This is the second extract from Five Acres & A Cow. I had been asked to give a one-hour talk about the Rural Economy at the Stroud Energy Fair in July 2001 and took the Linnaeus line that Farms and Factories don’t mix economically…something which E.F. Schumacher realised. The basis of my talk was John Seymour’s discussion in the Fat of The Land of Cow Economics…and its obscurity. For example what does a cow eat? Grass all summer, and very little else which can be considered as free for the use of our three-acre grass field naturally comes in with our twenty-five pounds a year rent...although actually it is not as simple as all that. John Seymour takes up the tale.

In the winter Brownie must have hay, roots and concentrates. The concentrates we have to buy and that is that. They consist mainly of oats and groundnut cake. And I have to admit shamefacedly enough that I have no idea what this costs me. I get a bill from Jack Hewitt the miller about twice a year depending on how energetic he is feeling in the book-keeping way, it always shakes me to the foundations, but then I know that it includes not only the little bit of food I give to the cow but also pig food and poultry food. I made a rough jumbled stab at working out what the concentrates for brownie cost and after the most devious possible workings came up with about a tanner a day averaged out through the year…winter and summer. Then there is the hay.

I cut some rough hay with a scythe the first year in my field. That lasted me until Christmas and then I had to buy hay. The second year I cut half the field with Michael's tractor and that lasted me all that winter and half of next. This year I have had to buy all my hay…and I am feeding hay now even though it is high summer. This is because of the terrible drought last year (1959), the partial drought in the early part of this year (we have had floods of rain since - but too late), and the fact that I have ploughed half of my grass field up. I suppose that this year, for the cow and the pony I shall have spent by the time the winter is over some forty pounds on hay. But it is most unlikely that such a thing will ever happen again. Nothing but a malign miracle can make us ever have to buy hay again. Roots - we have always managed to grow nearly enough…either kale or fodder beet…to feed the cow. But up to this year - not quite. This year I think we will have enough, as we have a fine piece of fodder beet on The Hill.

So all in all, our milk has certainly not been free. I would put the cost of cow food, to date, at about twenty-five to thirty pounds a year. But this must be considered - it will get less year by year until we may get it down to very near nothing. There is no reason at all why one should not feed a cow - ay, and two cows - and a horse, off five acres of land, entirely, and keep up a good milk production. But first the land must be built up to a high state of fertility - and in doing that the cow plays the most important part.

Now what do we get from the cow? When she first calves…and if it is summer and the grass is green…she gives nearly 4 gallons of milk a day. She goes down towards the end of her lactation to perhaps 1½ gallons a day. For most of the time she is giving us from 2 to 3 gallons a day. Now no family of our size can drink 2½ gallons of milk a day. After all - that is 20 pints. So there are various other things that we do with it. We make all our own butter and most of our own cheese. Further - every living thing on the place except the horse benefits from Brownie's milk.

Our pigs thrive in a manner remarkable to our scientific-farmer neighbours. Our young birds thrive and grow into healthy stock by virtue of their share of whatever butter-milk, cheese-whey, milk that has been left about too long and gone bad, cream that has been forgotten and gone mouldy. Our cat and our dog benefit. And the humans benefit by having unlimited, good, untampered with, unpasteurized, unprocessed and unbuggared-about-with milk.

Before we had a cow our milk bill came to two pounds a week, and butter and cheese cost another ten shilling. This comes to £120 a year. So whatever the calculating book-keepers and the costive cost-accountants say and they say a lot (the farming press nowadays runs an unending holy crusade to persuade people against being self-supporting - they want to turn every farmer into a money-grubber pure and simple), we make a profit of at least £90 a year. The fact that we don't actually see the money makes no difference…we are spared having to spend it.

What else does Brownie give us? Well for one thing at least a calf a year. Now we know that non-pedigree Jersey calves are not very valuable. But here is our balance sheet. We have paid out £107 10s. for cattle. We have been paid £149 4s for cattle that we have sold. Thus we have made a profit of £41 14s on the buying and selling of cattle (and rearing of calves). Added to this we still have Brownie and she is at present giving us nearly 4 gallons a day. Her last calf born a fortnight ago just before Sally's latest baby proved alas a bad-doer and I knocked her on the head and her skin is drying for a floor mat and her meat is down in pickle in a large crock for feeding the pigs and fowls. Waste not, want not!

The size of the above sums is due to the fact that we bought another cow. One cow will not give you milk consistently all the year…year after year…so you need two. We sold her again though, being in need at the time both of grass and cash. And once, when we didn't have any pigs, we bought a beef calf, reared him, and sold him at a negligible profit. A poor deal by any standard...and another lesson not to try to swim in the commercial sea.