Interview with Jane Bowler, farmer

 

Notes

 

Interview date: 28 May 2002

Interview location: Dews Meadow Farm, East Hanney, Oxfordshire. OX12 0HP.

Interviewee: Jane Bowler

Interviewer: Andrew Wood

Transcript key: AW: Andrew Wood; JB: Jane Bowler

 

Transcript

 

2.0.           AW: Can you hear it starting up

 

2.1.           JB: I can just, yeah

 

2.2.           AW: Okay, it’s umm, Tuesday 28^th May, I’m at Dews Meadow Farm, with Jane Bowler and this is Andrew Wood interviewing, Jane, umm, how would you introduce yourself, if I asked you to introduce yourself how would you err, what would you say

 

2.3.           JB: Well, I, I would just err, describe my self as a farmer, umm, producing umm, goods from a farm really, I suppose, you know, farmer marketing our own produce, umm, that’s probably

 

2.4.           AW: Do, do you err, say, do you say you’re a pig farmer or a livestock farmer

 

2.5.           JB: Pig farmer, yeah, pig farmer yeah

 

2.6.           AW: Yeah, how did you get into farming, how did you start

 

2.7.           JB: Well, I grow up in farming, but then left the industry and did all the other things, umm, and then, my husband who, err, studied at Butchers Green and had done farm management, he was managing a farm and then he, err, was made redundant and went into feed, animals feed, selling animal feed and then umm, he, we’d decided that we would like to have our own farm, and we started in 1979, that’s really how we started this era we’re in now

 

2.8.           AW: So was your, I’m just going to move this microphone slightly closer

 

2.9.           JB: Yeah, probably started whispering

 

2.10.       AW: Well no, I’ll tell you what it is, because there’s a bit of road noise

 

2.11.       JB: Right

 

2.12.       AW: But it’s picking it up quite well, umm, so, we’re you, was your father doing any farming at all when

 

2.13.       JB: Yeah, I don’t think he could ever give it up really, I think if you look around and you see an awful lot of people, if they’ve once been in farming then they never really seem to be able to leave it very well, and although he’d sold the majority of the land, he always kept a few cattle and umm, probably about five or so a year, so I was still, umm, we were still involved a little bit, you know, he’d have to go and feed the cattle at night and things like that, so we, I think we’ve ever really been without any, I don’t think there’s ever been a time, somebody hasn’t had something to look after and feed

2.14.       AW: So would you say that, that, was your fathers main business, farming

 

2.15.       JB: It was originally, yes, yeah, until, until he sold the, the farm, in about 1968

 

2.16.       AW: And err how old would you, were you when he sold the farm

 

2.17.       JB: Err, about seventeen

 

2.18.       AW: So, you had, you'd grown up on a farm had you

 

2.19.       JB: Yes, yeah, yes, it was milking, we were dairy milking

 

2.20.       AW: Did you, take any part, in that

 

2.21.       JB: Yup, I left school to milk the cows

 

2.22.       AW: At what age did you leave school

 

2.23.       JB: Fifteen, and I really, I loved it, I mean really used to up there, the dairy was, you know, my pristine, um, but err, then it meant spending thousands of pounds on a new dairy parlour and we were only a small farm, and my brother couldn't do the farming for medical reasons so dad sort of thought, oh well, you know, Jane will be off and married, you know, daughters it does tend to be a bit like that, you know

 

2.24.       AW: Was it a family farm, did you father employ anyone to work with him on the farm

 

2.25.       JB: Well that was part of it really, if you, if you're a family farm and you're small, unless you've got someone working, you're working seven days a week, fifty two weeks of the year, so it was either get bigger, so you could employee people, or carry on, you know, sort of struggling on, and, you really then, had to have a house, if you'd got, especially if you were milking, you had to have a house for whoever it was, you know, to, to work, supply a house to get a good, umm, a good person to work for you,

 

2.26.       AW: And umm, did your father, besides keeping the dairy, did he grow any other crops or keep other livestock

 

2.27.       JB: Yes, we used to grow barley, and wheat and umm, lucerne and strip graze the cattle, you know, the dairy cattle, clover fields, you know, because it was quite a, quite a lot of it was grass but, you know, you’d have a job to remember

 

2.28.       AW: Yeah,

 

2.29.       JB: The exact acreage

 

2.30.       AW: Do you remember hay making

 

2.31.       JB: Oh yes, yeah, and combining, and you know, things breaking down, and, everybody running off, mum used to help, everybody helped at harvest time and all our friends, used to come down in the holidays and that was, part of, part of life, really was a, a, umm, time when everybody helped and everybody had good fun, and dad used to take use all to St Giles fare and all our friends and everything

 

2.32.       AW: That’s in Oxford, yeah

 

2.33.       JB: Yeah, yeah, we used to do that

 

2.34.       AW: And, and you, so your fathers farm, was that, was that, close where we are now

 

2.35.       JB: Yes, this field where we’ve built the bungalow now, and where we’re got the pig, err, farm, that was like the nursery field, they were in here, err, and the problem was, the land was that side, the other side of this main road, and so you had to bring the cattle across the main road, so that was really the major reason he stopped, was because

 

2.36.       AW: It’s quite a busy road now

 

2.37.       JB: Yeah

 

2.38.       AW: Was it like that then

 

2.39.       JB: It was, it was not quite as bad as it is now, but it was still very busy, and we used to have, one of the problems was, you get people waiting, hmm, you get people queuing up, on the road, while the cattle were coming down, and it wasn’t, the gates weren’t completely opposite, they were, just up the road a hundred yards, and then if you’d got a, big cow heavily in calf, it would just get a bump or somebody knock it, and a bit impatient, things like that, and so it really meant, that we either had to build a big new parlour across the road and stop bringing them across the road or umm, you know, that was the option really, and err, I don’t think farming was in too good of a state in ’67 it was, ‘67

 

2.40.       AW: What sort of size was the farm then

 

2.41.       JB: It was a hundred, about a hundred and fifty acres, and it was just at that point where everybody was getting quite a lot bigger, or most people were, and I think the dairy prices were difficult you know, even then, it’s, umm, I mean, there was, you know, the Milk Marketing Board and all that then of course, but

 

2.42.       AW: So financially it was, it was, it was difficult

 

2.43.       JB: It was, yeah, especially if you were going to invest, a lot of money into it, it’s, you know, like any business, I think, you know

 

2.44.       AW: and was that, that was needed was it

2.45.       JB: That was needed to build, you know, really to stop us having to come across the main road, as much as anything

 

2.46.       AW: Was that about, was that because of new machinery that was coming in at that time, or new practices

 

2.47.       JB: Not so much new, we’d got everything, this side of the road and, and quite modern really, but err, the other thing was of course the milk churning, we were on milk churns then, and everybody, so it was new practices and new machinery really, because, the, everybody was going into bulk tanks, so this was the whole scenario, was you had to change your system really, umm

 

2.48.       AW: And you think your father, didn’t want to do that

 

2.49.       JB: Not, no, no, I think he just thought, it was an awful lot of money to invest, at that, that amount of money at that time

 

2.50.       AW: And what did he do when he, when he left farming and he sold the farm

 

2.51.       JB: Well, he’d already got a coal business anyway, and umm

 

2.52.       AW: He was a coal merchant was he

 

2.53.       JB: Yes, he was a coal merchant, as well, and he used to do, light haulage as well, with, because he’d got the coal lorry, so there, it worked quite well because when the farm was, busy in the summer, no body wanted any coal, and in the winter, when the coal was busy, the farm, it was a fairly quite time on the farm, as far as the umm, so we did always actually have people working for us, but they were, had to be multi-talented really, you know, they had to be prepared to do a bit of everything, so the, the two things, really worked quite well together as, as far as, that went, and at that point, you know, decided that, the coal business would carry on, earning, umm, err, a good business if you like, and the dairy side, and the farm side, would have meant investing a lot of money, on an unknown sort of, where were you going really, so, that was when the farm was sold

 

2.54.       AW: So he sold the land but did he keep the house

 

2.55.       JB: Yeah

 

2.56.       AW: The farmhouse, was that right

 

2.57.       JB: Kept the house and the, umm, would have been about, sixteen acres I suppose, no, perhaps not as much as that, about ten, twelve acres, you know, just round the house, and in fact, rented field, and he still kept some cattle, he could never give a, give it up, so he still kept, umm, an, a cow and breed cows from it, and

 

2.58.       AW: So were, were those umm, were there, were there, those cows, they were milked by machinery, or

 

2.59.       JB: Yeah, the cows were, yeah, oh yeah, we had, you know, fairly good, in churn system, it was, it was fairly modern then, if you like, but as just that everybody was changing to go, from churns to bulk tanks, around then, so that was the big, the big difference really, yes, I suppose, that would have warranted a lot of money, so

 

2.60.       AW: So, did, how, how about your, how about your experience in farming, did you, I mean you keep pigs now, umm, did you keep pigs at first, or

 

2.61.       JB: Yes, we kept pigs, we kept, dad in fact then said, well, you know I’m getting feed up, you can look after the cattle, as you inheritance sort of thing, one cow and something, it was always a bit of a joke, but, so, Andy and I had the cattle and, umm, as well as the pigs, umm, and it’s only recently that we haven’t had cattle because, the field we’re actually in, belonged to my dad, and that’s were the cattle were, and err, the whole field needed re-fencing, and, we couldn’t really afford to fence the field because it didn’t belong to us, I mean it sounds, but we just couldn’t, you’re talking about quite a lot of money to re-fence it, and so umm, and busy, we were also getting more busy with the shop and everything else, and err, so we were selling other people’s beef, local beef, we’d do that, we source it

 

2.62.       AW: So after the farm, sold most of the land, then you were renting some of the land to keep cattle, is that right

 

2.63.       JB: Yeah, Dad used to rent some, he even rented some in Oxford at one point, because he just couldn’t, he’d give up, and he’d send the cattle off, the beef cattle, then he’d go off to market, and come back, and mum would say, oh, you know, you could never really stop, and because he’d got a bit of ground, he always would err, you know, so really we always had animals about, you know, umm, then one of the fields, that we rented, umm, it was all part, I thing it belenged, belonged to Oxfordshire County Council, I think, and it was actually in my grand fathers name, and err, so, it, it had to all be, it was all sold off to umm, with another part of, down the village with another farm

 

2.64.       AW: Right

 

2.65.       JB: So we lost that field and we’d only got this one, so we just kept, one or two after that really

 

2.66.       AW: So you pretty much, been, umm err, with pigs for, since you started farming, really

 

2.67.       JB: Yeah, there’s a photograph at my dads with me when I was about two, bottle feeding a, a little piglet, and I keep meaning to bring it up and put it in the shop, you know, just as a point of interest really, but, so we’ve always, but dad used to just have, like, a sow and, a couple of pigs, you know, not, not, it was a mixed farm, it was dairy but also err, some beef cattle, and you know, it was, a real old fashioned mixed farm, the turkey that used to chase you, I think there was a reason for that when I was very small, ha, ha

 

2.68.       AW: So has, has, farming changed much since you’ve been doing it, I mean in your personal experience

 

2.69.       JB: Oh yes tremendously, I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s completely different now, I mean even if you, even when our children were growing up, err, whereas we were quite involved in the farm, they couldn’t be because you had to, you had to really be doing things in much more numbers to make it viable, so it wasn’t things that, you know, the setting wasn’t just walking down the yard, you know, it, it, it had to be umm, enough of whatever you had, whether it was pigs or chickens, you had to have enough to make it a viable living, and you had to do it, really, I suppose the dairy was in those days, but it, it’s just different, it’s a job to describe it really, but

 

2.70.       AW: So the number of animals you have to keep, is greater now is it

 

2.71.       JB: Yes, well, it, it is

 

2.72.       AW: To be viable

 

2.73.       JB: Yes, yup, and I think that was probably starting in the ‘60s really, that was the beginning of it, when, when my dad gave up, for that very reason, because you had to have more acres, you had to, so that was probably when things started to change

 

2.74.       AW: And has it changed much in how the pigs are kept and what pigs you keep, have those things changed

 

2.75.       JB: Well the have to a degree because, when, when Andy was working for the people and managing other farms, or just working on other farms, he, they were mainly intensive, umm, and that was the thing, in the ‘70s particularly, it was intensive farming this is the way to go, you’ve got to produce as much meat on as little space as possible, the cost of lan, land is, horrendous, and everybody was, you know it was how many pigs you could fit in a building, etc. and things like that, but we, when we started our farm we didn’t ever do it like that, we still had a marriage of, the old fashion farming, and the modern pig, if you like, and the idea was to keep them on straw, so that they were, umm, healthy and, err, a reasonable, umm

 

2.76.       AW: So, what they’d be kept inside

 

2.77.       JB: They were inside

 

2.78.       AW: Or in pens, or

 

2.79.       JB: Yeah, they’re inside in pens but they always had, straw and plenty of room to sort of, and pigs love to

 

2.80.       AW: Yeah

 

2.81.       JB: root about, even if it’s straw and they’re outside, then they’re digging up the ground, and if they’re inside then they, you know, you can put fresh straw in, and they, they like it, so you can keep pigs inside quite well, providing they’re got, you know, something nice to lie on, and so, maybe that was some of the reason, umm, it was difficult for us, because without a farm, was because there was so much manual labour, because your mucking out, and we’re mucking, and, we, the guys are out there mucking out today, so we employee umm, a, a friend of ours works, sort of, part time, because we’re so busy in the shop now, and, he comes down and we’re got a tractor and, err, we keep, but you know, once they come in up here, they, they’re

 

2.82.       AW: Right

 

2.83.       JB: But it’s manual labour

 

2.84.       AW: Sorry, let me just ask you, that, that person who helps to muck out, etc, that’s in addition to the

 

2.85.       JB: Yes

 

2.86.       AW: The couple of other

 

2.87.       JB: Yup

 

2.88.       AW: Full time people

 

2.89.       JB: Yup, yup

 

2.90.       AW: Including your son, who’s one, of those, and, err, the butcher

 

2.91.       JB: Yes, yeah, Ian has, we used to, Andy and I used to do it all ourselves, between us, you know, we’d, he’d go out and do the pigs and what have you, umm, but now, we’re just, we’re too busy really, Andy’s curing bacon nearly all the time, that’s without he’s not on the list, and he’s full time, really, managing going

 

2.92.       AW: That’s your husband, Andy

 

2.93.       JB: Yes, yes, sorry

 

2.94.       AW: So really there’s three of you isn’t there, sorry, there’s three full timers, there’s yourself, your husband, there’s your son, there’s

 

2.95.       JB: I suppose

 

2.96.       AW: There’s the butcher

 

2.97.       JB: Ian’s

 

2.98.       AW: Then there’s another part timer, who does, does the mucking out

 

2.99.       JB: Yeah

 

2.100.  AW: and looks after the pigs

 

2.101.  JB: Yeah

 

2.102.  AW: Is that right, do you think that’s the total

 

2.103.  JB: There’s my husband, who’s full-time, sort of managing, the, the general management of, how many pigs we’re going to take to the abattoir, how many pigs are, you know, ready and when they’re ready and, what size they need to be for the bacon, and that side of it, and err then, so he’s sort of oversees the farm and the shop management of quantities, and then there’s the butcher full time in the shop, my son, full time and he does the shop, umm, sort of all marketing bits, and the farmer’s markets, because that was, that was when he joined us, was, just about when the foot and mouth, just arranged to come and work for us

 

2.104.  AW: Do you remember the foot and mouth in the ‘60s

 

2.105.  JB: I do, yes, we were dairy farming then, yeah, and in fact my brother was a Abingdon College, doing a course, and he had to give it up, because of course, you know, you just didn’t go anywhere, you just stopped, and we had all the straw on the drive with all the churns of disinfectant, and you know, yet, we didn’t get it then and they had it quite locally, it was quite local, but it was very, very contained in this area, if somebody thought they had it, it was done and dusted within a day, I think it was only about a mile away from here

 

2.106.  AW: Has, have things changed, with the keeping the pigs, is there, umm, err, a lot more, err, expertise in terms of like, vets, you know, cereal growers they have, have agronomists now, maybe

 

2.107.  JB: Oh right

 

2.108.  AW: once that was an expertise that the farmer used to have

 

2.109.  JB: Yeah, yeah

 

2.110.  AW: umm, do you thing things have changed in a kind-of similar way for, for you as a pig farmer

 

2.111.  JB: I think, they have, but it’s the animal husbandry that’s absolutely important, that is the most important thing, perhaps it’s, I don’t thing it’s changed so much, as because, most people, are having to do more of a, whatever they’re doing, whether it was pigs, or cattle, they’re having to do, more of it, produce more, so that persons got to be able to pick up on things and stockmanship is absolutely, so they’re probably in there, in their field, they’ve got more knowledge, than having to know lots of things about, lots of subjects, or lots of parts of farming, and I think that’s really where the big change was really, instead of somebody being a mixed farm and knowing a little bit about everything, how to mend their combine, how to fix the, the milking machine and the cow had got a bad foot or mastits or whatever, people will have had, and I think that go, that’s happened in every industry hasn’t it, and I don’t think, so it has changed, but so has every other industry, and you’ve got to change with it, haven’t you

 

2.112.  AW: You’ve obviously picked up a lot of expertise in your years as a pig farmer, how, how about the person you employed, did you employ them, because they’d been to agricultural college or, or, what

 

2.113.  JB: Well Ian, umm, how helps us on the farm, he, he grow up in farming as well, and they had a small farm down the end of the village, and umm, I, and then, his dad died, and it was rented and again, there wasn’t, if you were small there wasn’t the money in it, and so he does, sort of, contracting and that’s how change, that’s how he works for several different people, umm, and err, where the only pig farmer he works for, in fact the feed company that he’ll deliver for them or, you know, things like that, and people, well, you’ve had to diverse really haven’t you, if your not farming, but because he grow up in farming, he’s very good, his stockman knowledge, is, is good, and that’s what you’ve got to have, you know, you’ve got to have somebody, we were hoping Tim, our youngest might

 

2.114.  AW: Can I just stop you there, you might want to have a slip of your tea, but the other thing is this table creaks quite a bit when its, ha, ha, when, when it’s lent on, so, it, it would be

 

2.115.  JB: A good idea not to lean on the table

 

2.116.  AW: Yeah, ha, ha

 

2.117.  JB: Okay

 

2.118.  AW: But I mean, do rest you arms on it, or whatever, don’t feel you can’t do that, umm

 

2.119.  JB: Oh, I don’t need to

 

2.120.  AW: The next question, I’m going to ask you about, umm, err, feed and err, where that comes from, a bit later and also umm, where you sell your pigs, and where they go to, err, to the abattoir, etc, err, a bit later, so that might be something that’s changed a bit

 

2.121.  JB: Right

 

2.122.  AW: Err, umm, no, let me ask you that now actually, has that changed over the years

 

2.123.  JB: The

 

2.124.  AW: Well, the feed where you get it from, what you feed the pigs, and err, where the pigs go for slaughter, the abattoir, etc, umm, maybe they used to be slaughtered on the farm, I don’t know

 

2.125.  JB: Yeah, no, umm, well, lost my train of thoughts gone completely now, thinking about all three thinks at once, umm, the feed was Andy, my husband, worked for, err, Vito-mealo Animal Feeds So he learnt all about the feed compounds, and what was in it, and everything else, like that, so that’s always been very helpful to us, and whereas when, when we started in 1979 the pig feed used to just come in, and you feed the pigs, that was the end of the that, you, err, but you do rely upon your feed representative, who ever you get it from, umm and they say oh you know, how’s your growth rates doing, when your producing pigs for Waitrose or for a, shouldn’t say a name of someone, but when you’re producing for large companies, or large abattoirs, umm, which most people do, and then they’re off and then the abattoir will sell them to whoever, individual shops or, umm, you know, you’re looking, you’ve got to grow your pigs, as quickly as possible, so, in order for it to be a profitable business, umm, and that’s how our pigs used to go off like that, and then we, we decided that we would, change that, and sell more locally, and that would have been in about 1984, and err, we

 

2.126.  AW: And why did you decide to do that

 

2.127.  JB: Well, one, we felt, we felt, we were specialising anyway, because we were keeping, our pigs, on straw and, the, it was costing us probably more to produce than the way we were producing them, than if they’re on slats, and you know, things were just going in and coming out, you know, job to describe it really, but umm, basically there was no, didn’t matter how well you did, your pigs, you couldn’t make any money, you were loosing money, so you could put as much

 

2.128.  AW: And that was back in 1980

 

2.129.  JB: Yeah, that was in about, umm, ’80, err, ’84 that would have been, sorry, about ’84, and we, we were selling, forty or fifty pigs every week and it didn’t matter how well you did it, Andy used to be on the umm, Meat and Livestock computer and you filled all everything in, and how many, how much food they had, how many pigs, what weight they were when they went, how many weeks they were, you, everything, umm

 

2.130.  AW: Who was that kept by, that computer

 

2.131.  JB: That was kept by the Meat and Livestock Commission, MLC, always say it MLC, if I say MLC no body knows what I’m talking about and they did that and the chap used to come round and Andy kept all the records and it would say, you know, umm, right from conception, from the time you, your, sows were served, how may, missed to be pregnant, umm, and had to, were returns to the bore, so you kept, your detail was absolute, you know, you’d got all these figures, we’ve still got them somewhere, and umm, when you looked at the figures, everything was, you were in, a good league, you were in, hmm, hmm, you were producing so many pigs per year and so many weeks and so much food and yet even, having the best, producing as economically as you could, when you come to sell them you weren’t, in ’84 there was probably a big down turn in the market, and that was just when we were ready to sell our, first fatteners, before that we’d been selling weaners, and err, that’s really, what made us change everything we did, because you could be the best and yet, you were still, loosing money, and serious money, every pig then, I think that went, walked up onto the trailer was loosing at least five pounds, so

 

2.132.  AW: What caused the down turn in the market

 

2.133.  JB: Well, that’s the problem with pigs, I don’t really know what does turn it, imports possibly, or probably, umm, because we still actually produce err, eat more pork than umm, than is produced in England, and yet half of it is coming in from abroad, and err, when you, there’s no subsidy or anything like that with pigs, which, I, I don’t have a problem with provided you get a fair price for it, if it was any other business, I think subsidies are a bit of a crutch really, because you don’t know, how well anything is working, umm, so that was really, when we, we had to sell everything to survive at that point

 

2.134.  AW: So in ’84, the market was err, poor and umm, it that umm, when things like Danish Bacon or that, they started coming, do you think, into this country

 

2.135.  JB: I think

 

2.136.  AW: Or was it, was that before

 

2.137.  JB: I think they’d already started coming in, the, the problem too, was there was no marketing for British pork, although Meat and Livestock Commission, you know, supposedly do the marketing, umm, it just wasn’t marketed, wasn’t marketed, and you’d go, go to a shop, you didn’t know if you were buying English, Danish, and nearly all the bacon was, err, Danish, you know, it really, just was, you go round the stores now and you’ll see there’s more Dutch and Danish bacon than anything else

 

2.138.  AW: And even at that time in ’84, it was like that was it

 

2.139.  JB: Oh, I think so, yeah, I think it was something that was, just, the Dutch are very good at their marketing, and you know, the Danish sizzle was well on it’s way by then, but, we’ve imported a lot of meat for many years, so, I think, you know, and so the pig price just goes up, and everybody thinks, oh good it’s all going to be alright and then bang it goes back down again and you know, unfortunately, it was just for us, at that time, we’d just finished our pigs, so keeping them longer, obviously you’ve got a very big feed bill, and so obviously when you come to pay those, those feed bills, if the pigs haven’t fetched what they should have fetched, their true price, you’re loosing money, and at that point we, we, obviously we’ve got to feed everything, so your going to get into debt, just to feed the animals you’ve got, without actually

 

2.140.  AW: So at that time, what, what did you decide to do, in ’84 when

2.141.  JB: So we decided, well we hadn’t got a lot of choice, we, were loosing quite a bit of money and we ended up, we sold, sold the herd, I think we’d just finished paying for our new bulk bin, and umm

 

2.142.  AW: That’s were the feed is kept, is it

 

2.143.  JB: Yes, yup, we’d just finished paying for that, because we’d got two big bulk bins, and I think it costs, about two thousand pounds, somebody offered me two hundred and forty, you know, and you thought, err, so we kept it, I think all we had left really was the tractor and the bulk bin, and three small children, so it was pretty, we’d just, just, built this bungalow, and umm, got a mortgage, as most, most people in the Country have, so we had all the normal trappings of a young married couple, and err, a business that was loosing, rather a lot of money, so my husband went out to work then, and just anything were he could earn, you know, mainly, delivering parcels in London, because, you know, people didn’t like doing that much, and err, we had a lad helping us on the farm, helping me, until most of the stock had gone, and err, but this has got a farm tie on it, this bungalow, so we thought we’ve got to carry on in agriculture even

 

2.144.  JB: What, what does that mean, farm tie

 

2.145.  AW: We’ll if you live in a, a, a place that’s built for the purpose of, being an agricultural holding, you really have, have to be, in full time agricultural work, in order to live, live in that house, so we thought we’ve got to do something, still in agriculture, so, we just, umm, started buying a few weaners from another farmer, so that’s young weaner pigs and err, finishing them, umm, just fattening them up and finishing them, and that’s what we did, so that I was doing that with the children and one thing and another, and err, then we discovered that one of our children was allergic to antibiotics, and err, quite, umm, quite poorly with it, and then umm, we, we were just looking at I think, we had some pigs that we were looking and they weren’t too well or something was wrong with them moving them and disturbed them, and err, the option is to, feed them more antibiotics to get them over what it was, then we looked at the animal feed, and I said well there’s not any antibiotics in that, and they said, well there is, there’s growth promoters, so you’re talking about the ‘80s, and not today, and err, so we spoke to the feed rep. and he said, oh well, it’s only, you know, a growth enhancer, to make it grow quicker, keep the err, short of bugs in the tummy down to a certain level, so that’s all it is, and you know, but that actually just gave me food for thought, at that point I thought, oh do I really want this, and err, so we approached the feed company and said, had new stock in, cleared out, cleared everything out and we said, can we have the feed without any antibiotics in it, and they thought, you know, this woman’s off her trolley, and so did many other people at the time, but I just, because I’d grown up in farming, I did know, about stockmanship and I did know that we never used anything like that, so, and we were a straw farm, it wasn’t as if, you know, the, the, umm, livestock was kept in nice surrounds, natural surroundings, although they were inside, so

 

2.146.  AW: And in the industry, at that time, most pigs were kept differently, were they

 

2.147.  JB: Well the majority of pigs were on, err, concrete, you know, slats, umm, and sadly there’s still a lot that are kept on, you know, inside on slats, and things like that, but in this country, we’ve had to, give up, not that we personally have it, but some people had their sows in stalls, all the time, and err, or tethers as they, you know,  they have a strap round their tummy, and about, two, a few years ago, the time goes so fast, in this country it was deemed that it wasn’t nice to keep the animals like that, and it was banned and everybody had to stop, so you, you know, it’s a way of producing cheap meat, and if the consumer’s saying, you know, we’re only going to pay for this, or the person that’s selling it, to the consumer is saying, we’re only going to pay you this for your pigs, as a farmer, if you wish to continue, and not go bankrupt, you’ve got to try and produce your pigs, as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible, and that’s what happened to the industry, and, umm, I mean now things have changed, and the Government, I think it came in, in the January  that, you know, you couldn’t keep pigs in this country like that, and the British are very law abiding, you know, they just are, if it’s the law, you don’t do it, err and err, all the local farmers, you know, have changed their ways and their sows are alright, you drive around now and most of the sows are outdoors, whereas in the eighties, there were few farms, with pigs outdoors, and umm, yeah, there’s still meat that comes in to this country, that’s reared, on slats, sows tethered, Denmark have now made quite a few, umm, statements in the, in the press to say, you know, we’re not doing this, so don’t say we are, sort of thing, things like that, but umm

 

2.148.  AW: So let’s, let’s just go back, you’re, you decided to buy feed that didn’t have antibiotics in it, growth, growth promoters

 

2.149.  JB: Growth promoters, right

 

2.150.  AW: Umm, because of an allergy one of your children had

 

2.151.  JB: Yup

 

2.152.  AW: And when, when you say they had an allergy, that, that wasn’t if they became ill, they, if they became ill they shouldn’t be administered umm, antibiotics, but it was, the presence of the feed

 

2.153.  JB: Well no

 

2.154.  AW: Is that what you mean

 

2.155.  JB: it, it was on medication, it was only if he had medication, but some people are just a bit affected, but James was quite, quite badly affected, and umm, so it was, it was just, what, the train of thought that went on from that, and I thought, well, if we need antibiotics, you know, there’s lots of things that we do actually need antibiotics for, and we cannot, suddenly say, phew, we’re not going to have them any more, but you, you know, let’s have them when we need them, but not have them, for, un, you know, the reasons we shouldn’t have them, they shouldn’t be in our pigs or anything else, because it, well there, if, if you’re giving your pigs or anything else, that , there, just, it’s not a proven thing, I mean a lot of these things you do things some times through, it’s instinct, it’s not something, that, well, will we ever know whether our feeding an, umm, antibiotics to pigs or, you know, as a regular basis is a good thing, we don’t know, but it’s just if you don’t know, then, and you don’t need it, then why do it

 

2.156.  AW: So when you started changing over to err, feed that was free from growth promoters, umm, how, how, did that work financially for you, did you have to change the way you sold, your pigs, what

 

2.157.  JB: Yup, we almost, once we’d decided we’d, we’d sort of talked about it and said well, we’ll do this, and the first thought was to put an advert in the local press saying, you know, this pigs, I think I had, took the little thing off I’m free, from err, you’re being, Are You Being Served, you know, where you’d, umm, and we even had it painted on a sign, but people thought we were madder than we really were, but err

 

2.158.  AW: So you put some adverts in the local press did you

 

2.159.  JB: Yeah, in the Oxford Mail, saying, this pig was, additive free pork, and err, we had one or two people ring up and order half a dozen belly slices and I thought, this isn’t working, you know, what could we do, but, we, we, at that point we then, spoke to the local butchers and err, there was one, Mr Clark in, then, in Wantage and another chap at err, Sutton Courtney, and they’re both retired now, and I went and saw them, and they said, we’ll have one of the pigs killed Jane and we’ll have a look at it, you know, and err, so, had one killed up at Newbury then, there was an abattoir, one actual abattoir in Newbury, and collected this pig because I didn’t know, much about anything, you know, I knew what they were like running around, but I knew nothing at all about what a pig was going to be like when it was dead, and you’ve got the liver and the lungs and all it’s bits, and I’m thinking oh, and err, so that

 

2.160.  AW: So that was in the ‘80s was it

 

2.161.  JB: Yeah, that would have been ’80, about ’86, somewhere I’ve got the bits on it but, umm, and so the idea was, he said yup,  you know, I think, we could, this is good, and Mr Clark said, get a slap on your pigs, something that says Dews Meadow farm, and he was really quite helpful, because obviously I didn’t know how, how to, so we had a, a butchers round, we had a trailer, had a trailer specially made, so that these pigs could, you could collect them at the abattoir, you could hang them up, you know, and so I started doing that, so the children were still quite young, Tim was about two, yup, and mum used to look after them while I’d go off, sort of, take the pigs to the abattoir one day, come back, and then take, deliver them the next, go back to the abattoir the next day

 

2.162.  AW: So you were delivering directly to the butchers

 

2.163.  JB: Directly to the butchers, yup, and we, we had quite a few butchers at one time, and it just coincided that the price at that time of pork, was quite high, cause that’s how it goes, obviously, so many people had gone out of pigs in ’84 so there was a little bit of a shortage of British pork, and err, we did, you know, we started to think, gosh, we, you know, this is going to work, we’re getting the money straight away, and, you know, it appeared anyway, but err, then, it, we did that for several years and err, it was quite successful but the biggest problem was, that the local butchers were having to cope with, supermarkets, so, in an, err now, if it was now, we were just a little bit before our time, if it was now, they’d be okay, because they’d be able to say well, you know, or two years ago even, a few years ago

 

2.164.  AW: Can I just stop you, who would you say your local butchers

 

2.165.  JB: Well, we had umm

 

2.166.  AW: Newbury, Wantage, Oxford

 

2.167.  JB: Yeah, Newbury, Wantage, Oxford, we used to do all those, right out to umm, to Headington, so it was quite around, you know, we did, we were doing Reading as well, there was one butcher in Reading we were supplying, umm, so I’d have to do two runs sometimes, with this little trailer, you know, the Newbury and Reading run, and then back to the abattoir, and then it was really very, very good and umm, so Andy had some days and he would do the round because it was, I just wasn’t getting home until seven o’clock and you know, just impossible really, so err, Andy worked part time doing that, and part time driving, you know, could fit those two things together quite well, anyway, then, err, it just really, the price went back down again and, less butchers, there were, retiring, and then we had one butcher that, and the Real Meat Company was up and running as well, it was about the same time as the Real Meat Company started, we started, I think maybe a couple of years in front of us, and they started doing the franchising, and of course, we only supplied pork, and if people wanted the additive free, additive free beef, additive free chickens, additive free lamb, and umm, one of the butchers we sold the most to, wanted all those products and he had to have a franchise with the Real Meat Company, which meant he couldn’t buy from any other additive free source, so that was sort of, six pigs a week, or four pigs a week, something like that, lost and a couple more retired, and we thought this is, not going, it’s, it’s changing in the wrong direction, so, umm, that point we turned our garage into, started to, turn it into a shop, and one of the butchers we used to supply, he used to make sausages

 

2.168.  AW: On the farm here

 

2.169.  JB: Yup, on the farm here, he used to make the sausages for us, and that’s how we started really, and then umm, another chap used to cure the bacon for us, up at, Lambourne, then he just said, on day, I’m off to Australia or somewhere, because it was a very difficult time for people, you know that he’d got a butchers shop and a farm, this was the one

2.170.  AW: This was the late ‘80s was it

 

2.171.  JB: That err, yeah, yes, sort of, err, late, yeah, late ‘80s about ‘80s about ’88 or something around there, and, yeah about, we did the, a good round for about two, two years, two, three years, and gradually, by 1990, it was obvious that we’d got to do the shop and sell it all direct because there were you know, just weren’t the other small butchers around, cause, they, they really had the problem of competing, people were, well we can go to the supermarket and get it all, I mean we all, we’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it, the local green grocers closed, the local butchers closed, it’s happened all around us, in Wantage there were, about four butchers, there’s one now, it’s a very good butcher, that’s the reason he’s probably survived, you know, but it’s sad, because we’re loosing the infrastructure of our, well, most of it’s gone now, because one, you haven’t got a local abattoir and two, you haven’t got a local butcher, and it’s, I think probably we were lucky that we started doing what we did, you know, a few years ago

 

2.172.  AW: So has that Newbury abattoir closed now has it

 

2.173.  JB: So that one closed, and then there was another one, there was one in Newbury, that closed and we went to one at Thatcham, that closed and we went to one at Reading, then we found out there was one just down the road at Didcot, umm

 

2.174.  AW: How did you find out it was just down the road at Didcot

 

2.175.  JB: I think somebody just, oh haven’t you been down to, you know, you know Cohens or something, and it was taken, I think it was an old, older man there, when we started, an older man there not looking for any extra work and then it was taken over by Cohen brothers and they wanted to umm, do more work, and I think somebody just said, oh didn’t you know, you know, so we went there for a while and then it to one Christmas and I said oh, when, when, can I bring the pigs in and they said, oh, we won’t be able to do any for you that week, and I said what, you know, I need fresh pork for Christmas and err, and we’d been going there every week, you know, and so I rang Reading abattoir and that, and they said, oh yes that’s alright Mrs Bowler, you come up, you know, so we actually ended up, going all the way up to Reading, because you’ve got, you can’t, doesn’t matter what business you’re in, you’ve got, if you say to your customers, you’ve got to produce it and it’s got to be as good and the same, your quality, you can’t just say, oh well, we didn’t get any pigs killed this week, when people were coming to you for your joint or bacon, whatever, so, we had to find somebody that was, umm, would do the thing properly for us every week, so, then Reading closed, probably about seven years ago or something like that I would think, and umm, we know, go to John Styles at Bromham which seems an awful long way

 

2.176.  AW: Where about’s is that

 

2.177.  JB: it is, it’s forty miles, it’s at umm, just at the other side of Colne, in Wiltshire, by Devizes, and err, we rang them up, in fact when we got to know them, when we were doing the butchers round because we used to deliver to the same butcher as they used to, and this chap said, cor they look some really nice pigs, we could use some nice pigs, if you’ve got any extra, we’ll buy them, and that’s how we come to, to use John Styles, and then, there wasn’t Much Meats, Much Meats weren’t at Witney, they’re at Witney now, so is there is a local abattoir, but they’re so busy, you’ve got to book your pigs before you want them killed, and because we’ve always been well looked after by Styles and they deliver them back to us the next day, because, we’re a bit old fashioned in that way, if somebody’s looked after us, then we just don’t chop and change, I mean that’s how businesses used to be run didn’t they, you had a certain amount of loyalty to, your customers or your suppliers, you didn’t just change at a wimp, umm,  so, that’s were we still go to this day, and, we did go to Whitney during the foot and mouth, we had to, we do sometimes go to Whitney, but err, you know, it’s not, because it’s where we’ve always gone

 

2.178.  AW: What’s a typical working day for you, here, here on this farm

 

2.179.  JB: Well, umm, looking at the livestock first of all, that’s the first thing, Andy’s up and checks everything out and sees what needs doing, or doesn’t need doing

 

2.180.  AW: That’s, that’s your husband

 

2.181.  JB: My husband

 

2.182.  AW: What sort of time do you think he’d start that

 

2.183.  JB: He’d, he goes out there about seven o’clock, something like that, and umm, then just makes sure there’s nothing untoward, everything is alright and he, if there is a problem then he can ring Ian and speak to Ian, or if Andy’s not here then Ian always comes as well, so that if something’s happened, umm, you know, he’s in everyday anyway

 

2.184.  AW: Ian’s your farm worker, is that right

 

2.185.  JB: Ian’s the chap who helps us on the farm, yeah, and then, from that point on, Andy’s out to the shop, after breakfast and things, he’s out to the shop and err, just looking at what needs to be done out there, the butcher comes at eight, so they sort of, decide the plan of action, if we’ve got farmers markets or what needs to be done, umm

 

2.186.  AW: Umm, tell me about the farmers markets, when did you start doing that

 

2.187.  JB: From the very beginning in Oxfordshire, I went to the first meeting, I think, in Oxfordshire County Council, I saw the, that they, local food issues, and I thought, yes, you known, this is what we need, this is, where we should, what we should be doing, this

 

2.188.  AW: So that was, late nineties, mid nineties, err, about, umm, gosh, I can’t remember the exact date now, umm, it must be late nineties it would have been because we’ve been doing them about three years now I think, the farmers markets, must be three years, Thame was the first one, I went to this meeting and, my main concern was that we’d be allowed to keep our vehicles on site if they had refrigeration to keep things cold and things like that, and we had working groups, everybody at this meeting would talk and what could be done locally to, get the local food to the local people, and I just thought it was wonderful, I mean, now having dealt with people in the shop and people come in and they, they’ll say, oh, how did you produce this, or where were the pigs and you can put your hand on your heart and you can say, you’ve done, you know, you’ve done it, you know exactly, and you’ve taken them to the abattoir, so if they’ve any misgivings about anything they’re concerned about, you can tell them exactly, and

 

2.189.  AW: So all your sales are either directly through the shop, or through the farmers market, is that right, so direct to the customer

 

2.190.  JB: Yeah, the only thing we do, apart from that is, we supply a few small shops, the community shop in the village, Hendred Post Office and a local Kew Gardens, a local vegetable shop, and another farm shop, up at Hungerford, that we’ve supplied for, since we’ve started, more or less, they’d have some sausages somewhere, and so, just come and said, um we’ve had this, it’s really good, can you supply us and we sort of thought, oh well yeah, so supply them

 

2.191.  AW: Do you think what people say to you affects, umm, the things that you sell, err and umm, err, the way you keep the pigs or, some other aspect of their

 

2.192.  JB: All of it really, I think it affects everything, firstly, it affects the way, hopefully, you’re doing what they want in the first place, the basics of, of, of looking after the animals, and then the rest of it, I think is consumer lead, the products of being consumer lead, because we were there, me and Andy with a couple of joints, and, you know, that the butcher had chopped up and some sausages, and people were saying can’t you make bacon, and we’re going, err, you know, and it’s been developed because people were saying, oh I remember was not like this, when it was old fashioned and you know, this bacon today is no good and all this sort of thing, so we developed the dry cured bacon, and we had a big article in ’94, in the Pig Farmer, and the lady came out and looked at the farm and err, all the, you know, what we where doing and then, we make rusk free sausages, or gluten free sausages for coeliacs and people like that, the biggest problem we have, we don’t have time to do as we should, you’re doing so many things, if you’d

 

2.193.  AW: So you don’t have a typical day, by the sound of it, every day is different almost

 

2.194.  JB: Yeah, it is, and if you’ve got a farmers market, you are, you know, you’re up sort of six o’clock, loading, well Andy always loads me up, I have to say, while I get the bits and pieces ready and we do tasters at the markets, so you take all your cooking equipment, and, it’s like going camping really, just like going camping, but it’s nice because people can taste it, before, they’ve never seen you before, and you’re there, on this, you  know, they can actually taste the bacon or see it  cooking without any white stuff coming out, umm, that’s the good thing about a farmers market, and you know, people, I used to like them coming here

 

2.195.  AW: Do you think they’ve changed the, umm, maybe umm, when the pigs are slaughtered or, or the feed that you give the pigs, or, do you think your customers have influenced how you keep the pigs, to that degree

 

2.196.  JB: I think probably, more so, that will change even more so, because everybody wants their pigs outside, now in Hanney this is typical Hanney whether, the early spring wasn’t this year, but you, it’s just took wet, you cannot keep livestock out, whether it’s cattle, you’ve got to get them in, umm,  in the winter and keep them in, because it’s just, just, clay mud, so that’s why our pigs were always kept in, as opposed to out, no other reason, it probably would be cheaper to keep them outside than in, in a way

 

2.197.  AW: Do you think that would be a problem for you, if you had to keep them outside, or

 

2.198.  JB: It would in Hanney, that’s why we keep them, on straw inside, because now, this is a ridge and furrow field as well, so you’ve got dips of, of, and err, but we’re, you know, looking to eventually have them outside and get some sandy soil somewhere else, that’s what our long term

 

2.199.  AW: And that’s a response to the public is it, your customers

 

2.200.  JB: I think so, and just to have more space really, yeah, yeah, so it is, you’ve got to produce what people want, and do it the way, people want, because it’s no good producing something that, you think they want, because it’s a waste of time, so you’ve got to be, consumer lead really, as well, and, and usually, it goes together with the way you want to do things, yourself, anyway, the two things marry together really

 

2.201.  AW: So let’s, let’s go back to your, your typical day, or untypical day, umm, your, your husband Ian, checks the pigs in the morning and

 

2.202.  JB: Sorry, Ian check, Andy check, my husband, then Ian, yup, they just sort of check the farm out

 

2.203.  AW: You decide what you’re going to do with the butcher

 

2.204.  JB: Yup

 

2.205.  AW: Err, and then err, the shop that’s opened

 

2.206.  JB: That opens at nine o’clock, so James is in for then, James is in there, they’re up and ready to go, wand what they do in the shop is Andy’s either curing bacon or making sausages, for whatever it is, either the shop orders, or farmers markets, and just the general sales in the shop

 

2.207.  AW: So do you, you yourself, umm, umm, look after the pigs or is that done by your farm worker, Ian

 

2.208.  JB: Well Ian, generally does, does that, and I float, no, I do the markets, the paper work, the general running, running and tearing about, you know, phone calls, they, they take the orders in the shop I don’t answer the phone in here generally because nine times out of ten it’s an order for the shop, or something like that, umm, I do a lot of farmers markets, we do, about, err, about eight, we did do two more, recently, but they’re too far

 

2.209.  AW: Are those all in Oxfordshire

 

2.210.  JB: Yeah, except these last two, we did one at Ascot, and one at Princess Risborough but my feelings were, they were new markets and they wanted to get plenty of stall holders there, and they wanted to get lots of people there, to encourage, people to come, and there weren’t err, local producers in that area, so we needed to get enough, but my feeling is, we’re loosing the, going too far, looses the feeling of the local food producer

 

2.211.  AW: And as I understand it the local markets make a requirement that all the food have to come, be produced within a certain

 

2.212.  JB: That’s right, yes

 

2.213.  AW: distance of the market

 

2.214.  JB: Some are as low as twenty miles, some are thirty miles, but is does depend of course, if you, if you haven’t got any producers in that area then, you know, like London or somewhere then you’re got to have people coming in from further a field, umm, but

 

2.215.  AW: So they vary

 

2.216.  JB: Yeah, they do vary, according to really the density of the population as to opposed the, amount of producers there are in that area, how rural it is I suppose, in a nutshell isn’t it

 

2.217.  AW: So you would have the regular farmers markets, that you go to

 

2.218.  JB: So we do, we do, we do eight, yup

 

2.219.  AW: So err, there are seven days in a week, so err

 

2.220.  JB: No, don’t panic, they’re a month, once a month mostly, Reading, is, is, just into Berkshire, obviously, that we do twice a month, and err, that’s at the cattle market, the actual market, the traditional market place, and umm, that we do twice a month, but all the others are only once a month, so, yeah, spread out, you’ve got one week, one week I do the deliveries to the shops one day, and err, one evening I always work, a week, usually, umm, in the shop, when everybody else is out of the way, cause it’s very difficult to do your cook products when the shops working, so I like to do that when the shops closed, so, umm, then I go in and make pate and haslet and black-pudding and all that type of thing, it’s much easier to have the shop to yourself, you know the working areas to yourself, and

 

2.221.  JB: Do you think if you hadn’t, umm, diversified in, and err, been selling directly to your customers, the end customers, the public, do you think you would have survived here

 

2.222.  JB: No, we won’t, without a doubt, without a doubt, in the, in eighty, about, about ’85, we just started selling to butchers and doing the additive free and by ’86, the, the, one of the feed companies, we owed money to, from this awful crash in ’84, we owed them some money and we were paying them, trying to make it and Andy was, doing this driving parcel job, to pay the debts, and err, one of the feed companies, was taken over by somebody else, that we owed the money to, and, and, he, I just asked him to come out, I said, this is what we’re doing, you can see, and because I’ve always done book keeping, I know if something’s right of wrong, if it’s going to work, and umm, I said to him,  will you come out and look at, look at this, you know, umm, and this was this new company that had taken over the one we owed the money to, and he said, oh gosh, yeah, I can see, you know, doing this, you know, we’re saying it’s cost this, so this is what we want for it and there’s a profit so obviously, you going to, rather than a loss, and we did that, and umm, but if we hadn’t done that, we, we wouldn’t, you know, maybe if, if err, I suppose we could have probably stayed here I don’t know, but we were concerned because it was built as an agricultural holding, oh I think we’re too, perhaps we were too law abiding in some ways, but you know, that’s why we had the bungalow built so that’s what

 

2.223.  AW: And you bungalow had an agricultural tie

 

2.224.  JB: An agricultural tie on it, yeah, and we wouldn’t have built this on the main, the edge of a main road, for any other purpose, it was built purposely for the, because we’d got sows here, breeding sows and err, about that time, in the ’80s, there was, when this was built, umm, eighty three, we moved in here, there was a lot of animal rights problems and they’d actually set fire to one farm, and they had an awful job getting all the pigs out, you know, and umm

 

2.225.  AW: Near here, a farm near here was it

 

2.226.  JB: I don’t, I can’t remember where it was, somewhere, I don’t think it was necessarily local, but it was, there was quite an uprising at that time, there was, everybody was on the march and err, the um, what do they call them, the umm, activists and all that, you know, they were sort of going through one of their little, you know, the people who do the hunting ban and all that, umm

2.227.  AW: The Animal Liberation Front

 

2.228.  JB: Yeah, the, mainly them and err

 

2.229.  AW: Animal rights activists

 

2.230.  JB: I can’t, yeah, and they’re, my dad said, to me oh, I shouldn’t put a sign up for, for your shop, even when we opened the shop, so that would have started selling meat from here, we were a little bit nervous about it, because we were frightened that people were going to come in, and do things you know, and that, that was some of the reason, we actually built the bungalow here, was because, and we’d had a couple of pigs stolen, so, we thought, ooh, you know, we were worried about the livestock, so that was the reason for building the bungalow, on site

 

2.231.  AW: Have you had any problems like that

 

2.232.  JB: Never, no, no we haven’t, thankfully, I mean, probably, if they’d come and looked, you don’t know, how they, know, or why they attack a particular place, I’ve now idea, umm, because, possibly, our pigs have been well kept, and they’ve always got straw and food and, you know, we don’t have, you know, one thing our pigs have always had always had food ad-lib, umm, the sows we couldn’t obviously, but err, we used to feed them twice a day, so that you never had noise of squealing animals, err, desperate for food or anything, I mean they’re not desperate, they just love food, so they’re going to make a noise when they see a bucket, but all our growers, have always been able to help themselves to food and water and always had straw, so, although they’re in, they’ve got, a pretty good time, you know

 

2.233.  AW: So if you hadn’t started developing this direct selling or marketing, and prior to that going to the local butchers, umm, where, would you just

 

2.234.  JB: We’d have had to gone back to work doing, nothing in agriculture, without a doubt, you could not, we tried, you know, every way, really, and as I say, the targets for, pig performance and farm performance were very good, but you’d had no control over, you were producing, I mean, it’s crazy, crazy, system, you’re producing, whatever it is, pigs, in our case, and they’re costing you say, fifty pound to get them to that, at that time, I think it was about forty five, or something, to get them to that, size and ready to go and you were only being paid, thirty, or thirty five, I mean it’s the most, you, you can’t go on like that, and, I suppose, because, we were more aware of it, in a sense, because, we’d both been out of the agricultural industry and worked, I’d worked in a garage, you know, umm, selling cars and all that sort of thing, doing the accounts and, my dad had, had other businesses, so we were very well aware of you know, we’d lived in the real world, we knew if you didn’t make a profit, you know, you’ve got to live and we had a mortgage, most people have mortgages, if you’ve got to pay a mortgage, your bills and, you’ve got to make some money, you can not

 

2.235.  AW: So you had some business skills that you’d developed outside of farming

2.236.  JB: Yes, yeah, I think that was, as much as actually the diver, but it, the diversification, it was the, the cross of the two things, because we both, perhaps it would have been much more difficult for us, to have diversified if we hadn’t worked in, other business, because you, you draw, you don’t even realise it, but you draw on those things to, to change, don’t you really

 

2.237.  AW: Did you spend long selling cars

 

2.238.  JB: Well, I didn’t sell them so much, as do the books afterwards, and, and if umm, if you’re doing the books, if you can see things are, not profitable, then your job is to tell your boss that somebody’s, you know, not doing their sort, you know, they’ve got too many, parts, I was like an, analyst, accounts analyst really, for lots of small businesses, you know, that’s what I did, so, I think probably that was the biggest benefit I’d got of experience in a way, and of course, retailing with the coal business, so you used to actually, helping dad on that, and talking to people, which is, you’ve got to be able to do, really

 

2.239.  AW: Now, umm, do you, are there any occupational hazards in being a farmer, health and safety

 

2.240.  JB: Probably not, any more than, most industries, umm, I mean, probably the butchers shop is more dangerous than the farm in some ways

 

2.241.  AW: Some farmers, umm, you know there’s a lot of lifting, heavy machinery

 

2.242.  JB: Yeah

 

2.243.  AW: Dangerous machinery, potentially dangerous machinery

 

2.244.  JB: Well, I suppose, that was one problem we had was umm, even lifting and moving pigs, you can slip and hurt yourself, and, Andy, my husband suffered two or three times with, you know, hurting his back and won’t be able to do certain things and I, I think, if we had our pigs outside, you wouldn’t be able to cope with doing that now, we’d have to, employee labour or we’ve got another son who doesn’t really quite know what he’s doing or where he’s going, and he’s only eighteen but, they have to decide for themselves, James left here and worked in retailing, then came back to us, umm

 

2.245.  AW: He works as your butcher now, is that right

 

2.246.  JB: He works in the shop, yup, and he would no, you know, that’s the only thing, if we hadn’t done this, you know, he wouldn’t have been able to come, he wouldn’t have gone into farming, he wouldn’t, if we hadn’t done this, there would be no opportunities where there’s probably opportunities for two of them really, to carry on, umm, run it, you know, run the business but, if we hadn’t diversified there would be, there would be nothing, no, we’d probably maybe be here, worrying whether we should be living in an agricultural bungalow, you know

 

2.247.  AW: So, I mean, some farmers who work on cereals, they have farmers lung, and that, you know

 

2.248.  JB: My mum actually had that, when we were, when we had, the farm at home, and they didn’t, when she filled out the form at the doctors, she’d just, they said, kept saying do live near any trees, and she was saying no, no, no and one day she just was late for the appointment, she said I’m so sorry my husband been combining and I had to do this, this, and err, they said, oh, you’re a farmers wife, that’s it, it’s farmers lung, she had that, and she was very poorly for quite some time, so umm, there are things that I suppose, because we don’t mill and mix, our feed comes in, direct, already for the pigs, you know, have it made to our specification, exactly we say what we want in it, what we don’t want in it, umm, and that now, has to come from Wrexham, which was a point we were touching on earlier, the nearest one was a Wallingford, List Mills, and they used to do it for us, umm

 

2.249.  AW: So there’s no machinery, or umm, substances, chemicals or, or whatever, that you

 

2.250.  JB: No

 

2.251.  AW: Cause you any concern

 

2.252.  JB: Not, not, no, because, err, I suppose, umm, with probably don’t really use anything, we don’t even, we don’t, we used to powerwash, and, and wash everything out, and sterilize everything, but we don’t do that, we, our pigs tend to have a natural immunity to, that’s what we believe in doing, and we found they were much healthier,  than err, cause they’re on a straw, they’re in a natural environment anyway, umm, so we don’t, so we don’t, we had to when the foot and mouth obviously you do boot dips and things like that, but we don’t really use any, we don’t use any weed killers, we don’t use any sprays in the field, even when we had our cattle out in the field, there’s no sprays been on that for years, but I am concerned about them, I mean I don’t like sprays, I think they’re horrid things, err

 

2.253.  AW: But other things just like, tools you know, that might be a bit sharp or, you don’t have any

 

2.254.  JB: Yeah, err, well no more than, normal

 

2.255.  AW: Yeah

 

2.256.  JB: Normal, working environment, if you work with the, the only thing is we never encourage the children onto the farm, unless we were there, with them, because of those things, there was a, there was a, umm, when my husband was repping, for this feed company, he went ot a farm, and umm, a tyre, tractor tyre fell over on one of their children and he was killed, and I just remember Andy coming back, and I said, what’s happened, you know, what’s wrong, and he said, he’d been to the farm that, you know, just to call in, just afterwards and err, this poor farmers son, had, so I think, you know, you hear thinks, and it makes you, take it a little bit more, I mean they always find some mischief to get in, falling in a pile of muck or something, but we didn’t ever encourage them to work on the farm, before they were, or doing anything, before they were certainly man enough to do it, and with supervision, we just didn’t

 

2.257.  JB: And you have two sons, is that right

 

2.258.  AW: Three, we’ve got, altogether, yeah, James, who’s, who works with us, Harry, who works as a lighting engineer and DJ in a night club, and Tim, whose not really sure quite what he’s doing, he’s between jobs, but he does, you know, he doesn’t do a very good job all the time, but he does

 

2.259.  JB: Sounds like there’s plenty of opportunities here

 

2.260.  AW: They’re grass needs cutting, you know, those are the jobs that I was trying to do everything, where as Tim, just picked up on, and if something happened then I can’t do the delivering, he can do that now, so

 

2.261.  AW: Let me, how, how do you keep in touch with what’s happening, err, in this country, in the UK and abroad, do you get Farmers Weekly, or any other press

 

2.262.  JB: Yeah, we have, have the umm, the Pig World magazine, and the NFU magazine and then the, several food magazines, umm, Meat and Poultry, Pig and Poultry or something, it’s called, umm, so those things, and also in, because of what had happened to us, in 1992, we formed a group called Ladies In Pigs, and LIPs for short, and the, well I wasn’t a founder member, there were three ladies, one went off to Australia in the end, but it, they were just fed up, because their husbands all worked one way or another within the pig industry and yet in the eighties they were seeing their own livelihoods, although they weren’t directly farming, one was a farmer, one was a farmers rep. or something, her husband, but they could see, that these prices were just, tumbling and nothing, you know, and nothing, you know, there was no promotion of the British porks, so they decided to start Ladies In Pigs, promoting British Pork, and there was a meeting over at, Pig Improvement Company then, saying about it and we’d been through the mill, really

 

2.263.  AW: The Pig Improvement Company, what’s that

 

2.264.  JB: Yeah, that’s PIC, Pig Improvement, they were a breeding company, for pigs to try and produce, you know, they were doing all the crosses, and selective breeding, to produce the best pig, that would grow as fast as possible, as lean as possible, in as least days as possible, basically, and err, you know, all the best attributes that everybody wanted, this very lean meat and this and that, and you know, so it was a, and they were world famous, you know, they did very well, and they’re still one of the leading, pig breeding companies, and we’d worked, we’d had our pigs from them so we’d worked, we did quite a bit of work with them, they’d sometimes say, once we’d got a vacuum packer and a slicer, and everything, they umm, get us to cure a ham for them and then we’d slice it and we’d label it, saying they’d say what breed of pig it was, and we’d say this is your this is your large white pig, cured and thing, and if somebody was coming from abroad they’d use the hams for that sort of thing

 

2.265.  AW: So you were, you joined

 

2.266.  JB: Ladies In Pigs

 

2.267.  AW: Ladies In Pigs

 

2.268.  JB: Yeah, I was foolish enough to stand up at the meeting and say yes, it’s deperate, we’ve got to do something, we’ve got to promote this pork, I know what’s happened to us, and I viewed it as, we were lucky, we were on the main road, we could turn the shop, err, the garage into a shop, but not everybody is in that situation, they’re down some farm track, miles away and, I wasn’t the only one, Andy and I weren’t the only one who were, there were many people, you know, did actually have to sell up and loose their farm as they have in the, even the last ten years again

 

2.269.  AW: So, how, how, long had it been going before you joined

 

2.270.  JB: Umm, I think it was in the second year, about ’92 we joined it, and there’s Clare Beacroft from umm, but I mean, they’re even out of pigs, they’d been in pigs all, this last lot was, but they’ve given up pigs now, Greenlands Farm And Jane Drew

 

2.271.  AW: That’s near here is it

 

2.272.  JB: Yup, by Wallingford, umm, she came, and Jill Graham, a lady from Gloucester way, and said right, you know, we’re pig farmers we want to form this group, will anybody be chairman, I never stood up, umm

 

2.273.  AW: So was there a public meeting then, or was it NFU meeting, or

 

2.274.  JB: It was like anybody that was on anybody’s list, within agriculture, with pigs, you had a mail, you know a mail shot come out and it was advertised in the pig farmer and things like that and I said, god, we need to go to this, you know, I couldn’t believe I’d stood up at the meeting, I couldn’t, I, I think it was the change in my life really at that point, but it was because what had happened, I was so motivated if you like, I felt so strongly about the fact that there was not the promotion out there, so we formed this group and we’ve been all over the country doing demonstrations, off we’d go with our frying pan, I had lots of bits in the paper about it, people think, what’s this, you know

 

2.275.  AW: So what’s the criteria to be a member of err, is it a membership organisation

 

2.276.  JB: Yeah, it’s membership, and the criteria, well, as long as you were interested in British Pork, and the promotion of it, whether you actually you’d ever worked in the industry, first of all, I suppose, most people, would be expected to be, farming, farmers husbands, farmers wife, or you know, something like that, or a partner in a farm, but some people were vets, some people were umm, just cooks, that liked using pork and, you know, we had, umm, people from any, really, as long you want to promote British Pork, that was it

 

2.277.  AW: So it’s a national organisation

 

2.278.  JB: It’s a national

 

2.279.  AW: with members all round the country

 

2.280.  JB: Yeah, yeah, and err, Frances Slade Is our Chairman, and err, she came to that first meeting and she was very involved at the time in pig judging at the shows, and was breeding pigs to show them, and umm, when she managed to err, slacken off slightly from that, and sort of went out of pigs, at one point because people had to, you just, we weren’t the only ones, we were the ones that sort of, just about managed to stay in it, but there were, people were giving up left, right and centre, because we were loosing so much money, but I was determined not to give up completely, one way or another, so I did a lot of, for Ladies In Pigs then, umm, with the Chairman, on and off, whenever anybody else was busy, you know, we had to keep this thing going and we used to, we used to, when I was doing it more, we’d go to ASDA and places like that, and cook the bacon, cook the pork strips, minced pork, try and get people to realise, that minced pork was a really, nice thing to use, and people just hadn’t perhaps thought of using minced pork, you know, things likes that, so umm, I was, I think, I was Chairman again in about ’99, and in that, that was when the, the spring of ’99 more or less, was when the farmers markets, that when it was, about that time, and I, I could see myself getting more busy with the farmer’s markets, and I knew, I just hadn’t got time to do the ladies in pigs as well, and err, I do it, still, but we do W.I.s in the evening, so I can, perhaps, go out every, I might only do one every six months, but if somebody rings me up, and says, you come and talk about British pork then I’ll go, so I still do it but err, not as much as, you know perhaps, more people have got a little bit more time and they’re involved in selling their meats through supermarkets

 

2.281.  AW: Yeah, so there’s, the, you’ve got the farming press there, and you said about that, then you’ve got, the, the Ladies In Pigs, umm, are there other ways you keep in contact, umm, keep in touch with what’s happening, I don’t if there are web sites, or newsletters, or umm

 

2.282.  JB: We get the thing from the NFU, we always whiz through that, you know, you, well you try to, but it really is time, I don’t have time to get on that computer, I’m doing some recipes

 

2.283.  AW: Sure

 

2.284.  JB: For the farmers market, umm

2.285.  AW: What do you think is the most important of those ways in which you keep in touch, that, err, to you, which do you thing is the most important, of the, of the, whether it be printed or meetings or word of mouth or

 

2.286.  JB: I think

 

2.287.  AW: Could be on the radio, don’t know

 

2.288.  JB: yes

 

2.289.  AW: Farming Today, don’t know if you listen to that

 

2.290.  JB: No, I don’t, I don’t seem to catch that one, I’m obviously still asleep from making black puddings, umm, I, I think which is the most important, probably it’s meeting other people in the industry, because when, the ladies in pigs was absolutely essential for me to know, what was happening within the industry, so that if, I could do something to help, then, and you knew what other people were going through, cause once your not selling, to those wholesalers, you don’t know what the price of pork is, I mean, now I couldn’t tell you what they’re paying per pound, whether they’re on a good or a bad price umm, so that is important, because it does keep me within, cause you almost can leave too much, you’ve got to be able to keep in those agricultural ties really, and people like Peter Beson, our feed rep, you know, when he comes round, you talk to him, umm, and you’ve got to have so much more knowledge of different things really, err, you know, that’s, but, probably meeting other producers

 

2.291.  AW: So is Ladies in, Ladies in Pigs, mostly small producers who sell direct

 

2.292.  JB: No, it’s the larger producers, I mean our, the umm, the lady chairman, is Frances Slade, and she works with the national pig association and people like that, it’s the big pig farmers, that’s why for me it was

 

2.293.  AW: Are you a member of the National Pig Association

 

2.294.  JB: No, I don’t think I am now, because I do umm, I don’t really, we’ve so small and how we’re doing it, it’s err we’re not no, we used to be, you know when we were selling more, so then we tried to do things more, so I try to help on a local basis rather then on the national level now, it was to try, the thing was really, was to try and I felt, to try and encourage other people to get out there and do, try and do something about it really, and err, you know, help other people a bit to, you know, to get on

 

2.295.  AW: Is the, umm, the National Farmers Union, the NFU, is that important to you

 

2.296.  JB: Well, we do all our insurance through them, no, err, we never make their meetings, we just don’t, probably, it’s not so important to us, because we’re not in growing crops, and things like that, because we haven’t got land, whereas I think if you’ve got all these different reforms, I, I really don’t know a great deal about the cereal and the how much subsidy and what they had before and what they didn’t have and how much the Governments, cutting back and how much, because we’ve not been involved in it, we’ve never, never had any subsidies so, it doesn’t worry you so, you, you know, you just know that, how much you’re paying for your food, the pig feed, things like that, and how it can possibly effect that, but

 

2.297.  AW: Do, do you have any contact with, err, farmers from other countries

 

2.298.  JB: Yeah, we have done, we’ve umm, we, but again, only on a smaller scale, we’ve had people out from Russia, though umm, gosh, it’s a company used to be out Standlock, Standlake way and they, I meet them at the Royal Show, we was doing the Ladies In Pigs thing, and umm, they had

 

2.299.  AW: So did you have a stall there, or something

 

2.300.  JB: The Ladies In Pigs did, yup, and umm, they were, they’d got some people who were over from, Russia, no it wasn’t through Ladies In Pigs, that’s wrong, I meet them again with Ladies In Pigs, but they had, some people over from Russian, when, just after everything changed, you know, and err, they came out and took photographs and the, the funny thing was, they said did we have anybody trying to bribe us for money to run our business, I can’t think what the word is, err, It’s gone now, but you know, that was there biggest fear, because everybody

 

2.301.  AW: They came and visited you, here

 

2.302.  JB: They came here

 

2.303.  AW: On the farm, did they

 

2.304.  JB: Yeah, yeah, and saw how we made the sausages, and all that, and we used to, until last year or the year before last, there was, out on the Reading road, there’s a, err, organic farm, which was run I think by a, Christian sort of, basically, but not over, you didn’t know it was any thing to do with it, it was a charity and umm, they had people over from Uganda every year

 

2.305.  AW: Is that Warren Farm

 

2.306.  JB: Warren Farm, yup, I’m glad you remembered the name, and err, we got quite, I got quite involved in that again, umm, and we had them, we’ve got some pictures somewhere, they were such wonderful people, then when they’d go home we’d try and make it over, before they went back

 

2.307.  AW: Do you keep in contact with any of these farmers that you’ve meet.

 

2.308.  JB: Umm, yeah, they send a, a letter every now and again, they, they tend to err, send a newsletter with, you know what the different farms we, we haven’t actually kept a personal contact, it’s just time, you can’t don it, you just, there’s a lot of things you have to actually give up of, on the personal side, because you’re doing so much, you know, you don’t sometimes keep, your contacts up, with friends, and personal, your private life can suffer a little bit, because, you’re so busy, in your business, and, not just your business, but trying to, things you believe in, I suppose

 

2.309.  AW: Was it, was it, was difficult then, I mean with children that must be difficult

 

2.310.  JB: It was, when, when they were little, it was very difficult, I mean we were very fortunate, because mum and dad were only the field behind us, so, if I was late on a delivery or something, they’d, they could go to their granny’s, and they were at there granny’s, but there was certainly a period then, of when you just wondered, you were just coming in, you know getting tea and going to bed and, but you know, I think lots of family go through that, for all sorts of reasons, people are made redundant, it’s all very well wimping about it, but you know, look at the steel workers a few years ago, there’s all sorts of industries, you can’t feel, it could happen, no matter what you’re doing, and I think it’s just, you’ve got to get up and get on with it, and try and, and it’s nice when it does work because you’ve, you think, well you know, that’s it, especially James now, okay he might have gone through a period when, err, you know, he perhaps didn’t have the same things, and didn’t have what he wanted for Christmas, and saw other people with it, but, that doesn’t do us an awful lot of harm, think of, if you can get things right and you don’t fall apart on the way, that’s really, if you can stick together through it, isn’t it really, I think you perhaps benefit in, in the long term

 

2.311.  AW: You, you definitely umm, come through it, but do you know of other farmers who haven’t, who’ve

 

2.312.  JB: Well

 

2.313.  AW: Have they, they’ve given up farming maybe, or

 

2.314.  JB: Some people have given up particularly livestock or dairying or, I mean you just got to look round and, and, I don’t know their personal, absolute details, but it just not profitable, and they can’t afford to carry on like it, and it’s knowing what to go into, I mean now there’s a good many going into growing these non-edible crops, you know, energy crops and all that sort of thing, umm

 

2.315.  AW: But that isn’t something that you’d consider here, not having the land, or

 

2.316.  JB: No, no

 

2.317.  AW: Or is it

 

2.318.  JB: It isn’t something we’d, we would consider but some, that’s what other people, as far as knowing what other people are doing, you know, that’s, that’s, their having to diverse in other ways, but, like my friend Clare I mean, they always had pigs, and they were, a very, very, efficient farm, very efficient farm, but they just, their, last, I think it was last year, and the year before, you know, it was just the pig industry lost so much money, it’s just horrendous, I mean

 

2.319.  AW: Cause of the foot and mouth

 

2.320.  JB: Well, not so much the foot and mouth, I don’t thing, it was before that, you know, it’s the price, the pricing situation of, rearing these pigs, and then, I mean it’s crazy, it’s still run like it now, if we had, for instance, if we had, ten pigs to go this week, just for arguments sake, and we only, we knew we could only sell five of them, and we, they had to go, cause we needed the space, or they were too big, or whatever, and they were perfect pigs, and you could send them to the abattoir, they would say, if you were doing it on a regular basis, you’d ring this person, you’d ring this person, and you’d send them, to whoever was giving you the best price, but that best price is what they’re giving you, it’s not what it’s cost you, well, I mean, so it could be well under what it’s cost to produce it, and that is how the pig industry, is run, umm, I don’t, well and, and the beef come to that, you know, that’s how it’s run, you don’t get what it’s cost you to produce that product, you’re getting, whatever the market price is, and sometimes you hear people saying, oh well, they’re talking the price up, or they’re talking the price down, and I’m thinking, who is this, that’s talking it, you know, it’s, it’s crazy, and

 

2.321.  AW: How do people survive then, when their, when their price of there, their sale price is, err, less than the cost of production

 

2.322.  JB: Well this is where you get this whole thing of having to produce these pigs, in, as many, least days as possible, whether it’s pigs or whatever it is, but pigs because I know it, it’s because you’re having to, you’ve got to have the very minimum costs, so this poor farmers, that are trying to, to carry on with what he’s doing, he’s trying to produce this product, at least cost possible, which means if he’s got to cut down on labour, or he’s got to cut down on, umm, and that’s why, the growth promoters and things like came into being, that was all it was, it was because, people were saying, can’t, you know, what about this feed, or higher energy, they’d say, oh it needs more protein, if you have more protein, or more energy, or something, you know, they’ll grow faster and this was the whole thing, and that’s what, was, has, been product driven, the farmer, to produce the pigs, at that price, because they’re, there’s no, and hopefully the National Pig Association, there’s a very, err, friend of ours, actually husband is chairman of that now, and he’s a Yorkshire chap, and err, I have great hopes for him because I think he’s strong enough personality to, to get people say, this is it, you know, we’ve got to stop, but unless we stop importing, you know, if they’re producing it, abroad, cheaper, umm, and they’re not doing it by the same regulations as us and they can do it cheaper and you don’t know where it’s coming from, or anything else, and you’re getting foot and mouth coming into the country, for instance when we have a pig killed here, you also pay a levy, towards the eradication of swine fever, or whatever, to clear it in the country, that’s fine, so we’ve all paid this money to get this disease so that if you’ve got that disease on your farm, the, the vets come out, they destroy the herd, end of story and you wait until you’re clean and then you restock, like the foot and mouth

 

2.323.  AW: Is that levy a legal requirement

 

2.324.  JB: It’s done, it’s just, on, I don’t know if I’ve got a thing to show you, but, it’s just on the invoice, you know, pig levy, so much, you’d get charged an inspection fee by the, be, pig’s have to be inspected, umm, by the Meat and Livestock Commission, and stamped, inspected to say they’re passable for human consumption, so you have to pay for that, and you pay this, err, other thing, in fact, I, it  might even have stopped now, but we were paying, it was about thirty pence a pig, and then, you’re importing pork, and it’s in there, if it’s in there as a, it still stays there, so somehow it gets back  into the food chain and back into the animal food chain, it’s off again, you know

 

2.325.  AW: Is, is there a lot of beaurocracy in farming today

 

2.326.  JB: Yes, I think, umm, I think

 

2.327.  AW: For you

 

2.328.  JB: There is, it, to a degree there is, yeah, umm, I suppose, especially when the foot and mouth, I mean that really bought it to a head, you know, of we were like, a hundred yards in the catchment area, so you couldn’t move your pigs, regardless of anything and yet, you could take them out, take them to an abattoir and they could be killed and, and umm, on welfare grounds, and err, destroyed, but there was nothing wrong with them, but you couldn’t have them back, you know I mean, they’re, they’re, that’s when, it’s only when it’s probably something like that, and I think there, there has to be some, policing and restrictions anyway, in order to keep our herds and our animals healthy, you don’t want people tramping stuff round the countryside because that’s exactly, what caused the last problem

 

2.329.  AW: Where do you get your advice on growing and rearing, umm, from, what is the most important source, it’s about quarter to twelve

 

2.330.  JB: Umm

 

2.331.  AW: Is half twelve alright for you to finish at

 

2.332.  JB: Yeah, no, I’m not really, I’m ignoring the phone so, it doesn’t, umm, sorry

 

2.333.  AW: Expertise really, where do you, where do you get your umm, growing or rearing err advice from, you’ll get agronomists on cereals, etc

 

2.334.  JB: Yeah, I think, I think it’s been down to us and our own stockmanship really, if, for instance, when we had a problem, what we always done, if we had a pig, that, for whatever reason, died, you going to have livestock, you know, it’s the old saying, you’ve got livestock, you’ve got dead stock, and err, when we had some weaners and one died, looked seedy and the next day it died, we would take it, we used to take them to Coley Park in Reading, and we’d have a biopsy done on, you know, an autopsy or whatever you call it, done on them, to see what was wrong with them, and we, we always did that, so that, unless you could see it’d just keeled over and had a heart attack, for no, you know, if there was anything slightly doubtful, then we did that, touch wood, we’ve never had anything in years that we’ve had to go, but if we had something happen tomorrow, that we couldn’t tell, from our own experience, that it was umm, something which we recognised, then we would call in somebody like that and have a post mortem done and know where we were, because, and if everybody did that, we’d all a lot better, because, although it’s, perhaps expensive to do that, if you’ve got a problem, you know about it

 

2.335.  AW: Do you get much advice from, from, vets, or company reps., or

 

2.336.  JB: Not so much now because we’re so small no bodys really interested, you know, it’s often a case of you talk, you go to the shows and, you talk to somebody and you want to some information and then when you tell them, you know, how many pigs you’ve got, whatever, umm, they’re sort of not that, interested but, the feed company is, important, because obviously they need to find, source your feed, and that’s what, as I say ours know comes from Wrexham because we particularly, it’s not what’s in it, it’s what not in it, if you like, you know

 

2.337.  AW: Do you, do you get reps calling-in off, the off-chance, or phoning you

 

2.338.  JB: Not so much now, no, we used to, but I think they all probably know, more or less you know, that we’re small and not in the market, you know they can’t make enough money out of us really to, you know, it’s a small, very small business, as far as, to the agricultural sector this is just so small it’s

 

2.339.  AW: Yeah

 

2.340.  JB: But, that’s not the point, there’s no point in having hundreds of something, not, and not being in control of the situation, no point at all

 

2.341.  AW: Umm, what, what do you think about the, the NFU, are you a member

 

2.342.  JB: Yeah, we are members, yeah, yeah, well we do

 

2.343.  AW: Do they represent, do you think they represent you

 

2.344.  JB: I think they do, I don’t, as I say, because we’re probably very much, on our own, but, because we’re so small and it’s almost, moving out of the farming industry, the, the few pigs we have within the, you know, everybody else has got thousands and thousands, in some ways, again, you know, they’re perhaps, umm, a lot, you know, we’re not really, that great importance, but if something’s wrong and you need, you know you needed, some advice, you could go them and get it, and that would be impartial and they would be the same to you I’m sure, umm, whether you had a thousand acres, or whether, I think it’s sort of bit like, your doctor, you know, they’re there if you need them, umm and because of what we’re doing, when I think  when we first diversified, err, we did speak to them then, they sent some brochures on, you know, retailing and things, and umm

 

2.345.  [pauses, sounds in neighbouring room]

 

2.346.  AW: Do you want to go and have a look

 

2.347.  JB: Oh it’s only James, it’s okay, umm, so they did at that, you know, the on set, they did that

 

2.348.  AW: In the foot and mouth crisis do you, err, do you think they were representing you then, did you agree with them

 

2.349.  JB: Err, did we agree with them. No, I don’t think many farmers did really agree, cause, it seemed to be the blind leading the blind a bit with the foot and mouth, I don’t think, I think the biggest problem was, that, I’m not really, to be honest, I’m not really sure what there absolute stance was, so I wouldn’t like to comment too much on it. We were almost too wrapped up in how it affected us individually, and, when we were going to be able to moved our pigs, whether we were going to be able to get the feed in, you know, um, and again, because we were smaller you tend to get, when it’s a real crises, like that, you do tend to get a little bit interlocked into your own thing, you know, umm, I think the biggest thing from the foot and mouth was the, having lived through it before, was, you felt that nobody was taking any notice soon enough, nobody was, and perhaps the NFU should have been, a bit more heavy handed in, from the beginning and said, look, we’ve been through this, read the file and act on it, because it was all there and if they’d done what it said, in the first place from the notes that were, come to light, come sometime afterward didn’t they, you know, umm, so I think really, I’m not a great one on, exactly what they were saying at the time

 

2.350.  AW: What do you think of, I think its Ben Gill, isn’t it, the President of the NFU

 

2.351.  JB: Yeah, umm, again I think as a small producer, err

 

2.352.  AW: Have you ever thought about, I mean, I don’t know if there other smaller producer, err, organisations

 

2.353.  JB: Yeah

 

2.354.  AW: I mean I suppose, Women In Pigs

 

2.355.  JB: Well that’s were I work, I tend, Ladies In Pigs, was initially, and then as things have changed, umm, I was, I am a founder member of the Thames Valley Farmers Market Association, because, I, it was a bit like, when Ladies In Pigs, you know, this desperate thing to, something you really knew worked and people believed in, and we formed this, association, to market our products, and I’ve also, umm, from the, quite early days of the Agenda 21 local food issues, because I know it’s, from talking to people, it’s what people really want, and it’s getting it onto that wider sector where, where err, you can, get more people benefit, not just perhaps the well off, that can drive to local farm shop, but getting things into the towns where err, people can get it, from the farmers, and umm, because that done fare, I said to you earlier, we didn’t, marketing side of doing internet sales and all that went by the way, because we  felt that, the local sales and the local thing, was much more of a burning issue and it also, hopefully, tries to bring some life back into the towns, it’s a sort of double edge sword isn’t it, you’re trying to, do both things, and umm, I went to the food meetings, the Agenda 21 food forum, with Suzy Ohlenshlarga, I don’t know if, she’s very interesting lady

 

2.356.  AW: I don’t know her

 

2.357.  JB: She works for Oxfordshire County Council and she’s, she’s done a lot to promote the local foods, she’s err, got a directory up together, with Oxfordshire, and all the farms, saying what they produce, and how they produce it, and I think when we have, such

 

2.358.  AW: Was that Lucy

 

2.359.  JB: There’s Lucy Nichols, she’s from Oxford Brookes University, she’s on it, but Suzy is the one who actually works in Oxford, through the County Council, but there was this wonderful band of people, that weren’t anything to do with farming that were trying, and I just felt it was, you know, when there’s that offer of help, there hasn’t been, when we first started you were looked at, you know, you’re farmers, you’re not retailers, you know, and there wasn’t much help out there, really it was the, environment and health you had to try and get to try and tell you what you’d got to do, to comply with regulations, and trading standards, that was it, there was nothing, nobody else, saying this is a good idea, you know, we were a bit before our time, so I did feel that it was necessary to, try and be as helpful in a way, to those people that were actually there, supporting, well even doing what we’re doing today, because people have to be reckon, if they are going to help the agriculture, if we are going to change, and be rural and be recognised, then we’ve got to give some time to it, we’re got to, and it has worked, we’ve got the Association up and running, it’s run by a steering committee of eight to ten people, umm, the idea is, because what happens, the towns perhaps, the Councils are all people that are voted on, voted off, aren’t they, and you might have a group of people that think the farmers markets are wonderful, and then, all changes and the next persons, more into, umm, fox hunting or you know, doing more IT work and the farming issues going to go by the wayside so the farmers markets going to stop and no body’s got time to worry about it, so the idea of the Association was to form it, so that when, somebody said, well that’s it, we, we can’t run this or do it any more, we could try and keep it going, which is what we’ve, we’ve done and we’re actually starting to actually run some of the markets ourselves, and to keep, keep the farmers markets going, and promote them, locally, and working with, Lucy Nichols and err Suzy Ohlenshlarger, we have now, got as far as, I’ve missed a couple of meetings cause I’ve been tied up with markets and things, err we have somebody, for, forming a food group, Oxfordshire food group, umm, employed a person, sort of between us, so they’ll do one, one point five days a week for the farmers markets association, some for Oxfordshire Food Group, umm, and Lucy Nichols is very involved in that, so if you have time to, she would tell you all the details, cause I only

 

2.360.  AW: Sure

 

2.361.  JB: Support it, but I mean to me that is absolutely wonderful because it should help more local, and that’s were I, I come from that angle, I may not know what Ben Gill’s doing but, you know, it’s what’s happening in our county that, to me, is the most important, really, the local issues, really

 

2.362.  AW: Do you, do you thing there is a crisis in farming, in, in the UK

 

2.363.  JB: Oh, I think, I think there is, yeah, as I say, I don’t know enough about it, but I think it’s, we’re going to end up being a country of, sort of, service industries if we’re not careful, you know, because, there’s so few people working on, in agriculture, umm, okay you’ve got big machines and all the rest of it, but err, I think umm, we import so much, and yet we’ve got this wonderful green rich land, you know, there’s something wrong, somewhere, there is something wrong I think

 

2.364.  AW: What about in the rest of the world, do you think there’s a crisis there, or, in other countries

 

2.365.  JB: Yes, I think, I think, probably there is, I mean, they always used to be on about the mountains, didn’t they, the food, the butter mountain, we never hear anything of that, what, you know, has it disappeared, is it there, or, it seems crazy, you know, but I don’t know how we can get it all right, I think we have to start at home, I think it’s the only thing you can do and like, if you meet somebody, like when these people came from , err, Warren Farm, it was a wonderful experience, because they’d come and you could talk to them, and because you’re a small producer they could, I think is was more a hands-on thing and you could, and there they described how they grow all their crops, I mean I’d love to go there

 

2.366.  AW: Is that because they were small producers, as well

 

2.367.  JB: Yes, yeah, I mean they’re not, this would seem like a, you know, six acres or ten acres would seem tremendous to them, they’d probably only got what we’d term as more of a garden size, but if they could actually, not be hungry, and grow their food and have enough left over to sell buy the thing they didn’t grow, you know, it’s sustainability isn’t it, that’s the, worn word that drives me, mad, I mean that’s what we need to be doing, in every country in every region, and umm

 

2.368.  AW: What, what do you think caused this farming crisis

 

2.369.  JB: I don’t, I, I, I think probably, probably loosing control local, at the local, everything getting bigger and, and loosing the local control

 

2.370.  AW: Do you mean farm sizes increasing

 

2.371.  JB: Everything really, the way the distribution and, you know, things to try and make it cheaper to, produce and cheaper to, err, trying to produce cheap food, really, in a nutshell, that’s, that’s where it used t be, and you think, when I think back, to when I was little, food was never cheap, it wasn’t a cheap option, umm, but when you think that a chicken is probably, you can buy a chicken for two pounds or something, I mean, that is the most ridiculous thing in the world, how can you possibly, do that, in the ways, you’d like to do it, and so maybe once the larger companies, that are selling it, start saying we’re going to pay you this, to the farmer, for that product, you’ve lost it, you’ve lost the plot, because it’s no longer what it’s cost to produce, it’s what you’re being paid, and I think that’s probably gone, I don’t so much about the cereal, but certainly, I think that’s what’s happened with the food industry side of it, you know, trying to make everything, even hanging bacon, or making bacon, we went round a factory and they said twelve hours from pig to bacon, well, I mean you just want to laugh really, don’t you, because, anything that’s dead, you’ve, when you’ve reared it, you almost want to respect it, it sounds stupid, but you, you respect that, animal, when it’s dead in a way, because of all the nurturing and things you’ve gone through, and to think it as being a slice of bacon, almost in twelve, it seems, just wrong, it’s, I don’t know, it may sound very silly but that’s how it is to me, you, you sort of have a respect for your food and, and the whole thing, and, and that’s how everything used to be, but, so I think this fast, mad, rush and everything being done in such massive quantities, and, to, to make it cheap is where we’ve gone wrong really, trying to produce something which is impossible

 

2.372.  AW: So, doing things more locally has, has worked for, for you, but do you think exporting might be the answer for some

 

2.373.  JB: Yes, I think it probably is, umm, especially when we’ve got so many people, even now, umm, moving abroad, you know, you go abroad there’s, there’s an awful lot of people, cause people, even our customers, that have gone abroad have said, arrh, they come home and they, they said, they hide things in their suitcases to take back with them, because they can’t get the English products abroad, and of course the foot and mouth didn’t help that at all, because that made, you know

 

2.374.  AW: Do, do you export any of the

 

2.375.  JB: Nop, no we don’t, um

 

2.376.  AW: Products

 

2.377.  JB: It was something we, we probably, as I say, the farmers market issue, hadn’t come up, the local food, we were really doing as much as we could locally, and that was why we were going to do the internet site, and you don’t know where that would have lead you, but we, we had our, EU licence number, we got that fairly early, because we were one of the few people actually producing pigs and products and selling them, once you’re not selling them out of your farm shop, you have to have an EU licence number, if you look on any dairy bottle, or pack of butter, you’ll see an oval sign with, which will say, UK and a number, and err, our EH, environmental health guy, the EHO came out and he said, I’m sorry, although you’re small you’ve got to have these special labels printed and you’ve got to have an EU number, and we went, oh,  took a deep breath and err, the labels alone were about seven hundred pounds, and um, we thought well if we’re going to do this, we, we, we knew get on, and we do cook meat as well, as well as raw and it’s part of, you know, the, you’ve got to prove that you, due diligence, that you’re producing all these products, in this manner, and that you’ve taken every hazard analysis point of, into care, and this was before they bought in that cook meat licence

 

2.378.  AW: So it’s a kind, is it a quality assurance

 

2.379.  JB: Yeah, it’s a hazard, I mean now they call it a HACCP, Hazard Analyse, Analysis, Critical Control Point, and it’s been brought in, more, and everybody, now, in the food industry has to do that, and, and, have done that exam, since the outbreak of food poisoning in Scotland

 

2.380.  AW: So is that just because you’re a, a retailer or that because you’re a producer

 

2.381.  JB: That’s because you’re dealing with food, you’re a food handler, first of all you have

 

2.382.  AW: So if you were selling to wholesalers and you didn’t do the butchering

 

2.383.  JB: If you were selling whole pigs

 

2.384.  AW: You wouldn’t need it

 

2.385.  JB: I don’t think you’d need it, no, I don’t thing you’d need it, you’d probably need to do basic hygiene, or something like that, you, you may have to do it, if you were doing all your own transport you probably would because you’ve got to be able to produce documentation, to say that, this pig come, into this shop, and it, was, an, an acceptable temp, temperature, i.e. four degrees, umm, then it went into your fridge, which is monitored, regular, and it only runs, at between two and four degrees and that at every, and then when you take the pig out it was cut, and everything you do, in your touching of that product, is been, as, you’ve checked that there’s no danger areas where you could, make everybody else

 

2.386.  AW: And there’s an inspection regime for that, is there

 

2.387.  JB: Yes there is, yeah, and now they come out and they, they err, do your licence, at least once a year, and they go through all your written paperwork, you have to fill forms out, when I do the black pudding of the pate, you, you put the date, and the product, how, exactly what type it is, umm, what time you put it in the cooker, what time you took it out, what the internal temperature that was, that’s  it’s reached, umm, over seventy, or is it sixty eight degrees

 

2.388.  AW: And what do you think about that, that scheme and that regulation, do you think that’s good

 

2.389.  JB: I do think it’s good, because funnily enough, we did it before anyway, before it was written, because, we’d moved from farming, into a new industry, and we were, terrified of getting anything wrong, it’s a big responsibility to suddenly, although I’d always, done, you know, home cooking, and I’d grown, and I think, the benefits of the dairying days, benefit me, because then you have the milk, err, testing, likely come round, and your dairy’s got to be spotless and they check your equipment, so, all those things, probably were locked away, and you, you don’t, basic hygiene, you’d, you’d done that, umm, so I think we had those thinks, but also, they also made us realise how important those issues were, and we used to monitor, our first fridge, cuase we were frightened it might brake-down, we used to monitor it anyway, and err, I always tested the temperature of the pate, because I, I’d read in, things like the, your, the Meat Traders Journal and things like that, about somebody, being in trouble for, selling something that was unfit for human consumption,  and, or it, some, we stopped making pate at one point because of it, because there was an outbreak, and I thought, oh my goodness, I’m not going to do that, you know, and then I found it was because they were making the pate, in a big, like container, and then pouring it into, dishes to set, umm, and of course you, if the dishes weren’t sterile and there was any bacteria in it, that’s how it happened, but we don’t we cook it in the pot, that it’s actually in, and it stays in that pot until it’s sold, so that way, you’ve eliminated that, your not moving it around

 

2.390.  AW: Um

 

2.391.  JB: Sorry, I get a bit carried away

 

2.392.  AW: That’s alright, some farmers are concerned about, err, sterling, the exchange rate, umm, I don’t know if that’s something you have an opinion about, and of course there’s the euro, do you think joining the euro would be good for farming, maybe it’s not something

 

2.393.  JB: I don’t

 

2.394.  AW: Impacts you

 

2.395.  JB: I don’t really know a lot, I keep, you know, look, reading bits and pieces, my gut feeling is no, but my, I haven’t got a well educated feeling cause I haven’t got, I really haven’t read enough about it, but I just feel, that, looking at the issues that affect us, and have affected us through BSE, through foot and mouth, if, if they get it, and something goes wrong, umm, it’s all, all, quiet and nothings much about it, and err, we hear, we do, we are, it’s like I said earlier, we are a very law abiding country, pretty well, you get the odd person, that doesn’t comply, and that’ll happen in any industry’s, a lift will fall on somebody because they haven’t had safety in whatever, but I think, we do as a rule comply by most, you carry the letters of the law out, whereas some other European partners don’t, and it’s very hard to, police controls on a great big place like that, it’s such a big, you know, you hear stories of somebody collecting eggs in Poland, and their paper work all comes from Demark, and umm, you know from a lorry driver or something, and they say, where’s the paperwork and they say, oh you’re picking it up in Poland, and Poland, the paper work from Denmark, you know, sound it sound as if it’s all come from there, so, traceability on a large scale and, you know

 

2.396.  AW: That’s something you’re concerned about, is it

 

2.397.  JB: Oh yes, yeah, it is

 

2.398.  AW: Yeah

 

2.399.  JB: It is, and that’s why the imports, you know, I mean, we, we have no control, it’s such a large area, when you’re importing meat in from, from goodness, well, you don’t know

 

2.400.  AW: Would you like to see restrictions on imports

 

2.401.  JB: Oh I would, I’d ban them, oh no, I think, they have, I mean it’s just horrendous, what comes in here, I mean, you have all this dried meat and goodness knows where it comes from, but also you have, err, pork coming into this country, for processing, and then it’s processed in, I don’t know, Liverpool or Manchester, and it’ll say on the label, packed in the UK, and the consumer picks it up, and thinks oh, UK, you know, or produced in the UK, it’ll even say on some, well it might be produced as a product in the UK, but it’s all imported meat, so the poor housewives, they’re thinking she’s buying British meat, or a product that’s been made from British meat, the labelling is the worst thing in the world, it just drives me mad

 

2.402.  AW: Well this, this leads onto umm, quality assurance schemes

 

2.403.  JB: Umm

 

2.404.  AW: Umm, do you

 

2.405.  JB: We aren’t in one

 

2.406.  AW: You aren’t in one

 

2.407.  JB: Because when we started there weren’t really any, you know, and, umm, so that was why we had this err, this little, I’m free, sticker and err, then later on, we had a particular design on the letter head up there, to, to, make our product

2.408.  AW: Hum, hum, right

 

2.409.  JB: So, had, our own, logo if you like

 

2.410.  AW: Had you, have you considered joining any schemes, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know how far

 

2.411.  JB: Not really

 

2.412.  AW: you are from organic production

 

2.413.  JB: No, I think if we had more ground then we would, it would be the organic road we’d go down, err, but unless you, you know, unless you can grow some cereal yourself, if your using a lot of straw, you can’t even get enough, there’s not organic, enough organic straw out there, to supply everybody, even people that are organic, sometimes have to use non-organic straw for bedding, so, that’s why we haven’t, we just have stayed as we are really, because were small scale, we deal with our customers, we can tell them exactly what we do, and why we do it

 

2.414.  AW: You’ve got the sign up there, do you still have advertise in the, in the press, you mentioned you once advertised

 

2.415.  JB: Occasionally we do, we tend to support local things, umm, local schools, I’ve got a letter there I must reply to, you know, in there umm, fundraising events, or giving them a raffle or something like that, and it tends to be word of mouth, more than anything else, and it, it’s the product, the product we rely on, the product we rely on to really sell itself, and err, sometimes, we just, we’re struggling to cope, Christmas we just, and there they are, ringing up and saying, do you want to advertise, and we’re saying we can not do any more, we can’t sell another, we’re, you know

 

2.416.  AW: Do you think if there was a local, err, assurance scheme, that you would join that

 

2.417.  JB: Well, we’re, umm, I think probably, yes we would, I think if there was a local, I mean this is where this food group will come down the line of, and the Thames valley farmers markets, so we can get an Oxfordshire, you know, so that people really know,  and little places are inspected and everybody knows and that’s where I’m hoping that this, Oxfordshire Food Group will, err, benefit them

 

2.418.  AW: Now, umm, I’m sure, I don’t know if you read the, the recommendation of the food and farming commission, but I’m sure you’re aware of it, umm, about switching from production to environmental subsidies, what, what do you think about that

 

2.419.  JB: I think they’re good, I mean, I don’t, I don’t, umm, we’ve never had a subsidy, we had one once for a cow, you used to be able to get one for a suckler cow but, even when we were doing the beef sometimes we were so busy, we didn’t send the form in, in time, and we just, but, you know, if we were making enough money, if you’re making a profit you don’t need the subsidies, and umm

 

2.420.  AW: Would you like to see them abolished

 

2.421.  JB: Yes, I think, a proper price for the proper product, you produce is how it should be, I’d, I’d, I don’t know quite how, I don’t know enough about the, how it works with the, seeds and I really, it’s a knowledge gain thing, because it’s so long since my dad was in it, umm, I don’t thing he had subsidies when he was in it

 

2.422.  AW: Do, what, how do you feel about, umm

 

2.423.  JB: I think it needs a complete rethink really, maybe the EU thing and all that, I mean I must admit I’d voted to go in it, but I think that’s it, it’s all, it’s too big, you can’t, how do you manage something so big as that, all these other countries with different systems, different costs, you know, I think we’re, we are very different in this country because we’re not joined on to anybody else really, no, so, umm, I think it needs to be a complete rethink really

 

2.424.  AW: Okay, let me ask you about this, farmers always have opinions about umm, about supermarkets, what role do you feel supermarkets

 

2.425.  JB: Deftly silence, well sadly I think, this has been part of the, has been part of the downfall, really, of our, fabric of society, but on the other hand, how the heck are you going to feed everybody and supply everybody, because we’re not the same amount of people living in the same density as we were when the old fashion farming system was in place, it’s a very difficult to, it’s going to be a problem to get it right

 

2.426.  AW: Do you think supermarkets, umm, do they have much control in, over farmers

 

2.427.  JB: Complete, they, I mean, it was even worse a few years ago, that’s really why everybody was, they say what they’re going to pay, or you know, if you could get on a contract, some people did it on contract, I mean, one of my friends who is no longer in, she had a contract, and even they gave up with a very well known supermarket, you know, and

 

2.428.  AW: What were they supplying

 

2.429.  JB: Pork, yup, and they’d been with them, and there, there pigs were all completely additive free it was a err, umm, minimal disease, they’d never had any diseases on their farm

 

2.430.  AW: do you know why, do you mean, that the supermarket gave up on them, or that they gave up on the supermarket

 

2.431.  JB: No, they, they gave up with producing pork because of loosing money, so if you’re supplying one of the major supermarkets, and you still loosing money, this is what I was saying earlier, it’s, there’s no control, it’s, you’ve got to be able to re-invest, whether your pigs are outside, whether they’re inside, things wear out, as long as you’ve got livestock, it’s like clothes, it wears out, so you’ve, you’ve got to be able to make enough money, to re-invest, new buildings, new, so on, umm, and make some money, and have a holiday, and all those normal things that most of us really want, and have a car, and you know, but you, a lot of things like that, you, you, just there’s not enough, there’s not enough money, people have lost, billions, big farmers, you think what we lost on, just, you know, seventy breeding sow herd, and they’ve got seven sows or something, you know, a thousand sows and, it’s err, pretty frightening, eventually, you know people just have there, that’s it, so supermarkets play, such a tremendous role, because most people, or have paid and are still paying, most people, go to the supermarket, and buy most of their meat, it might not be in the size of a joint of meat, I stood by a lady in the supermarket last week, horrific, horrified at the bill, at the end, but everything she bought was prepared and packed, now there are going to be people that have got to buy and are going, and it’s going to go more that way if anything with more of us working, both partners working, but, you know, that’s process, whether it’s processed or whether it’s a lump of meat, it’s still come from somewhere, it’s either been imported, been manufactured here, but those raw ingredients to the person whose produced those in the first place, however they’ve been produced, they’ve got to get a fair price for it, you know, and they haven’t been getting a fair price for it and I think, it’s like I said earlier, it’s trying to produce, cheap food, and you cannot, it’s a living product whether it’s growing barley, or whether it’s an animal, it’s a living, organism, you can’t, you cannot, you know it’s going to grow, and if it grows at a natural rate, it’s going to grow slowly, whoever’s doing it has got to make a living, and they’re not.

 

2.432.  AW: Here you have a butcher’s shop, etc, so you set the price, but, are, are you in control, do you think you have enough control in setting the price, what determines the price that, you charge

 

2.433.  JB: What determines the price on it, is our costings, umm, when we first started, we didn’t charge enough, because we were so pleased to not be loosing money, I mean it was, that just shows you, how the, the change over, is, we didn’t charge over, and some people were saying, oh no, you should, you know, they, they sort of think, there was something wrong, because of it, and of course, we hadn’t then, probably, envisaged all the costs, because you don’t, you don’t really, I can’t, there’s always hidden costs, that you perhaps aren’t going to find until, down, down the line a little bit, you buy something and its great and then you realise you got to have a newer better one, because of, regulations and everything like that

 

2.434.  AW: I, just an aside, are you a member of the RSPCA’s umm, animal friendly, I can’t remember what it’s called actually

 

2.435.  JB: No, no, we, we never really bothered to join any of it, because if people come and if they had a problem then, you know, before the foot and mouth, if somebody said do you want to see the pigs, well, we’d let them, you know, and that was it, we don’t, we haven’t, since foot and mouth, and umm, one day this lady said oh, could we see the pig, yeah, so, and then she said, oh we’ve just been to so-and-so’s farm, looking at their pigs, and I sort of went, [draws breath], because pigs do, you can transmit a disease with pigs, quite easily, and I think that was a lot of pig, a lot of us as pig farmers worries when pigs first went outside, that were, you know, were we going to have problems, and I think that’s the most positive thing, of all in the industry, that the pigs went outside and they stayed healthy and well, and we had foot and mouth, so bad in lots of herds, and it didn’t get into the, the outside pig herds, which is, it was just wonderful, for all of us, I think even, whether you had one pig or a hundred, because obviously once animals are outside then they are more susceptible to what’s around them, and it’s probably because cause, you know, they’re outside and they’re, built up their natural immunity, to a lot of things and I think, generally we’ve probably got a healthier pig herd than we’ve ever had, because they’re, in more natural environment, so I like to see, you know, I like to see them outside and that

 

2.436.  AW: Right, we’ve got ten minutes, I’m just going to ask you, it’s a bit of a, umm, about, err, one of the things we’re interested in is, will farmers be leaving the farm to their, or will their children, if they have them, be umm, carrying on farming, umm, what do you think will happen here

 

2.437.  JB: Well I would, if you’d ask me that, three or four years ago, I would have said no, you know, we will do this as long as it, supports us and then, it will be our pension, and that is how Andy and I viewed it until Ali, we just viewed it as umm, a, making our own living, bringing up the family, now, things have changed really because one, although he’s not always in a good mood about it, and wishes he doesn’t work here, but that is perfectly natural thing, umm, I think he can see a future in it, he can see a future and

 

2.438.  AW: This is your son who’s the butcher is it

 

2.439.  JB: This is James, our son, he works in the shop, and, umm, I think, when, when, we’re just trying to get this field fenced and we’ll get some beef again, you know, he’d like, he’d, he’s sort of, oh, when can we get it done, he’s got that, he remembers us having cattle before, and he’s got that, little sparkle there and in a way we need to move on quite quickly now, so that he can, see, us doing more things he likes and err

 

2.440.  AW: So you think it’s possible it will stay in the family and you’ll, James maybe

 

2.441.  JB: Yes, I think it will but only, if, we carry on down the diversification road, and umm

 

2.442.  AW: So are you going to go into beef, it sounds like

 

2.443.  JB: We will go back to beef, yeah, we will, we just to get this fence field now, cause it’s my field now, which is really nice

 

2.444.  AW: That’s something else you would sell in the shop here, presumably

 

2.445.  JB: Yeah, cause we used to sell our own and now we, we um, sell some local and we get the abattoir to source us some local grass feed beef, you know, old fashioned farming really, that’s really what we’re going to

 

2.446.  AW: How many cattle do you think you’ll keep on that

 

2.447.  JB: Well we used, used to keep about nine, um, which more or less was nearly a year’s supply, because there was different sizes, and then you know, we probably use a bit more beef than that, but there is, I think there’s the opportunity to probably rent land and finish them off, so we could start them off here, it would be nice to have, I mean I want to have all my own beef back again and be able to sell it, cause, it’s much more rewarding when you’ve, you have reared it, and it’s been all your own, it’s a different, I love cattle, I mean its in my, it’s, goes back too far, but err, we couldn’t do it before, as I say, cause the field needed fencing and it wasn’t our field, and we’re talking quite a lot of money to re-fence everything, whereas now it’s, I’ve inherited it, so I can actually, you know, be able to save up for the fence, so we can’t have a new fence, we’ll have to fence the field, you know, but that’s what it’s like all the time, you just think, oh I’ll do this and then you need a new mincer but you don’t mind if, if you’re growing and it’s, and there’s a, a, a goal at the end of it, and obviously, with children, it’s nice to think, possibly you know, at least one, might umm, cause he believes in it so much, he remembers, they, and they, they’re very aware of, of, err, the reality of growing up, and things going wrong, and I can remember James saying I hate this farm, I hate this farm, I can never understand, why did you and dad give up good jobs, because we had really good jobs, and both had a car, you know, umm, a professional wage each, you know, and that was the only reason we could start the farm, was because we’d saved all our money when we worked for other people, to buy the livestock and you know, put the buildings up, and err, I mean, I can particularly remember these sort of, they couldn’t understand why on earth we’d done it, you know, which is understandable, when they haven’t had what they want for their birthday or

 

2.448.  AW: So he’s enthusiastic now about farming, is he

 

2.449.  JB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and especially, knowing, you know, what’s in it, I’m not sure if he’d, I think he’d, especially he would be more interested in the marketing and, and, oh, oh, seeing somebody do more of the, like he does now, I don’t think, he’ll help when, when we need him, you know, if you’ve got to move pigs or something like that, but he’s not, he’s not out there everyday looking, different to me, when my, when my dad was farming I was the one who was up in the morning, doing the cattle, really into the animal side of it, umm, umm, but I think, you know

 

2.450.  AW: So you think he might, go into farming, but your

 

2.451.  JB: Yeah,yes

 

2.452.  AW: But you’re not quite sure

 

2.453.  JB: Not quite sure, I think he’d want it to stay it as it is, you know, with some help, and, make sure it’s all done, how it wants to be done, and you can’t, problem is, you can not do anything, yourself, and you’ve almost got this point, well we were in the point where the shop was starting to do well, and we couldn’t go anywhere, you couldn’t go, Sunday we’d close and try and catch up on everything, but you were working all day in the farm, then you’d going out into the farm, you’re our there in the dark, trying to do everything, and my husband and I, were just, were, we’re like zombies, you know, so you’d got to be, you’ve got to be big enough to be able to have some help, so that you can actually have a day off, or, a holiday even, you know, so it’s very difficult to get through that change over process

 

2.454.  AW: Okay, last question. What do you think, the, what do you think the, the publics image is of farmers

 

2.455.  JB: I think, err, especially after foot, tremendously sympathetic I think, generally, and, umm, pro-British, where everybody, I think, is very much, for, we’ll say everybody, there’s going to be a certain sector, that, probably, like I might say I don’t read certain things that don’t affect me, generally I think, we have the public on our side, and they want, they want quality, the want food, and they would rather have, one, well people say to us, they’d rather have a little bit less, but they know, where it is, it’s origins and it’s safe, because, you know, I wasn’t well off, but I was very concerned about my children and what we ate, and that’s what, sort of flicked us off, on, if you like

 

2.456.  AW: Do you think the public have a realistic image of farming and farmers

 

2.457.  JB: Umm, realistic, fairly realistic I think, I think, some of it is, it’s, it’s almost like a double, family farms they probably understand and can work with, when they see, very large estates, and very few people, and probably big shooting parties, and all the posh cars, and, that, I think that’s, that does us a, because they tend to almost slot you into that box, and I was at a farmers market one day, and umm, I’ve got a little broacher showing where I supply, and umm, I was showing the lady the photograph of me doing the black-pudding, and umm, talking about it

 

2.458.  AW: Did you make that leaflet yourself

 

2.459.  JB: It was, it was just, just a, one of those folders, you slip the things in and I took, like cuttings, I had Helen Peacock come out, and, cause she wanted, to be sure I made this black pudding, come out and watch me make it, and then she went to several restaurants, I mean, she had it in a restaurant, that’s how she knew about it, and err, there was this article, and it showed the different restaurants we supplied, and there’s this one Fallowfield Country House Which is a, and this lady, sort of, [huffing sounds from JB], she was very nice and then she said, oh you don’t live in that big house do you, you know, and so obviously, suddenly she, almost changed because, it was, and I said to her, no, I said, we, we just supply them, you know, but it, you’ve got this problem which, can almost divide people, of, you know, the very rich land owners, gentry, gentlemen farmers and, you know, the good guys and the bad guys almost, and I think when they, see a programme perhaps, on the television, of somebody’s, that’s had thousands and thousands and thousands in subsidies, and they’re rolling around and their kids all go to private schools, and their children can’t, and this is something I feel quite strongly about, you know, it’s, err, if you’re lucky and you can go to one, and you can earn the money, and you go out, it’s no good people quibbling about things and then, driving around in two posh cars and sending their children, it doesn’t do us any good at all, because that’s such a small percentage, you know, you, it’s a double, double sided really I think, so, sympathy’s of the, to the working farmer and extra-ordinary, and the people will go, you know, and help for them, they want you to, umm, they want you to do well, they’re really please, like customers of ours, that have been with us from the very beginning, they say, oh well you’ve worked so hard, you deserve this, you know, Jane, go and have a holiday, you know, when my mum died and things like that, I had cards from them and, tremendous, really, they become, they’re not just a customer, they’re not just a customer, they’re not the general public, they’re, we’re, the people, like people you work with, they become your friends and your, you know, community

 

2.460.  AW: And you, and you have that direct contact with them

 

2.461.  JB: Oh

 

2.462.  AW: Farmers markets

 

2.463.  JB: Yeah, yeah

 

2.464.  AW: And the shop

 

2.465.  JB: And the shop, yeah, and I think, perhaps it’s something that used to be there years ago, you see, and it’s, it’s gone, that’s again

 

2.466.  AW: And that, so that, that sounds very important to you

 

2.467.  JB: Oh, it is, it is, it’s very important, and I think umm, it’s the whole, that’s why with the farmers markets, I feel it’s important, that they’re kept within the town centres, as much as possible, because although it might be as difficult as can be and it might, be not very environmental friendly having all these, vehicles come in, and you don’t want them parking there, we’ve got to make the product safe, and you’ve got to be able to ensure that it’s kept safe, so if we could keep vehicles on site, that’s the absolute, most important, we can’t always do that, because of certain laws, but we need to be in the centre of the towns to try and, you know, this whole community and the local issues I think it’s, it’s all, part of, it’s all part of the same thing isn’t it really, umm, and again, like that’s where, you’re going to get the support from people if they, we’re all the same, at the end of the day, we’re all only people aren’t we, we all come in the same and g out the same, so, that’s where you get your support I think, yes, is that it

2.468.  AW: Yeah, yup

 

2.469.  JB: That’s about my feelings

 

2.470.  AW: Yes

 

2.471.  JB: I get a bit carried away

 

2.472.  AW: It’s fine

 

2.473.  JB: They laugh at me because, when I meet people and they come into the shop, and umm, they’ll say, oh, why do you do this, and I say, don’t, and James is going to go, don’t ask mum, she’ll go off on a trip, you know, because, I think most thinks we’ve done, we’ve really believed in what we’re doing it, and err, well everything, and, like, if it’s making sausages for coeliacs  or, if you love sausages and you’re not allowed to have a sausage with flour, you know, so it’s really, really nice, if you make those things and if, if you’re going to make them, you might as well make something special and something nice, you know, but I drive everybody mad, because they think, oh God, Janes come in the shop, this customers going to be here for half an hour and we haven’t served them, you know, they’re trying to serve them and I’m yapping on about, how I made the pate or something, you know

 

2.474.  AW: But that sounds very important to you the customer relationship and

 

2.475.  JB: Oh it, it is, because I think, well it’s everything isn’t it, if, if you’ve no faith in each other whether you’re a buyer or a seller, and, and customer and it’s the same with us with our feed rep., or, that, I was brought up in that sort of um, well I suppose it’s caring about each other, a bit in’ it, really, you know, you’ve, you’ve some old lady had rang up for coal and she couldn’t afford it, dad would take it regardless and he’d know that, you know, that she would pay them when she could, or whatever, and that, something, and my granny when she had the shop, you know, you grow, you, I grow up in very much a, a local environment, and umm, you know sadly, once you’d got supermarkets all the village shops closed and there were about four in this village, in Hanney, in Hanney, at least, yeah, about four, and there’s one community shop now, you know, sadly I used to do a lot in there, and everyday go in and take meat, but I don’t have time anymore, I just can’t do it, and so I don’t do that job as well as I’d like, umm, you know, then of course, you’ve got you own family, and mum and dads ill and using, and that’s when it becomes hard because you’re still trying to, do all these jobs, and you can’t service everything as good as you’d like to, but, I do think it’s, I do think it’s one of the most important things we do in life really, we’ve lost, that’s what’s lost and that’s why everybody’s running round falling out with one another and, community, isn’t it really, so, maybe we, you know with the farmers markets and all those things and the social structures, that’s why I think somebody like Suzy Olenshlarger, who’s working in Oxford County Council, I mean, she’s tha only one I know really well, there’s lots of other ladies working on all, and men, working on different things, like how people on Beansfield could perhaps, benefit from, more local food, it’s a big issue, I mean, I, I fell that’s more than what Ben Gill says to me, that’s more important, that I perhaps, even if I only have time to read the newsletter and what they’ve done, umm, maybe it’s nothing, it doesn’t affect me, but it might be something one day that I meet somebody that, you know that’s more important, I think, before we loose it completely

 

2.476.  AW: Okay, great, thank-you

 

2.477.  JB: I’m sorry, I do rabbit on

 

2.478.  AW: No you don’t, no, that’s very valuable what you’ve

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