The Flake household, who run Coombes Farm in Lancing, West Sussex. Jenny and Jerry, proper (Picture: Adam Gerrard / Every day Specific)
Jerry Flake factors out a tractor’s big rear wheel as he hoists a hay bale the dimensions of a Ford Focus into place – it’s a maybe stunning instance of the knife-edge on which lots of the nation’s 185,000 family-run farms now discover themselves.
An already perilous state of affairs that has worsened since Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ tax-raising autumn Price range….
“After all, these massive tyres look sturdy however we’re farming with flint within the soil right here, so we’re fortunate if a tyre like that lasts a single season,” says Jerry, 67.
At a hefty £1,500 a pop, the frequent tyre replacements add to his household’s mounting payments. And there are six tractors on their 1,000-acre arable, sheep and beef enterprise throughout the South Downs Nationwide Park.
However the enticing rolling panorama may be expensively misleading.
For right here, “England’s inexperienced and nice land” is of slightly poorer high quality.
Jerry provides: “The soil right here is lower than 6in deep and beneath that’s unforgiving chalk.” In order that porous bedrock makes ploughing a fragile course of.
His spouse Jenny then sums up the state of affairs for the holding, which has been in the identical household since 1901: “Fairly merely, the farm shouldn’t be worthwhile.”
Her childless brother Trevor Passmore died of most cancers in 2017 on the age of 67, leaving the farm in two shares to Jenny and to his nephew Andrew.
Jenny, now 70, continues: “Andrew was aged 22, so it was a really large resolution for him to make.
“However he had at all times needed to farm and lambed his first lamb when he was three. Somebody mentioned, ‘Ought to that little one be there?’ I seemed round, and there was Andrew lambing a ewe.”
For Andrew, the farm was a shock inheritance which additionally got here with the money owed of earlier generations, that had been nonetheless being rigorously managed.
Jenny Flake and her son Andrew (Picture: Adam Gerrard / Every day Specific)
He calls it “a poisoned chalice. It’s dwelling and we’re the custodians of it, however because the farmer you might be on the backside of the checklist.
“Above you might be all of the household you help, then the employees and the companies that depend on you. The animals are offered at market and we help native butchers, tractor sellers, mechanics, vets, engineers, corn retailers and grain sellers, and quite a few self-employed individuals and small enterprises.”
The broader household now farms it collectively however, though Andrew works for as much as 120 hours every week, “breaking even” on the land and livestock is all that the present three generations can hope for.
Jenny provides: “It’s a lifestyle and sustains a complete household however years in the past we needed to diversify to outlive.”
She is the matriarchal mastermind behind Coombes Farm which is neglected at its easterly edge by the 90ft-high flying buttresses of Lancing Faculty chapel which may be seen from miles round.
Jenny explains her view on the farm: “We don’t have a look at the land as having a money worth – its worth is immaterial. What we need to do is be capable to cross it on.”
In 1979, Jenny knew the farm needed to diversify to allow it to outlive, amid higher working prices than ever.
Open farm days in earlier years had seen as much as 10,000 guests. She continues: “I’m fourth technology and we used to make use of 22 full-time staff in my grandfather’s day.
“Now we battle to pay one particular person full-time. We now have two part-time staff together with a 16-year-old apprentice.”
Therefore it’s the farm’s excursions, open lambing, annual maize maze, tenting, venue rent and agricultural contracting that collectively create the household’s earnings.The newest 12 months of open lambing resulted in 20,000 guests flocking down the muddy lane to the farm. That progress has continued with the help of volunteers.
The Flake household at Whitehall protest towards the Chancellor’s inheritance tax raid in November (Picture: Flake Household)
Jenny says proudly: “We’re a working farm that opens, not a play farm. We speak about every little thing actually and we present farming because it actually is.
“Just lately, I had two non-verbal youngsters visiting who spoke for the primary time whereas they had been right here.” One was a disabled teen, the opposite was a refugee.
“This little boy had come from a village the place every little thing had been destroyed and his household had been killed.
“He had been put in London away from all that was acquainted and was not talking a phrase. However he began speaking to our lambs in his personal language.
“A farm is way greater than the land that it’s standing on,” she provides. Andrew concurs: “My grandad used to say that we’re custodians of the land for the subsequent technology.”
The household are united in wanting their very own subsequent technology to have the choice to proceed – that’s Connie, 5; James, three; Humphrey, one, and six-year-old cousin Jack, the son of Andrew’s sister Pamela, 32.
However even the redoubtable Jenny is having sleepless nights over the Authorities’s latest monetary thunderbolt of creating some farms answerable for inheritance tax for the primary time. It’s a extremely controversial measure, and the Every day Specific is working a campaign known as Save Britain’s Household Farms to try to have it dropped.
Andrew says: “Mum has labored her entire life for one thing that will likely be misplaced when she passes on. It’s a laborious image to speak about.”
Jenny explains: “Once I die, Andrew should promote a portion of the farm to pay the inheritance tax due on my share. It can solely simply be viable for him to proceed with the farm after promoting to pay that.
“However when Andrew dies, beneath the brand new guidelines it merely won’t be viable for the subsequent technology – and the farm should be offered.” The farm’s location within the costly South-East of England – the place land values are excessive – signifies that as soon as the loss of life duties are paid there won’t be sufficient of the farm left over to farm.
Jenny continues: “As soon as a farm is gone, it’s gone endlessly. Folks maintain saying that I ought to go away my share in belief to Andrew now, however it’s important to survive seven years to cross on belongings positioned in belief, after which the place would I stay?”
For she would then be legally required to pay market lease on her farm cottage reverse the gorgeous Tudor farmhouse the place Andrew lives along with his spouse Gussie Harmer, 27, and their youngsters.
Andrew would then need to pay tax on the earnings – however Jenny and Jerry shouldn’t have the cash. Like the vast majority of household farmers, they’re asset wealthy and money poor.
Jenny says: “When Trevor died of most cancers, we did every little thing appropriately to make sure the way forward for the farm, however we will’t pivot this quick and what occurs if there are additional modifications?” She believes that the Authorities is failing to contemplate the influence of its Price range modifications on different members of the family:
“When somebody dies and a home is offered, it may be left in equal parts to the youngsters. However when you find yourself passing down a farm issues should be made honest for different family members, like my daughter Pamela.
“You may’t promote the farm to do that as a result of it’s also a food-production enterprise, so it’s already a sophisticated state of affairs which the Authorities has failed to understand.” Andrew says he has by no means seen his inspirational mum so involved in regards to the sudden change in her household’s outlook.
Andrew and Pamela as kids on Coombes Farm in West Sussex (Picture: West Sussex Gazette)
It comes at a degree in her life when she may need moderately anticipated to be trying with pleasure at a lifetime of laborious graft that made the farm all it’s, together with being a useful resource the place individuals within the area can find out about farming and the agricultural lifestyle.
Says Jenny: “It genuinely considerations me what’s going to occur sooner or later.
“It’s so changeable. We try to plan to do the appropriate factor. Andrew could have chosen a distinct life if he knew this was going to occur, nevertheless it’s now too late for him to make new plans.”
The household’s important herd is pedigree Sussex beef cattle, famend for high-quality meat and a relaxed temperament.
However on a latest blustery afternoon Andrew was utilizing a JCB agricultural fork-lift telehandler to unfold barley straw bedding in a barn for the shiny, darkish, cocoa-coloured Angus cross calves that had been introduced into the farm for the spring. They had been quickly busy exploring for tasty barley heads to crunch to complement their eating regimen.
Close by, Charollais lambs – “well-liked with native butchers for being leaner and with extra meat on the animal”, Jerry says – had been being fattened up over the winter within the heat sweet-smelling barn.
Chickens and dealing canine had been busy within the yard on my go to, as a responsible spaniel sprinted by with a stolen pheasant gripped in its jaws.
Younger Connie identified: “They hold on this line earlier than we will eat them.”
Jerry says of his younger grandchildren, who he scoops up for images: “Farm youngsters have unimaginable frequent sense.”
The children are sixth technology of their father Andrew’s household, and seventh-generation farmers on their mom’s aspect – Gussie additionally farms her close by household holding.
Andrew Flake with daughter Connie, 5, on their household farm (Picture: Adam Gerrard / Every day Specific)
Gussie provides defiantly: “The Authorities have focused the improper bracket. Farms are excessive turnover and low revenue, and we’re on the mercy of the climate and world occasions – most not too long ago Brexit after which the struggle in Ukraine which has had a knock-on impact on fertiliser and gasoline prices.
“The minimal wage has additionally been upped in addition to nationwide insurance coverage, so this had already made it tougher to make use of staff. Now some necessary subsidies have been pulled in a single day and we’re left in limbo. We don’t know what to place within the floor…”
A number of members of the family joined the latest tractor rally in London as farmers tried to impress upon the Authorities simply how dire their state of affairs is.
It took them three hours to get there at a prime velocity of 30mph.
Jerry recollects: “We had been in a convoy of 30 Sussex tractors from our space, and there have been 650 tractors in all in central London. It was essential to be there.”
Andrew sums up the household view: “It ought to be everybody’s proper to recent, high quality produce that has been produced regionally to excessive requirements – however the Authorities has pulled the grass from beneath our toes.”
