The Archers - It's Full Of Pants! Listeners are allegedly leaving in droves. Will Peggy also FOHMC?

[PseudoBadger]

She's got a whole calendar to use!

I think we should send the sw a map and also remind them there are other places in the world than Canada and South Africa and is it the Isle of Wight clarrie occasionally disappears to?

errol I agree re. Otto. I think Pat would want rid of Otto after such a traumatic accident.
I doubt another farmer would want him.
Although I suspect Tony will be a bit "it wasn't actually Otto's fault" about it.
Probably be quite tasty though if he were real.

Insurance might cover the loss anyway?

As for Rob. IME this again is not inconsistent with EA men it doesn't mean they have changed. People are not all bad or all good. and this is one of the reasons partners stay and/or are not believed. If they were a bastard all the time everyone would know and no one would end up with them in the first place. So good writing there I'd say. Especially if later there is an "after everything i've done for the family" come back.

DH and I were musing about insurance (IIRC Pat mentioned they were well insured)
Perhaps Moany will receive a large payout for his disabilities, will be suddenly and dramatically cured by the Ambridge Health Fairy and will then buy Brookfield or some other such nonsense

Re Brookfield, I think Justin E will outbid Brine (dum de dum de dum de dum) then it will be all angst from Rooth and Dave about whether to accept it. But then (at Christmas) Route B will be cancelled anyway (sink hole, spring), and all back to square 1. Maybe Heather will peg it and then there'd be no reason for them to move at all. Gill will cry over not having to leave her bees.

"I know they've heard from Tom since he went to Canada".

Really? I don't remember anyone on TA saying they've heard from Tom in the Brave New World across the Atlantic. But since I have the remembrance skills of a half-asleep goldfish, I may have missed this important fact.

Please could someone confirm that listeners have heard Tom's been in touch with Ambridge since he went away to do important sausage stuff in Saskatchewan?

I'm pretty sure Pa said something a while back about having heard from Tom that he's OK.
Maybe I'm wrong though and therefore it would be even more sinister because Rob really would be the only person who knows where he is!

Leaving aside the human tragedy, in purely financial terms the difference between Archers and Grundys is even more stark.

If Eddie or Ed were incapacitated for any length of time they would be in deep, deep trouble.

Tony is covered by the farm's accident insurance but probably also has life insurance or critical injury insurance. If there is still a mortgage then that could be paid off, labour hired and the farm continues.

Or Pat could sell up for close on what Brookfield is selling for because Bridge Farm it isn't getting a road through it* and, frankly, if she is keen to get rid of Otto then in her shoes I would be just as keen to get rid of the whole farm having lost a son and maybe a husband to it.

Which raises the interesting possibility of two Archer farms going on the market.

• I'm not sure if Bridge Farm is smaller than Brookfield or not.

I hate this storyline. Not bulls crushing farmers in itself but coming on top of John's death and the e-coli and Tony's heart attack it's just too much to heap on Bridge farm. I hate that Tony has been proven (in some eyes) to have made a mistake buying beef cows. I hate that it will blight poor Johnny's apprenticeship just when all was shaping up so well for him. The only thing that pleases me about it is that that old bag Peggy missed both her party and her hair appointment.

Would MUCH rather it had happened to David.

I hope you're right, Biscuit. Road nonsense over in the very near future, please!

BYOS, the Isle of Wight is far too exotic for Clarrie. Her sister Rosie lives in Great Yarmouth. Quite far enough for a Grundy to travel!

I like the farming background of TA and I've appreciated having several different types of agricultural enterprise going on in Ambridge.

1. Brookfield - classic small to medium-sized mixed farm, with various changes made over the decades. They now have a dairy herd, sheep and arable growing wheat, barley and potatoes (I think). They used to have pigs as well and it was a big deal when they decided to get out of that area (Phil loved the pigs). I think that was when Neil set up on his own (he was their pigman).

1. Bridge Farm - originally very like Brookfield. Then it went organic. They have branched out into using their milk to make yoghourt and cheese and they grow lots of vegetables. Cows (used to be dairy, now beef), pigs. Do they have sheep? I rather think not as I don't remember them talking about lambing.

1. Home Farm - huge farm, mostly arable, sheep on the higher ground, diversification in the form of the fishing lake, the riding course and the holiday cottages.

1. BL estate - huge swathes of arable, megadairy, shoot. Different from the first three because it's nobody's home so it's very obviously all about the money.

1. Small concerns - Neil's pigs, the little chicken business run by Neil/Hayley/Josh, the Grundy turkeys, Ed's little dairy herd.

It's probably not realistic to have two smallish farms continuing in business but I'd be really sorry to hear most of Ambridge converted to a megafarm.

If the Brookfield Archers and the Bridge Farm Archers both sell up and move on, the only Archer left in Ambridge would be Kenton

I suppose Helen & Henry as well, but only for the short term if Rob has his way. Unless I have forgotten someone?

Kenton and Helen would be the only ones with the Archer surname but there would still be Shula, Christine, Jennifer, Lilian and (very nearby) Elizabeth.

I don't think Tony's beef cows have been a mistake. The accident didn't happen because he bought the herd, it happened because he agreed to look after his daughter's small boy (because he is too scared to say no to her) and then entrusted Henry to Johnny's care because however much progress Johnny might be making in farming he has virtually zero experience (not having grown up on on a farm) and didn't have the sense to realise that small children and bulls don't mix. In fact Bridge Farm is the only farm where this accident could have happened as they are the only farm with a bull. There have been various farming accidents over the years involving tractors, sheep, cows and horses (didn't Brian once suffer a brain injury which the Ambridge fairy then magicked away?) which must be pretty much par for the course if you look at statistics (hesitates to use word in case it revives actuarial discussions ) All in all much more believable in the context than a bypass decision made in a matter of weeks and all the ramifications therof.

Mimsy nice summary of the different farm types there. Of course Home Farm also has deer, which I always think of as a very interesting diversification. Perhaps Brine could have been gored by a stag instead of Ton being squashed by a bull?

I agree, Lillian. We have our radio alarm set to come on at 5.50 (yes, I know) so we hear a snatch of Farming Today as we wake. This morning a chap from the HSE was talking about Tony's accident, specifically referring to the difficulty of keeping children safe when the farm is their home as well as the family business workplace. He also said most accidents involving farm workers and cattle happened to people over 60.

I imagine the HSE have had a big role in scripting this accident, given the interesting blog on the R4 webpage which Zero linked to above - written by a senior person at the HSE.

Of course, the deer! Thanks, Jessie. I can never imagine what Home Farm looks like given the huge variety of stuff they do. I suppose most of it is very large, flat fields but in one corner there must be a bit that isn't suitable for large-scale arable so they have sheep there. Deer in a partially wooded area? You'd need some clear ground so that Adam can shoot them easily. I suppose the riding course and the lake must have been on poor soil areas. They set up all those extra businesses up something like 20 years ago when the EU was throwing money at farmers to try to get them to stop producing food that nobody was going to eat. Some of it was justified as environmentally beneficial too.

Agree Lillian - I don't think Tony's beef cows have been a mistake, although it may be construed by others that it has.

Surely Brookfield have a bull for their suckler herd? I know they (Ruth) AIs the dairy cows, but wouldn't it be a bit of a faff during the spring / summer / autumn months to AI the beef herd cows. The logistics of gathering the relevant cow into a crush into the field, getting all the AI paraphenalia up to whatever field they're in - I really can't see it. They must surely have a bull.

The accident could just have easily happened when Bridge Farm had a dairy herd - as I mentioned upthread, in all likelihood they would have hired a bull for a couple of months on occasions to 'catch' the cows which should be in-calf but weren't. Unless they had a ruthless culling policy, which I can't believe they did - they'd give their cows one last chance I'm sure.

By the way, I know I don't so much need an Overinfested emoticon as a full body tattoo!

Re the Home Farm deer: there has been much talk of losing the contracting work but not much mention of the deer. According to an article I read yesterday, venison sales in the year to Aug 2014 were up 413% on the previous year (oops more statistics!). There's been no mention of this by Adam et al.
Apparently the supermarkets made a push on venison burgers, sausages and meatballs which has snowballed into increased sales of prime cuts too.

Have the deer been mentioned lately? Sw have probably quietly forgotten them

If ed had been crushed surely he would have been covers by the bridge dark insurance too?

Talking of the magic health fairy what other examples are there

I seem to recall a big hoohar about Hayley needing ivf but bit being able to get it because Roy had phoebe. But then it seemed to fizzle out and she had Abbie not long after rather than years of infertility/trying to save up and the stresses that brings

There was a close thing with a Brookfield bull a few years ago, but the animal was never mentioned before or since.
If Otto is more than 3 years old, he'll be pet food not burgers as BSE regulations say beef must be from animals under 36 months.

Yes Errol "You'd have thought someone would've rung Tom".

You also would've thought someone would mention that Tony had a heart attack 'not that long ago'. Like Olivia and I said.

Yeah I mentioned the absence of Tom too. It's like he doesn't even exist. Surely Peggy would be wailing about him needing to know?!

Have the deer been mentioned lately?

We did have that strange conversation the other day where Adam wanted the quad bike for deering purposes but Brian had mislaid the key. What was that all about? - a public information film about how annoying it is for your colleagues when things aren't Where They Should Be or a pointer to Brine losing his marbles?

Well the sw have a long standing record of 'out of sight out of mind'

Totally unrealistic that bone of them have been in contact with Tom. Surely new Tom is about to arrive.

Won't be listening tonight as I suspect a Brookfield episode which I just can't bear so let me know of anything interesting happens non Brookfield related!!!

I'm trying to find out about age limits for the slaughter of beef cattle for the human food chain - there are a lot of archived documents, but difficult to find the up-to-date rules. I've found this though:

In November 2005, the ban on cattle aged over thirty months (OTM) from entering the food chain was replaced with BSE testing of all OTM cattle entering the food chain.

In January 2009, the age threshold at which cattle had to be tested for BSE was increased from 30 months to 48 months.

The latest change would mean that almost all healthy cattle slaughtered for human consumption will not have to be tested until the age of 72 months.

It comes from FSA news and updates

So Otto would be tested for BSE if he's over 72 months, but otherwise not.

If I see any beef farmer people while I'm out and about today, I'll check with them