As a part time nurse married to a farmer, the wife and I are in very little danger of slipping into 40% tax or buying a second home in the South of France. However we do eat well – exceptionally well. If we had to put a dollar amount on all the organic beef, lamb and veg that as a family we consume it would probably look fairly scary.

A prime example is our Turkey this Xmas, which weighs in at an awesome 26lb and would have cost well in excess of £100 in one of the local farm shops.

Last Christmas, brother-in-law Jeremy had orders for only eighteen of his twenty Bronze Turkeys, and so we gave a home to the remaining two. The Bronze is the traditional American thanksgiving bird and has been bred up over the last 150 years from the original wild Turkeys of the mid west. As well as a magnificent plumage, it has the amazing trait of changing the colour of its skin when excited or distressed. Its head can change from deep blue to vivid red in literally a matter of seconds, and as you can imagine, this has been a source of endless fascination to family and visitors.

Unfortunately, late in the summer, the female made a secret nest for herself in one of the field hedges and refused to be put away at night. As any smallholder will tell you, its only a matter of time before a fox will claim any poultry left out and so it was the male was left on his own, with only a couple of muscovy ducks for company. He become quite cantankerous over the autumn and used to chase Churton (4½) round and round the cars in the yard, beating his wings menacingly on the concrete.

Normally, enlightening any child about the direct link between the animals on the farm and the meat on their plate can be a tricky business – however when informed that we would be eating the beast for Christmas dinner, Churton replied with a very curt “Good”

As a new-world renaissance farmer, there are many occasions that you find yourself saying - “If you had told me five years ago I would be doing this, I would never have believed you”

Well this week saw me and half a dozen of my peers, closeted in a small conference room, sticking small, pink, heart shaped post-it notes to flip charts. Yes - as many of you will guess - we were enjoying a training session. Presentation, Facilitation and Media was the subject, and all very strange it was too.

Why? – well post Foot & Mouth the government commissioned a report into the state of British agriculture. This was comprehensively compiled by Sir Don Curry and contained a host of recommendations for our industry. The central premise of these was that we need to ‘reconnect’ with our customers.

He was of course, absolutely right. Over the last 30 years we have tended to operate in isolation, distancing ourselves from the public, allowing processors and supermarkets to control the marketing between the gate and the plate, and leaving the tabloids dealing out nightmare PR.

So, ably assisted (or should that be facilitated) by the staff of Wren Media, we were learning how to make good impression, positive spin, and the art of fending awkward questions. Over the two days it emerged that simple technique will always win over simple honesty, and natural sincerity will struggle against the practiced speaker.

Being a cynic (or a theorist, as my tutor Janice kindly spun it), I could see that over the two days, the very methods we were learning were constantly being employed against us, and by the end of the sessions I was struggling to believe that we were all ‘fantastic people’ with ‘wonderful stories’  - regardless of how often we were told with maximum eye contact and fixated smiles.

Actually, all-in-all, it was a fascinating insight into the media, and in this Warholian society, where more and more of us know the heart thumping experience of having a microphone or TV camera thrust on one’s face, these were valuable lessons indeed.

“Who’s that on the phone dearest……Jeremy Paxman???” – bring it on!

A day that we both looked forward to with a certain amount of apprehension. Having killed and plucked two geese earlier in the year (see entry for 9th Oct), we knew that slaughtering and processing the remaining 17 would be no small task. However, we struck lucky with a phone call to fellow organic farmer - Martin Collinge.

Stephen Gelly Farm is on the edge of the Bodmin urbane fringe, and Martin has developed a very successful organic chicken business and has recently added a small-scale processing unit built in a couple of redundant stables.

Very kindly he allowed us to use his new facilities and the 17 geese, 3 ducks and 3 chickens were dispatched and plucked in an incredible 4 hours.

Our merry band consisted of
Martin – on electric stunner and sharp knife
Katherine – chief wing plucker
Des – on plucking machine
Wife Cathy – on blowtorch  
Me – assistant wingman and general dogsbody

Des and Katherine regularly help Martin with his chickens and without their very experienced help I don’t know where we would have been – probably still plucking now. They are the kind of country folk that restore your faith in human nature. They took to the task with a tireless enthusiasm, and quite honestly Cathy and I struggled to keep pace with them. Des and Katherine wouldn’t take a payment – “Just let us have some beef and lamb” and Martin wanted a ridiculously small sum.

So the geese are all done, we have some new friends, and we now know where to go for a regular supply of tasty organic free-range chickens. Martin’s farm is one of the many unsung heroes of the organic movement - quietly, and without fuss or fanfare, supplying local people with quality wholesome produce.

I was casually watching ‘Time Team’ the other evening. They were doing some work on a site close to Stone Henge and were discussing the relative importance of the winter and summer solstice in the Neolithic calendar. I have read and seen quite a bit of this debate, and am glad to see that despite seeming the less ‘sexy’ event, the weight of evidence seems to be pointing to the winter solstice

Common sense I say. Despite being a new-age, blog-writing, e-mailing, diversified landowner, there is still enough of the farmer in me to be very in tune with the weather and the seasons – it’s one of the nicest things about the job. And these first three weeks of December, when you are literally chasing the last strands of daylight each day in order to get the work done, mean that there is a real sense of relief when the corner is turned on the 21st and each day becomes a precious couple of minutes longer.

Of course the upside is that I can be in, bathed and out again in clean togs by 5.30pm, ready for the seasonal round of carol concerts and nativity plays – and with 5 children we certainly get our fair share. There are precious few opportunities to sing out loud in our modern existence, and quite honestly I relish the chance to belt out a few well-known carols, either huddled outside with frosted breath or on a rock hard pew in one of our magnificently gothic parish churches.