I turn my back to the wind and watch the cows grazing. Despite the cold, they look happy and healthy, without a care in the world. Elsewhere on the farm it has been a stressful time. For better or worse, farms our size depend a lot on government grants to get by, but we’ve had compounding problems on this front recently. There was the announcement that the basic payment scheme wasn’t just being cut, but being phased out far quicker than expected.
Another grant, our Environmental Stewardship agreement, ended at the end of 2024, and is mainly replaced by the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme. I submitted an SFI application on 4 September, well ahead of the start of the agreement on 1 January, but it wasn’t confirmed until mid-February (and even then it was half the expected amount). Added to that, our final ES payment – paid annually, but usually in December – didn’t come through until February.
These may not sound like big delays, but the margins on farms like ours are so tight, we were at one point running out of cash. We were starting to consider selling some livestock just to keep going. Planning ahead is also so important to this job, but delays make it almost impossible. This year we had plans to do some roofing and improve our farmyard drainage and water quality, but we’ve had to cancel those, which means someone else has lost work too. We could also have planted more orchard and restored habitats.
I love farming this land. We’ve moved towards focusing on “public goods” as well as food, like successive governments have asked, but that’s also made us more reliant on state funding, so we need them to be reliable in return. We don’t even pay ourselves a wage, we just cover our costs and aim to stay in business. The stress and worry doesn’t go away that easily, and you start to expect nasty surprises, which isn’t a nice way to live.
My son is still very concerned about inheritance tax. For many upland farms it would be impossible to pay the bill. He wants to try to make a better future for himself and other young farmers, and so has put himself forward in the Eamont and Shap byelection to the county council. Every evening is now spent knocking on doors, listening to the many concerns of local people.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
