The chains beneath each of the dragons teeth, feed the cobs into the header.

The combine harvester unloading pipe fills the trailer with maize seed and it’s carted back to the grain drier. 

On his way home tonight my husband met someone relaying local gossip or opinion of this hard working man; who endeavours to keep a farming business afloat or heaven forbid, possibly even to make a profit one year in three, to re-invest in and future-proof the business for the next generation to take up the reigns, so they can continue to produce food and fuel like generations before them; what was the gist of that gossip? That he’s a money grabbing ******* 

That farmer is still down at the grain store now, at 11pm and hopefully should be home by 12.30am only to return there at 5am, whilst some of those charming locals (ha ha) will already have been home for a while and enjoyed a family meal; produced by a farmer.   

Why should most people striving to do well and reinvest in their own business be called entrepreneurial, whereas farmers who work tirelessly, undertaking stewardship of the countryside, producing the food we buy in shops and markets, food and bedding for horses, dogs and other pets, produce biofuels and industrial products such as rope, insulation and paint, plus many more products, are called something entirely different by a few small minded ignorant people.

Maybe those people who prefer to see farmers failing to succeed, should no longer have the hundreds of UK farmed products available to them, maybe it would make them happier soles in the knowledge that they aren’t paying the farmer for the products he has spent all year growing.

Farmers are producing milk and at times beef and grain below the cost of production.  Many have mixed farms and this can help to spread the risk across the products, whilst others adapt their business to add value to their product such as cheese making or charcuterie or opening a farm shop or other viable project dependent on many variants such as location, infrastructure, customers, a good business plan and financial backing. 

But that isn’t always the case, it’s not a case of one size fits all, every farm business is individual and often it’s a family run business reliant on family members working all hours or taking on extra jobs outside the farm.

If the alternatives are not there or every angle and opportunity has been tried or possibly failed or there’s no funding to establish that next diversification; the business often folds.  Hundreds of farmers leave the industry every year and not through lack of trying.  Are those small minded folk happy then, seeing a farmer go out of business rather than make a profit?

200 dairy farmers alone packed up in 2013 and more than 400 ceased farming in 2014.

It’s a strange world in which we live and reflects the dis-association with the land and the lack of value given to the myriad of products (many of us use and even take for granted); food, fibre, fuel and medicinal products derived from the land around us.....by farmers.   

We choose to work hard and breathe life into a living and working countryside with all the interlinking enterprises, employing skilled farm staff, veterinarians, agronomists, agricultural engineers, hedge-layers, contractors, hauliers, butchers and local professional services to name but a few and supplying local and National businesses with British produce.  

Farmers need to be self motivated and move with the times in order to succeed and quite literally that’s why EDG Matthews left his parent’s farm in Somerset to take on his first farm tenancy in Kent and was then prepared to move again when the tenancy of Manor Farm arose in 1935.  He had to adapt to farming during the war, whilst his sons adapted to new farm technology and then Laurence even more so by the 1980’s.

Fred saw the demise of dairy and pig farming here as these became unviable and latterly the egg production ceased.  Things have changed quite considerably since 1935 and through three generations, with an increased demand for farmers to produce ever more quantity from the same or in fact less land, as increasingly thousands of acres in Europe are managed specifically for wildlife rather than food production.

We are proud to continue this diversified mixed farm to ensure a thriving viable business which links and supports hundreds of rural jobs in Surrey. We wonder what the future of farming will be for the next generation, it certainly continues to be challenging, but all the time we can, we will continue to strive and reinvest our time in the future of farming and the Education of hundreds of visitors to the farm.