01/06/2026
We only keep going with help from family, friends and customers giving us physical and emotional support week in, week out. Seeing the comments on the Farmer’s Choir winning Britain’s Got Talent gives us some hope that farmers are valued by people that matter, we just hope that some of this gets through to the people in power…
🚜🎶 Following on from the Hawkstone Choir success story and an article in the Sunday Times written by Jeremy Clarkson back in February that has been reshared in our group - we are still seeking a full reversal of APR and BPR changes by this government or the next and here’s some of the reasons why…
The Government, particularly the Treasury, likes to push the idea that farmers are wealthy land barons — in it for the money and sitting on vast fortunes.
After spending considerable time both farming and campaigning, I can tell you that simply isn’t true.
Sure, I’ve met some very successful farmers on this journey. Almost without exception, I’ve found them to be kind, supportive and genuinely passionate about giving back to an industry they love.
I don’t often focus on our own farm. This page is an outlet for many farming families, but it’s the story I know best. My son is now the seventh generation and our farm has been carved up by death and taxes before, rebuilt every time through hard graft and someone in each generation refusing to quit.
What really needs talking about is the unpaid labour that keeps family farms alive.
Most farms will have their own version of it. Second jobs, side businesses and extra enterprises all funnelling back to the one constant: the farm.
Not building vast wealth. Quite the opposite.
Simply subsidising farming and food production through whatever means necessary to keep things moving forward for the next generation.
For us, one of those unpaid heroes is my brother — “the apprentice” as he calls himself. A bricklayer by trade and our right-hand man the rest of the time.
So let’s talk wages.
A couple of beers. A BBQ. A game of Uno with a really nice view and reliable dog sitters for when he wants to go motorbiking…
That’s about it.
Along with a shared determination to leave my son, an only child, with a viable business so he doesn’t spend the first 25 years of his working life playing catch-up.
That’s the bit the Treasury can’t seem to grasp.
Most farms don’t have teams of 10, 50 or 100 people generating profits for the owner. We’re price takers, not price makers. Margins are tight, costs keep rising, and there often isn’t enough left to employ all the help you’d like.
So family fills the gap.
Brothers. Sisters. Parents. Grandparents. Children.
All keeping the wheels turning.
That’s why inheritance tax worries so many farming families. Not because they’re protecting vast wealth, but because they’re trying to keep that cycle moving forward.
Break that cycle and you don’t just lose farms.
You lose generations of hard work, food production, rural communities and the hope that the next generation can carry on where the last one left off.
Its quite unnatural for us to have to justify our existence. Farmers aren’t people who usually ask for help. We were quietly getting on with the job. While I agree that as an industry we must become more proactive, innovation is expensive in time and resources and things have changed at an alarming rate.
The support from the wider public has been tremendous, and we’re incredibly grateful for it. Yet now, more than ever, anyone who wants to see British farming survive needs to make their voice heard.
Because once family farms are gone, they’re not coming back.
📸 a smile from ‘the apprentice’ after a bank holiday weekend fencing in 30 degree heat - that’s the reality!
