Normally this time of year is dominated by conferences and various other gatherings but this year has been a little different.

As we have a fairly diverse business with carrots, parsnips, cut flowers, bulbs, grass B&B, forage and cereals, I have spent my time usually allocated to conferences by giving presentations to the various stakeholders explaining what we do.

Confusion

It’s always an issue for me when we approach the banks and enterprise boards as they have no idea what it is we do and they can’t get their head around it. A couple of years back, we had five agri specialists from one of our main banks out in the flower fields and to say there was a sense of bewilderment would be an understatement.

The frustrating part is our non-conventional nature makes it very hard to get these stakeholders to press the green button get involved with us. It’s not a straightforward business like dairy or cereals, not least because of our all year round harvesting which sees us never really cash out of one year and into another.

The latest tack I have taken on this is to invite these people out on farm and give them a full presentation. The unfortunate part is as I win over one layer of an organisation, I then have to start again with the next layer up as we make progress.

Farm presentation

As we are now finding ourselves more and more having to give these in-depth farm tours and presentations, general upkeep around the yard is back on the menu.

I always maintained that farmers with postcard yards had too much time on their hands and as a 365 day per year harvesting business, we always have more than a few bits and pieces in the wrong place. With the increased footfall around the yard, things that you take for granted start to really stand out.

Starting with the most important, there are a few extra gantries needed around machines and one or two health and safety boxes to be ticked. After that, a few shrubs and plants around the shed entrances would go a long way.

As I said before, we are fairly diversified, I never thought interior design and landscaping would be on the daily job list though.