As another voice actor does a bunk in the night, is he watching them all with the eyeeeeeee .... of the TIGER? Bring back Matt unadulterated to The Archers NOW.

[PseudoBadger]

This is too much for me now. I need to meditate.

Oh yes! They could live in a caravan in the stables and then the sale at the other end will fall through and they'll be left with nothing at all! Divine retribution for being so bloody greedy!

How attached to the herd will the Dopeys be?
It would seem to make more sense to get rid of the herd, move up north so you can be on site to oversee the newbuild and then get a replacement herd. Or, even, buy a farm with the equipment already there since everybody else seems to be getting out of dairy.

Strange my year 9 son and all his mates say'oh my days' all the time, so the SW are definitely down with the kids!
Surely 'completion' means legally they are out, but what if they complete on the sale butt not at the purchase of HH...they will be technically homeless and will be joining our list of homeless refugees in the tent on Alan's garden....

It could all go pear shaped at that stage quite easily JE will want them out no question.

...and yes, Pip was really dreadful tonight I cannot bear her voice/attitude etc, old pip was bad enough, but she was a really bad choice of actor

Something I was wondering is how much it costs to transport all those cows to the other end of England compared to sending the existing ones to slaughter and buying a new gang once you've arrived at the new farm (and built the parlour). What is the shelf-life of a dairy cow anyway?

Definitely better to transport them! 200 ish cows worth at least 1200 each = £240K. Transport, probably 25 - 30 cows on a big artic stock wagon, so 4 - 6 loads, plus young stock, I would guess maybe £6k to £8k (and I do mean guess, it's a while since we've transported any cattle very far, so I can't remember actual figures.)

You would never slaughter them to replace them up north anyway, they are worth more sold as milking cows. But it would be unlikely anyone would sell their established herd in one county to buy another elsewhere. You would be bringing in all sorts of unknowns in terms of disease, the dreaded TB being the main one, but there are several others. The only reason to do it would be a complete change of cow type to suit a different system (going from intensive Holsteins to grass based cross breds, for example).

I need to listen to tonight's again, trying to listen when the kids are in the bath is tricky!

the plan is to complete on brookfield and HH, then start the building work so it is ready for the cows 3 months after completion. so they need to stay at brookfield with the cows for 3 months

NewPip is dreadful. Is she SOC's niece or something? Her acting is so hammy and she can't maintain an accent. And she sounds older than ruth at times

NewPip sounded less alto tonight and as her accent wanders around I didn't know who I was listening to at first...until the hectoring about the dairy started up again. To me she's probably the naffest replacement they've made.

I don't think the writers are down with the kids at all. I can't imagine any 21 plus year olds banging on about Feebs chatting to a random lad on Facebook as happened at the NYE party, it's all about snapchat and Instagram as FB is absolutely not cool. Nor can I imagine them saying 'oh my days'. Year 9 maybe, older than that not so much.

Surely not even the Dopeys cold seriously think that JE will just let them have the use of £7.5 million whilst he twiddled his thumbs for 3 months or more? Even if he was inclined to, he would know that he has them by the short and curlies and would charge them an absolute fortune in rent. I'm not sure there's any other viable solution either. It would be slightly more sensible to try to delay completion and get a bridging loan to buy HH and start the building works, but the interest on that would be totally eye-watering.

Could it be that the collapse of the Brookfield ridiculousness is going to be brought about not by sink holes, not by the brown hair butterfly, not by discovery of JE's dodgy past, but by the Dopeys' arrant stupidity?

Surely 'completion' means legally they are out, but what if they complete on the sale

You can complete a sale but agree an arrangement that the sellers can stay on. Could be on licence basis (which I'm using in the Scottish sense of being a rent free permission withdrawable at any time) or a short - term lease. I'm not sure of English agricultural leasing but under Scots Law it'd be a pain due to technical issues the landlord can't contract out of.

The buyer might also suggest a substantial retention to be held by the solicitors until the Dopeys had gone.

If JE is using loan funds there isn't a cat's chance in hell of this being acceptable to his lender.

Re Pip, accent and indeed gender are so random I think they are using several actors.

I can't imagine that JE would have a loan when he's offering £7m instead of £1.5m or £2m or whatever Rodways were talking about. Surely any lender would insist that he doesn't pay massively above the asking price?

It's all about leverage. He will be getting as big a loan as he can. I think the final valuation was £5m.

New pip also ranges in age. Terrible radio acting. She needs to be told!!! Confirms soc is dishonest because his reason for recasting clearly had nothing to do with lack if ability in the old and outstanding talent in the new

So whose daughter do we think the Pip apology for an actress is?

Depends on the amount of the loan, not impossible. The lender only needs to get the loan funds back. And Rodways valued it around £4.5 - £5 million.

Also as good farmland tends to be more in demand than supply his price will have the effect of upping MV generally if and when a lender had to resell.

Thought I might get away with it tonight - but I seem to gave posted on auto-pilot a long time ago today.

So - BOOP for Ed going straight to his Dad with the awful problem.

The rest was horrible.

I feel sorry for the actress who plays pip. She clearly needs some lessons in radio acting but a a graduate of lamda they obviously feel that is sufficient. Her interview on the archers bbc website just read like a propaganda piece

I can't decide if soc has got out of his depth and underestimated radio acting/drama but it does feel like he's taking the piss

Perhaps the 'old' Pip didn't want to come back, do we know for certain that she was sacked and replaced as Tom was? The new actress has got Pips rudeness and entitlement nailed, and without the whine and that rather wired breathiness, but her accent, or should I say accents is really odd.

Really passed off about more problems for Ed, why always him?

The Ed farm land rental story is sad. That poor couple. But at least they've finally mentioned the drop in price of milk.

n.b. This was always on my radar as someone who buys local as much as I can, but thanks to dairyfarmerswife I am now clued up on what is genuinely British dairy. (Wondering if buying Rachel's or Yeo organic guarentees this anyway)

Phaedra, you say they are using several pips. You do mean in the same sentence, right?

Milk prices was top story on the r4 news this morning wasn't it (or did I dream that)

Whilst I feel for ed an Emma I wish they would go and visit the sodding benefits office! I hate the way they seem to think the ed actor does despair and hopelessness so well they must heap bad things onto his shoulders

I have become obsessive about checking whether my milk is British. And yesterday I went to Lidl and didn't buy milk because they pay so badly (according to another thread on here).

Poor Ed - I was really hopeful that things were turning a corner for him and Emma but it was very short-lived :(

The time for Ed to say something about his farm rent was when Emma rented The Green. This seems like a quick bolt-on to acknowledge falling milk prices when it should be the Brookfield family who take this into account when dreaming of milking parlours.

This is the charity we need!

Yes, I wondered that about the toys - most of our stuff was handed down, particularly the farm toys.

(I would weed out the lead-painted bits from my father's generation these days.)

Emma surprised ed with the house so it would have been harder (but not impossible) for him to say that it would be difficult to afford

Re the toys, I assume they have some purpose appearing now - perhaps to show that david can't engage with the process of moving from his childhood home as it's too painful?