You can’t have escaped the news of the devastating floods that are continuing to affect Somerset residents and farmers. The news clips struggle to convey the magnitude of the problem, but when, as a farmer, I saw farms completely underwater, farmhouse and all, it became painfully clear that they face a problem that eclipses anything we’ve seen locally in my lifetime, if ever.

Soon after the floods had begun to have a serious effect, my wife and I were due to attend a meal and night out organised by a group of like-minded farmers on twitter. For a variety of reasons, mainly transport related, we never made the meal, but I heard that they had a whip-round and raised a huge sum of money for the flooded farmers.

Having been unable to contribute on the night, I felt I wanted to do something to help out. At this point lots of farmers had started to offer Forage Aid, via the same network as had helped the Welsh farmers last year, but haulage was proving an issue. We don’t run a lorry in the business currently, but we do have a big high speed tractor and large low loader so I started to make enquiries about possible loads looking to go to Somerset that we might be able to take.

Initially we drew a blank as most loads were either too far from us to be realistic, or were full artic-lorry loads that didn’t want splitting up to fit our trailer size. A day or so later I spotted a Facebook post from a local farmer’s daughter, Georgina Haigh (who some of you may know as an Arable Reporter for Farmers Guardian) who was organising, on behalf of local young farmers (Wormleighton YFC), a series of loads to be sent down. I made contact with her and we discussed the options.

Initially it seemed that there wasn’t a suitable load ready so we were back to square one again, however twenty four hours later Georgina contacted me to say they had a possible load.

We both rushed around contacting the farmers who had so generously offered fodder, and made some tentative arrangements to collect the load and were just about to “pull the trigger” when word came through that Sedgemoor Market was full and loads were not wanted at that time, due to lack of cover for non-wrapped bales.

I won’t lie that I felt very deflated at this point as I was itching to get going. I contacted Georgina and we put the load “on ice”.

Later that day Georgina called me to say that because the load was mixed feed and bedding it could go straight to a farm and not disturb the, by now crammed, market at Sedgemoor. We were back on again!

I hastily prepared the tractor and trailer, and began checking out the route on the internet, being mindful of road closures in Somerset. It was very frustrating knowing that a motorway route would be quick and easy, but (as I’m sure you all know) the law bans agricultural machines from motorways.

We made a call to our diesel and oil supplier, Red Horse Fuels in Warwickshire, to tell them about the trip and as a result they very generously donated a large amount of diesel towards the run. A big thank you to them!

One of the farms donating was very close so I fetched their donation on the Friday afternoon, saving a lot of time for Saturday – time I was going to need. (Below are photo’s of my first loads)

-  Part two to follow: “The Run”  -

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