Great excitement this week as we took delivery of a brand new pick-up. We had planned to drive to the dealers on Thursday after school so we could all go and take it for a spin into Launceston for a celebration fish & chips. However due to a cock-up at the garage it didn’t have a tax disc and so arrived here on the farm on Friday - as our American cousins would say, “A day late and a dollar short”. Why…well having delivered the truck to the farm a day late the salesman then managed to leave with the keys in his pocket – leaving us with large & shiny (but useless) object in the middle of the yard!

This has a powerful diesel engine and so marks a change in policy for us. All of the other vehicles on the farm (with the exception of the tractor) run on LPG. Our commitment to this more environment friendly and cheaper fuel meant that the last two 4X4s that we had purchased had been powered by very large petrol engines. The technology to convert diesels to LPG has not been successfully developed yet and so large gas guzzling V6s and V8s were our only option.

Having several years ago bought a lemon of a Shogun off of our local garage forecourt, I decided last time to buy a V8 landrover direct from the army surplus. Both of these vehicles, once converted, cost me over 5 grand and both kept my local mechanic in gainful employment for nearly a decade - and in the end, I suspect, enabled him to take a once in a lifetime trip to Australia. Both were terrible false economies - and when at the last MOT my freshly tanned mechanic announced that the landrover chassis was rotting away and would not pass another, I determined to get a new vehicle next time.

The landrover only actually achieved around 10 mpg, and while very nippy actually proved to be a poor towing vehicle indeed – struggling to pull our livestock trailer up the local hills. So I reasoned a diesel with claims of around 30 mpg would be a better prospect for both the farm and the environment. Anyway – I thought – now I can look into these much talked about Bio fuels with their oft quoted benefits to farming and mankind.

However, a little research soon reveals that commercial Bio Fuel, “which offers dramatic environmental benefits” is actually a mixture of 95% fossil fuel and only 5% plant based fuel. Worse still comes when you discover that 85% of the emissions saved within your 5% are actually lost during the agricultural production of the oil seed rape. So the net savings of greenhouse gases is actually 0.75% – hardly what you would call dramatic.

No – without doubt – the best course for the fight against global warming, the best way of minimising the fuel bills, the best way of keeping up the resale value and keeping down the maintenance cost, is to leave the truck in it’s new home, under the barn, and only use it when absolutely necessary. Yeah right…. “Dearest, we’re nearly out of milk – me and the kids will just slip down the village and get some”