It’s been rather a busy summer! The time when the farm is most in need of labour – picking crops, delivering orders, planting & sowing new veggies, keeping on top of the endless weeds that grow rapidly once the summer rains turn up – is of course when it’s summer holidays, so those of us with kids have less time available to work just when more is needed. September is harvest month so we are working against the clock and the weather to bring in crops that need to be stored before the weather properly turns. The shallots are now in, but the last lot to be picked have suffered in the last week with wireworm attacks; pumpkins and squash are next on the list, as are potatoes and then beetroot in October. We are also pulling summer crops out of the polytunnels and getting them planted up with salads and other crops for winter. We also hope to have caught up with the weeds in the leeks in the next few weeks and get clovers down in bare rows and patches of soil, to keep them healthy over winter.
MEANWHILE, a friend pointed me towards a Rural Prosperity Fund administered by local authorities – this replaces the old EU-funder LEADER and RDPE funds, and offers Government-sourced match-funding of 40-50% for rural businesses to improve and expand their enterprises, while reducing their carbon footprint. Great, I thought; I need to put a shed/barn up to store my lovely Fordson Dexta tractor Ian we bought in the summer, funded by our fantastic backers on Crowdfunder; and to store our expected extra crops in. Local organic food saves food miles, has a lower carbon footprint than conventional produce reliant on artificial carbon-intensive fertilisers, plus a barn will offer space for events and courses, and will mean I can take on more staff to expand, so ticks all the boxes. Like many of these schemes however, I came across an expected minimum grant spend of £10,000 (the maximum grant offered is £315,000 to fund £750,000+ projects) – which would mean my project would be expected to cost a bare minimum of £20,000, so I will still need to find the £10,000+ myself as well as paying the £20,000+ upfront before claiming the grant back. For a micro farm business like myself, this is pretty unreachable unless I take out a loan – and with interest rates so high at the moment, is that really a sensible option? I always measure any cost in terms of salad bags, and the idea of simply growing so much extra salad to just pay the bank is distinctly unappealing and actually unworkable. It’s like a medieval tithe system, where the Laird gets the first 10% of the produce. In marginal businesses like farming and growing, the idea of taking on debt is extra risky and unsustainable – a bad harvest, pest attack or adverse weather on top of market forces means that predictability is not farming’s strong point. Realistically I have been looking at putting up a shed for £5,000-£10,000, and was hoping that the grant would cover half. We are able to use great local timber and craftsmen to help, and would do a lot of work ourselves, which saves on cost; but grants like this seem counter-intuitively to encourage spending money in perhaps not the best way, and not saving it.
I contacted the team at the fund and asked if the minimum spend was set in stone – they implied that there is a notional minimum but it was not officially a minimum, so I was free to apply, but to bear in mind they would award grants to those businesses that make the ‘most difference’, ie cost more. I am of course biased and feel like businesses like my own make a huge difference, but that will be hard to show on paper if facing competition from large companies with a turnover of millions, who have finance staff who can spend the time calculating how many extra staff they can employ with a grant, how many tons of carbon they will save and so on. The deadline is next Friday 22nd September, so my choice is whether to spend my evenings and nights filling in the forms and spreadsheets this weed, trying to work out how to put my financial information in a format which is acceptable and on par with those large companies who have to file accounts with Companies House etc – with a very unlikely outcome of being awarded a grant based on the feedback from the team adminstering the fund – or saving my precious time and energy. It seems another example of how if you are big enough, you get money offered to you more easily than if you are small and if more need of finance in the first place in order to grow. I also know of organisations who spend their time chasing grants and make it part of their business model, but is that sustainable? Hearing about Government subsidies for TATA steel and others does not help my mood. The grumpy farmer stereotype is strong with me today!
Grown Green @ Hartley Farm 