Farming Breeds: Gav – the Delboy farmer
Join us for a funny, irreverent look at some of the characters that make the British countryside what it is. Our tongue-in-cheek guide puts characters such as the retired Major, the “perfect” next-door farmer and the young tearaway under the microscope. Here we meet Gav, the Delboy farmer, who is is calmly and quietly generating income from 20 different sources.
Gavin is always busy.
He likes to think of himself as an entrepreneurial businessman with a radar-like ability to sniff out an opportunity. He has “projects” coming out of his ears – sometimes even literally made of ears (a recent foray into the Chinese export market for sautéed pigs’ ears).
The Delboy-type is the ultimate diversified, think-outside-the-box, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, have-a-go farmer.
Sometimes revered, sometimes sniffed at, Gav has a thick-skinned, undying optimism that sustains his “give-anything-a-go-once” mentality. One of his favourite expressions is: What’s the worst that can happen?
The worst, as pessimists would be quick to point out, is bankruptcy, but he doesn’t listen to the pessimists. He’s not going to get diverted. Not going to get dragged down to their level. Richard Branson wouldn’t have made his millions if he’d listened to the nay-sayers. Ditto Alan Sugar.
His other motto is “try everything once”. And if it doesn’t work, dust yourself down and pick yourself up. He routinely ignores his wife’s exasperated pleas for a simpler business model. “Oh, it’ll be awright, gal,” he reassures her.
He doesn’t listen to the pessimists. He’s not going to get diverted. Not going to get dragged down to their level. Richard Branson wouldn’t have made his millions if he’d listened to the nay-sayers. Ditto Alan Sugar.
Having started off with his parents’ pig farm, Gav soon saw other opportunities and diversified into horticulture, fondly becoming known locally as “Pigkin” (pig and pumpkin farmer).
Keen to get into the entertainments and events industry, he also resourcefully engineered “The Haunted Pig-Sty” at Halloween one year, complete with his fiercest pig wearing a ketchup-smeared pumpkin over its head (“that’ll be £3.50 to enter the sty”).
He cleverly rigged up a light-bulb in the pumpkin to give ferocious glowing eyes. Clever, that was, until the smell of burning bacon started wafting up from the sty. The NFU Mutual lady wasn’t very understanding. Neither was his wife.
Never one to be discouraged, “Pigkin” expanded further into the events sector. When his daughter Alice went off to Glastonbury, Gav started to wonder what a growing and niche market might be for festival goers. He quizzed her on her return. What was in big demand and low supply? Portaloos and “Shewees”, of course. Well, that was that. Twenty sleek loos arrived the following week and 50 boxes of Shewees (a discount batch from Ebay), and within the month they had been whisked off to the Big Chill Festival.
His ultimate talent, however, is his ability to come up with integrated and efficient farm management systems, creating income from many sources. It was this talent that resulted in Gav’s next genius venture.
He would start to grow potatoes. Then he would set-up a “farm camp” for eastern Europeans and green types who wanted a working farm holiday. These “agricultural tourists” would dig and peel his potatoes (no point in paying for machinery and fuel when you can get people to pay you to do it by hand). The potato peelings (and his pig muck) would then go into powering a state-of-the-art biodigester to sell energy to the National Grid. The peeled potatoes would get sold to the local chippies, and they would give Gav their used chip-fat to power a converted “eco-bus”, which would be hired out to corporations concerned about their CSR. Phew. Gav was elated. His wife exhausted. His children embarrassed.
But jokes aside (there are plenty in the pub), Gav feels a bit pleased with himself. Yes, he might be seen as a jack-of-all-trades and not a “proper” farmer, but he is calmly and quietly generating income from 20 different sources, future-proofing his business and helping to encourage a “green (and toilet) revolution”.
As Gav says: “Follow ya nose, and point ya nose to the future.”
Now, what was that he’d read on the internet about goat milk shampoo and electric cars?