It’s always great to get in a new magazine from the printer and today was no exception. The only problem is by the time you know the things you would have liked to put in it if you’d known them at the time it’s too late and they’ll have to wait for the next magazine when you’ll have exactly the same thoughts. The great thing about a blog, though, is that you can jump ahead and air them anyway!

So what would I have included if I’d had the foresight? Well the first thing is probably the selling off of the woodland, which I’d hoped was our heritage. I underuse it myself as it’s mostly the bit next to my house that I take advantage of when walking the dog each morning, but I’d like to take advantage of many more areas of woodland at different times in the future. I know we’ve got to pay of an immense chunk of public debt over the next few years and, although I’m by no means a deficit-denier (I actually dislike this term a lot as it attempts to link the belief with the infinitely more serious act of holocaust denier) I do feel that everything comes down to priorities when making sacrifices.

My real fear links the proposal to sell woodland with the far less emotive (because they’re often misunderstood) propoals on bio-diverstiy off-setting. Effectively if you wish to do some environmental damage in one space you have to have a second space where you can show how you’ve done some good to off-set your other more heinous activity. We have the same ‘get out of jail’ card with pollution where somebody with the ready cash can go to someone with less cash and buy their right to pollute, at least to some extent. It’s slightly different with bio-diversity but again it comes down to spilling something somewhere but rather than wiping up your spillage where it happened you wipe up another spillage of your choice somewhere else. I’m damned if I can get into the spirit of it.

Another issue seemingly taking the country by storm is the contentious issue of micro pigs. For anyone who doesn’t know what they are they are best described as a cross between Barbie and a piglet with a dash of living on a wing and a prayer, the latter because you never know if yours is the one that’s going to be a half ton boar in six months time. The real issue though is not the possible inconvenience for the owner but rather the thought that a pig can be raised like a dog or a cat. The Department of the Environment, Forestry and Rural Affairs state that pigs are classed as livestock and require not just registration but strict dietary consideration and when you hear of someone keeping a pig in a flat and feeding it sausages you realise that something is wrong. Piglets are cute, as are pups and kittens, but the similarity ends there. Dogs and cats do not potentially carry disease which could wipe out the nation’s farm livestock and, with very rare exceptions, their probable eventual size is known. In spite of that we have many rejected dogs and cats to be re-housed and now it seems that the same problem is arising with non-micro micro pigs.

I’m going to end for now with a simple request, though, and it’s one which Ruth, my partner, occasionally grumbles about. She makes jams, marmalade and chutneys and collects any jars she can lay her hands on, and most are OK. There are, however, a small number with labels you just cannot remove, which makes tham a second-rate candidate for re-using. Surely it is better to re-use these jars than to have them broken up and recycled after depositing them in a bottle bank. The recycling process has got to be a greater waste of energy than washing them and filling them again. So all we need to do is ask that all labels are easily removed and, if successful, then in our own little way we’ll have made a difference. There must be hundreds or even thousands of similar but really easy ways to achieve these small changes to the way we do things, but added up they could make a major difference. If I termed them as ‘off-setting’ then perhaps I could even drive a few more miles every week without feeling so bad, too!

Let me know of any simple suggestions you have for making another small step in the right direction. If we get enough then there might be a feature with credits in a future Home Farmer and the makings of a fine campaign the next time government feels like collecting our suggestions.

A warm welcome to my first words on the Home Farmer Editor’s Blog. My name is Paul Melnyczuk (call me Paul, for obvious reasons) and together with my wife Ruth we’ve been responsible for Home Farmer since its inception. Since December of last year I’ve taken on the editorial responsibilities and responsibility is the critical word here. I’ve met many of you at shows up and down the country and spoken to even more of you on the phone and the one thing that is clear is that Home Farmer is viewed by you as a good friend dropping in for a bit of a chat each month. That’s fantastic as far as I’m concerned; I couldn’t ask for a nicer or kinder description of the magazine. What this does do, however, is make me aware that, as a guest in your house, there is a need to keep to the original reasons why Home farmer is so welcomed. We are a good and entertaining read which hopefully leaves you with a few good ideas, some great recipes, some useful information and a broad smile. As such there is no real room for personal opinions, although it’s impossible to keep them entirely to yourself when it comes to proposals for dairy cattle units designed to keep the animals indoors for their entire life or experimental GM chickens designed to resist bird flu when the best way of achieving this is good husbandry!

Just like a friend at the dinner table, the topics are agreeable and pleasant, leaving everybody content and quite at home. A blog, however, is what develops when most of the guests have gone home and just a few remain at the table with a good bottle of wine and a desire to provoke a little thought on subjects close to the heart and mind. Opinions are no longer taboo but are now essential to fuel the banter into the early hours of the morning. It’s not always cosy, but it feels good and the relationship between the participants is more profound.

To give you a basic idea of who I am I’ll throw in a few details. I have aspirations to own a little land and to produce Home Farmer from a converted office just a few yards from my house in view of a couple of goats, some chickens, a few raised beds and perhaps a polytunnel if the space is there. But that’s a little way off. At present we live in a reasonable semi on the edge of a wood with the company of three chickens, a number of raised beds and a West Highland terrier. I and my wife Ruth (now publisher to my editor) are both passionate about what we can achieve from this limited scenario and intend to learn ever more so that when the aspiration becomes a reality we are prepared. We are home farmers in all respects. We produce what we can at home and turn it into food, looking for ever more imaginative ways to do so, with our kitchen now taking on increasingly ambitious projects, many which we hope to share with you when they have proved their worth. We’re not self-sufficient and probably never will be but each time we find something that takes us a little closer to that mystical goal we try to incorporate it into our routine. We find it satisfying, fun and it’s also part of our work, so we are very happy.

We don’t know evrything and never will. Consequently we have surrounded ourselves at Home Farmer with people who collectively know a heck of a lot, although even they will admit that they don’t know it all. If you don’t have an inquisitive mind and space set aside to learn more you will ineitably ‘come a cropper.’ We include many of the things that we need or want to know because we are no different from the readers of Home Farmer, and that’s the way it should be. It’s like the good old days when the footballers drank in the same local as the fans.

What I do find, however, is that as editor of Home Farmer I am a target for much information from many different sources. Some of these sources are very polarised and opinionated and others perhaps a little too corporate for the home farmer in me. I can occasionally deal with the more important issues in the news section of Home Farmer but as a snippet of information so that anyone interested can then do their own research online or wherever they might choose. They are then free to form their own opinion or simply to move on to the next item.

Recently I have been following events in Lincolnshire and the proposal for a dairy plant to house 3770 cattle permanently indoors; proposals for a pig unit containing up to 25,000 pigs at any one time with opposition to the facility being fought using libel proceedings which describe the ‘concerns’ as ‘defamatory; proposals for GM chickens designed to resist disease (it must be less costly than good husbandry) and I have learnt that the UK permits the use of neonicotinoids which heve been shown to be a possible cause of colony collapse disorder in bees. The latter, a chemical I only heard of for the first time a few days ago, was apparently found to be a danger by someone in the bee research unit in the US some two years ago, but the information remained buried until it was recently leaked by someone in the US Agriculture Dept. and it is now the subject of an early day motion in the UK parliament which seeks to ban its use in the UK in line with a number of other European countries. Given that some believe our demise would rapidly follow the demise of the bee population it seems like a worthy cause for support. I keyed in ‘nicotinoids early day…..’ and it took me straight to a UK parliament site which gave me the chance to give my views. You might wish to do the same. If it saves the future of mankind it will be time well spent!

These are a few of the recent things which have made me more than a little angry. They offend my own view of natural justice, but other things I find are just annoying, but that’s often just me. But it’s not all bad news. I like good food and enjoy watching the TV in the evenings; last night I enjoyed ‘Hustle’ and ‘QI’ and it’s probably as important in giving a round and balanced view to mention these things too. I also watched a DVD called ‘The Infidel’ and that was good fun too, with a simple but good message of harmony between religions woven cleverly into a madcap and occasionally frantic comedy. So let’s not get bogged down with just the bad things. We were given a bottle of Hendrick’s gin as a Christmas present and that’s worth a mention too as one of life’s goodies.

Now I’m in the Home Farmer office (the Old Pigsties) listening to squabbling politicians on Radio 4’s ‘Any Questions’ as Ruth and I put the finishing touches to March’s magazine and get the week’s remaining bits of admin out of the way. The magazine’s looking great with Terry Walton’s first article, self-sufficient dairying from the Tynes, recipes for pulses, crisps and also an article on making curds by Mel Sellings (aka the Jammy Bodger), Ben making orange wine, The Rutlands considering goats for their farm and Heidi Sands suggesting Highland cattle for the smallholding, Clare Beebe on the ever present threat of rats for the small scale chicken keeper and me extracting some advice from former Goodie and wildlife advocate Bill Oddie. If only the admin was quite as much fun!

It’s now just after 2.00pm and that’s probably enough to be going on with for the moment. If you come across my blog (and more importantly stick with it until this point!) then let me know where you stand on any of these matters. You might have been involved in the protests against Nocton Dairies’ plant in Lincolnshire or you might even be the MP sponsoring the Early Day Motion to ban the use of neonicotinoids. Then again you might just disgree with me on the subject of ‘The Infidel’ or you might just prefer Gordon’s to Hendrick’s. Perhaps you would feel safer in a world populated with disease resistant GM chickens, although if that was the case I’d be more than a little surprised, but I’d still be keen to hear your views on the matter.

Tomorrow it’s the plan to go to Formby and the beach with the Anthony Gormley metal statues for a long and liberating walk with Ruth and Suzi, our West Highland terrier. Incidentally, for anyone looking to get chickens in the garden but uncertain how the dog might deal with it, I can tell you that after an initial barking fest and a couple of circular runs round the garden, she has not even bothered with them. If she runs along the length of the garden yelping it is more likely a reaction to a squirrel on the fence and the chickens just let her get on with it, with at most an admonishing glance as they look up from their attempts to destroy our garden. It seems (to us anyway) that the only concern of a dog is that it remains ‘number 1 pet’ and as long as this remains apparent (ie. the chickens don’t come inside by the fire), the dog finds it acceptable.

Cheerio for the moment!