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Yet again we have been blessed with a wet harvest time. This is a frustrating time for me because every day that it rains means that the quality of our crop is falling. The reason for this is that once the grain reaches maturity and then gets damp the seeds think that they should start to grow into plants. The shoots in the seeds start to form and this changes the make up of the grain. This is a particular problem in malt barley and milling wheat. To make malt they get the grains to germinate and then stop the process at a critical stage. this is a very specific process and if the grains have already gone past the dormant stage by getting wet in the field they have already germinated making the crop useless for the malting process and only fit for animal feed.
The wet weather has kept me in the office sat at my desk, I it is probably the most profitable place for me to be, but I don't really like it too much I'd rather be out getting dirty somewhere! I have been working on a whole estate plan since Christmas and we are now at a consultation stage. We have gone through and carried out an audit of what we have and what we do with the estate, now we are trying to find out what we need to have to go forward over the next 30 - 40 years. We are finding this out by asking people what they think. I have done some work with our directors to get their thoughts. Carter Jonas our agents helped me carry out a feedback session with some of the industry stake holders like natural England, and the AONB board, and we are currently running a survey in the local community. The aim of this survey is to find out what the people who use the rights of way the views on the estate as part of their lives feel about the estate and its management.
Once the consultation period is over we will then be able to make some plans that reflect a greater proportion of the wants and desires of those who use the estate rather than just what a small group of directors think we should have. From the feedback that has been done so far I can see that there is quite a lot of overlap between all the different view points I'm hopeful that we can find the right balance that will allow the estate to go forward in synergy with the of the community so that we can all get what we want from this great and beautiful piece of land. The wonderful thing about synergy is that it is much more than a compromise, and it can be much much more beneficial to the community than that.
You can view more infomation about the whole estate plan process and take the survey here.
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