Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

Generali

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I've had some nice Cornish wines, in the Isles of Scilly.

There's some reasonably good English wine out there. It tends to be very expensive for the quality of wine you're getting IME.

Davesnave

silvercar wrote: »

You mean you get paid to cut your hedges:eek:

No. There is no financial incentive to be neat & tidy. The wildlife benefits anyway.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'd like to get paid to not do things. If I could find a good list of 100 things that I was paid £60 each time I didn't do them, that'd be worth £6,000/year. Nice (non) work if you can get it.

I'm not sure but think its more like £12. Another reason its better value for big farms.....£12 times a few hundred acres is considerably better than twelve times a couple of acres.


We're also still dithering over whether to go soil assosiation or not..for which there is also a small payment...not sure what.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

I'm not sure but think its more like £12. Another reason its better value for big farms.....£12 times a few hundred acres is considerably better than twelve times a couple of acres.


We're also still dithering over whether to go soil assosiation or not..for which there is also a small payment...not sure what.

At £12/acre .... that's not a bad ROI if you just go out and buy roadside fields with hedges How much is a random acre of cheap field these days?

neverdespairgirl

Depends. About £4k to £6 in the SE.

tomterm8

PasturesNew wrote: »

At £12/acre .... that's not a bad ROI if you just go out and buy roadside fields with hedges How much is a random acre of cheap field these days?

Er... it's a crap investment. Particularly since it comes with bazillions of forms.

But it is very good for his nobbs the Prince of Wales, or the Duke of Cornwall. You know, the historical land owning class, who get the money on thousands of acres they then rent out to people who farm the land, on condition they don't actually do anything with it.

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

Er... it's a crap investment. Particularly since it comes with bazillions of forms.

But it is very good for his nobbs the Prince of Wales, or the Duke of Cornwall. You know, the historical land owning class, who get the money on thousands of acres they then rent out to people who farm the land, on condition they don't actually do anything with it.

I agree with this. We wanted more land with our place and there was to-ing and fro-ing til the completion. The price per acre locally was high enough that the interest repayment was not covered by the highest acheivable letting price for grassland. Not surprisingly, we failed to get funding in the 24 window we were offered the land within.....while off line we had this whole drama and almost pulled out of purchase over it because the vendors were behaving so very, very badly over this and our lenders agricultural dept were being really helpful but couldn't make the figures work...in the end it went to a farmer come commodities guy.....who sees pound signs in out pricing the other farmers locally over his lifetime. Its kind of what the rental market bear shouters say about BTL here, apart from on a massive scale, both financially and over time....there will be no rapid return on the purchase and it has to be cash funded or small funding to make any reason of it.

The rpa and defra forms are a PITA because there is a lot to do for a tiny job and some big stuff has no associated paper work. We're had a DEFRA inspection AND and RPA inspection this year..both done ''randomly''.


Road side hedges require MORE expense because you usually HAVE to cut them everyyear roadside for ''traffice saftey'' reasons. You then have all other costs which on a big scale are smaller...water metres, harrowing, cutting etc etc etc.

PasturesNew

Get goats

lostinrates

On thursday I noted the ''smell of death'' again, this time in the garden room. Have JUST managed to find the source.....a dead hedgehog, squashed behind the radiator ....yuck. And I thought I'd noticed more slugs ...we've had very few up until last week....

tomterm8

PasturesNew wrote: »

Get goats

Very expensive money pit. I'd say goats are the second most expensive animal you can have, after horses. And with horses it is often possible to get your money back.

Basic economics: in order to have the animals, you need to fence them, and goats are very good escape animals. They need serious fencing. On top of the 4k an acre, you are looking at maybe 1k or more for fencing an acre, plus feed, plus all the time...

Honestly, can't think of any activity that is more guaranteed to work at a loss.