Despite the weather, I think this is a fantastic time of year – but not everyone agrees…
Thats it, summers over…
Next bank holiday is Christmas day…
The weathers just going to get colder and wetter from now on…
A group of mums I know, actually went out for a celebration freedom-regained breakfast on the first day of term, celebrating that at last the kids were back at school
If you want to be pessimistic, thats fine, but it doesnt do for me. Because I trained as a farm manager back in nineteen hundred and frozen to death, I see this time of year as the start of something new and exciting.
In East Anglia, the cereal harvest is virtually complete, potatoes and onions are being lifted and the sugar beet wont be long after that. And next years crops are being sown, with diligent tractor-drivers turning the scruffy post-harvest patchwork into a neatly brushed landscape of ploughed and cultivated fields. Its the start of the new season and whilst many, like me, find it exciting, quite a few find it a little daunting!
Arable farmers have a tough time. They spend all year planning, nurturing and investing in their crops, and then have a mad couple of months to try and collect the fruits of their labours. Its then a case of trying to sell this bounty for as high a price as possible
In my college days, we used to say that a farmers income was dictated by the quality of his land, influenced by the vagaries of international politics and the weather and he cant change any of them! The bit we missed out was the farmers skill, and the quality of the help he got from agronomists and his other advisers.
Other industries are not so different. Our profits are governed by the quality of our staff and our raw materials and the quality of our management. I suppose the big difference is that we have more control over some of them.
With the farmer, once the seed is in the ground, the maximum yield potential has been set his role from that point is to prevent external influences from reducing it too far: pests, diseases, hostile weather, nutrient imbalances and so on.
In other industries, at least we have the chance to change things during the whole year we can train our staff, we can get help and advice for ourselves and we can improve the marketing of our products to our customers.
So yes, of course we must do the best with what weve got, but if we want to really achieve something, we also need to grasp the opportunities that come our way as well.
So, is your glass half-full or half-empty? I do remember an engineer offering a third option, Its not that the glass is half-full or half-empty youre missing the point; obviously the glass was just made too big in the first place.