2011 was a unsteady year for the farm – certainly it's least productive. It ended with a cornerstone of the whole project, Liz Tate, leaving us for pastures new.
We'll miss her and her positive attitude a great deal – as well as her family – but I think she's doing the right thing for them and wish them all the best of luck. I'm a little jealous!
I haven't been able to spend as much time on the project myself either, and with no practical work to be done it's been difficult to keep everyone interested. Selling an idea that conjures up completely the wrong image without explanation, isn't easy for pulling in new blood either.
It's save to say, money is tight for everyone at the moment. Oddly, there seems to still be huge chunks of money blowing around, but mid-size grants have all but dried up. There's been a change in attitude of grant type too.
Before, they loved 'new projects', or whatever you could persuade them was new (I will write about the dubious world of grants one day), but now the serious money is only interested in existing projects and organisations – proven success and supposedly safe hands.
We could probably get a grant for this typing I'm doing, or any of the other ten jobs I have to do for the project this month, but, quite frankly, folk doing that is the problem.
We've spent a few months going back over the plans and cutting wherever we can, but it's a basic fact: no matter how we do it, just to make the site suitable for visitors will cost at least £50,000. You then have up to 10 years of growth towards the farm as it stands in those plans we flashed around – costing at least another £200,000. Every year we don't have the profitable sides of the project in place, the running costs will have to be found as well – around £50,000 a year. We won't go into the land costs that begin it all either, as that'll be covered much more in the future.
That can look a little daunting, but when you see what we can do with that amount and how much is spent by others for their projects, it's quite cheap.
I say we've been cutting plans, but actually a new direction has opened up, which we may talk about next time. How much more investment will be needed for this though, is another matter – and perhaps more importantly, we have no one with the skills to really take it on. But what's new?
The year is new, that's what, and these plans won't happen unless we get on with it. So here's hoping it really is a happier and more productive year for those working on the farm, those now elsewhere, and for all of you.
Jamie
