg is again…a lot of it is driven by people buying by their eyes rather than thinking well, I’m gonna, well especially with the potatoes, the one that really annoys me cause everybody tends to peel them anyway, so what does it matter what the skin looks like? But…What other policies have an effect? … Well, lot of the labour policies you see, which affect all industry, don’t they? As working time directives, minimum wage I suppose started from, to a certain extent, from the EC didn’t it? But I think the biggest drawback is, you know, most farmers want to be out there doing the work or overseeing doing the work, and don’t particularly wanna be in an office ticking forms all day. But that’s probably the same for…everybody would rather that…So there’s a lot more bureaucracy than there used to be. But again, you see that points to bigger farms, like any bigger business, I mean if you, I don’t know what you’ll end up doing, but you know if you go to a big company they’ll have an HR unit won’t they? You know, which takes care of all these things and somebody who knows how to fill in your contract of employment and your health rights and I don’t know, sorts out maternity leaves and all these sort of other things that come along whereas, you know, if you’re just a humble farmer employing two or three people you’re just not so well versed to it, so all these things take a lot longer to set up and…You know, that’s what we don’t think we were actually meant to do, but… I mean there are farmers who are very anti EC, but I think most farms don’t, farmers I know, certainly don’t wanna come out the EC. Cause it’s been, in the past, especially the Tories, don’t give food and farming too much of a second look. Farming tends to do better under Labour than it does under Tories funny enough. You get more, sort of social argument I suppose. … What else has the EC done? I mean there’s a lot of restrictions coming on use of water that’s all being looked at, being driven by the EC at the moment to try and…and water, waste of water cause this country, on the whole it’s…with more and more people and you know it’s struggling to find enough tap water for everybody to use. So I think that’s gonna be quite restricted. And obviously we need water for irrigation of crops. But I think we’re gonna face restrictions on how much water we can take out the rivers. But mainly because they want to increase the amount they can put…suck out to go into through the taps. Seems slightly short sighted, cause whatever we pump out and use, it either goes into the crop or it goes back in the land again, doesn’t it? It’s not actually ever wasted. We’re only recycling it really. I suppose there’s some evaporation but…I think the trouble with agriculture in the EC, the biggest problem is that, you know, trying to make rules that apply to a hill farm in Scotland or us here or you know an olive grower in Italy or a poly tunnel tomato grower in Spain or vines in the Champagne region, you know and making something that works for everybody is impossible, really. And I suspect there’s…If money gets tighter and tighter that the subsidies will only reduce coming to farms and again, so again, it all pushes towards only the big farmers will survive. But against that you’ve also got how…do you know what gearing is? Financial gearing?

L: No.

J: Anyway, it’s basically how much people have got borrowed money, you know, interest rates for an all time low and have been for a number of years now. But I mean I can remember when we were borrowing money and paying 17% interest. Doesn’t seem that long ago and you know, if you got a lot of borrowed money that was a huge strain on a business. You know, at the moment we’re paying about 2, 2.5… which makes borrowing money very easy, but…(talking a bit more about interest rates). Sorry I think we talked way off the subject really but… I mean there’s quite a few farms round Canterbury that have been here multigenerational but I mean… (asking about the project)

… (talking about the project) …

J: I had a close shave with a lot of wasps last year, and they nearly killed me, you know, a wasps nest attacked me, and it’s, you know, it’s quite…the silver lining is that with the two children I had quite a rough time from my father when I came back he didn’t really wanna hand over at all. And then he got Parkinson’s disease, which is a neurological disease and that made him a great worrier, you know and he always wanted to know exactly what was happening even though he couldn’t do much himself. And it’s made…This has made me sort of realise that, you know, I need to get them, cause they’re both about 30. You know, time is marching on and they need to know even if they don’t do it all, they need to know how to do everything a bit quick. And you know I would like to retire and I still wanna be…work on the farm and sort of be there when it’s busy, but I quite like…my wife and I are quite looking forward to say oh there’s nothing much on this week, we’ll go away for…cause you know we have very few holidays, or have had. I find it’s personal choice but with livestock you tend to sort of, you’re the first line of call for something that’s ill or something that gets out…That sort of thing. We have a very good stockman on the farm as well and we’re very lucky with the labour we’ve got, but…The buck stops doesn’t it, like any business, with the person at the top. But most…Well, I can always remember that I mean farmers were known as terrible wingers, aren’t we? I think, I don’t know if that’s coming across as moaners, and I mean none of us has to do it. Most farmers live in some lovely places with lovely houses and if your worst problem is, you know how you’re gonna manage to hang on to your money and pass it on to your children and keep the business going, it’s not the worst problem in the world, is it really? But I know some farmers…you know they constantly complain and you just start saying well if you don’t enjoy it don’t do it. I mean…but anyway…I think it’s a big difference with farmers, you’ll find, it depends who you meet, but I suppose…if you’re mainly doing bigger farmers, but…if…for instance have gone off to college or not, cause there are quite a lot of farmers that went to school and then what they’ve done is worked on the farm and you know, it’s a great boon to get out, well it’s a bit like what you’re doing, you know you don’t see, and I mean, talking to…I always, talking to people from other ways of life or other jobs and actually getting to the bottom of what people do is actually quite a nice thing, because…it’s a bit like, I don’t know how you…your schooling, you then choose, you give up subjects all the way up through school don’t you? you have to drop subjects, you drop a few to do your GCSEs or and then you drop down to 3 or 4 for your A-Levels and then you gotta decide what degree you do. I mean if you wanna be a doctor or something, by then you know what you wanna do but…for the vast majority of people…I mean how did you decide on anthropology?

(Asks about where I come from, as I respond Luxembourg, the conversation returns to the EU…)

J: Well, I’ve been to Brussels twice, an sort of been to some meetings there and things and…I was singularly, at that time, this is quite a few years ago last time, you know they get a lot of bad press, but I was incredibly impressed about how knowledgeable – we met one or two of the Commissioners – of people who are leading on certain crops, the way they split it up. Anyway, you’ll laugh really, it would be interesting if…this lady came in, in a really sharp suit, you know, really done up to the nines, French lady, high heels, the works, and everybody thought gosh, she can’t know… And she absolutely wiped the floor with us; all these old boys were gonna tear her up, but she knew every fact, everything about why this crop needed, you know, and the problems with this, this, that and it was incredibly impressive. So there are people out there that do know and do work hard and…and it was quite fun really.

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