21st May 2025
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guy smith
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26th March 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: Survival of the fittest
One of the main winter distractions that punctuated my farm day was patrolling oilseed rape crops for pigeons. The daily routine of checking gas bangers while persecuting the blue menace with aerial bombardments from rockets…
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18th December 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: En marche
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11th October 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: Of naturists and naturalists
Being a coastal farm brings benefits and burdens – it means you get more wind and less rain as storm clouds rush to the magnetic attraction of the sea. So in September, while the English…
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21st September 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: Behold the flatliners
It’s a pensive moment to be writing in CPM magazine on its 25th birthday – a quarter of a century is a notable passage of time. It used to be the definition of ‘a generation’…
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15th August 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: St. Margarets field under new holy orders
Harvest 2024 is erased from the fields but probably not from the memory, for all the wrong reasons. The record wet that fell in both the autumn and winter left its scars – cereals don’t like…
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24th July 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: A PTSD-conditioned harvest
I once read that to claim to have lived a full farming life, a farmer should see first-hand at least fifty harvests. I’d guess I’m far from alone in that given I was handed harvest…
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19th June 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: 1966 and all that
I’ve never been one to get over excited about elections, but when they do come around, I usually summon up the energy to troop to St Osyth village hall to put my pencilled mark against…
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14th May 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: No mow May
There’s a hint of irony in the fact that just as ‘no mow May’ becomes the height of fashion among the Chelsea Flower show set, arable farmers across the land will be out more than…
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11th April 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: Gone completely cuckoo
I’ll admit I’m not a huge believer in old weather sayings. I suspect it’s because as much as I’d treasure an accurate long-term weather forecast, I’ve yet to find one and that, in turn, causes…
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10th March 2024
Smith’s Soapbox: Perversity in places of power
Despite a few uplifting signs of spring such as an increase in birdsong and blossom in the hedgerows, there does seem to be a number of large black clouds threatening this year’s harvest that won’t go…