Cumbria Grassland Society

On Thursday night, Sandra, Michael, Kevin Batty and I went to Penrith Golf club to do a presentation at the Grassland Society’s AGM.

The night started when we joined the committee members for an informal meal - this was a great chance to get to know some of the members better and also meet new faces.

Richard Chester who was chairing the meeting began the proceedings. Once the AGM was finished there was a discussion about ‘interesting speakers’ for forthcoming meetings – this put a huge amount of pressure on Sandra and Michael to make their talk on tax a little more fun and interesting!

Sandra discussed what the firm does; how David started off 14 years ago in his garage and the latest tax issues including Renewable Energy Tax and VAT. Michael spoke about dairy benchmarking and then Kevin finished off with a brief talk on available grants, NVZ’s and the initial announcement on SFP changes from 2014.

The audience asked many questions during the presentation and then afterwards over coffee and biscuits on a more informal basis.

We all had an enjoyable evening. It gave us a great opportunity to meet new farmers, new contacts and to catch up with people we hadn’t spoken to in a while.

Emma Pigg