Could you tell us just maybe a couple of the things that you did in your time on the program?

We've been trying to do things both before the program and during.

And I joined up with Vito, who's an ecologist as well.

So he kind of came from marine ecologists.

He had a lot of background.

And I suppose the advantage of that was it's there's a lot of value in someone with different expertise seeing your farm because you like everything and every day you get used to what you see or you're focused on maybe the production side so he came in and we had a look at kind of we have a stream going through the farm and there was an obstruction that would have stopped fish going back upstream to spawn It was just a little thing to kind of allow the river to flow its natural course.

And then we did a farm walk and Vito helped me do a tree survey looking at ash dieback and what might be coming as the ash dies out, what might... becoming instead.

Would that echo your experience, Brian? Would people expect, are they surprised when they hear about, as a beef farmer, your level of passion about the natural world? Or is it something that is kind of more understood?

it You mean he was the good influence?

No.

Well, Stephen had been involved in organics for years over in Brussels.

And my dad has always been nature, a nature appreciator and not squaring up ditches.

Loads of vague different kind of things.

I suppose they weren't really that fashionable to talk about.

So Grace Marr in the IOA, I think she used to hound him at the ploughing match every year and every year he'd be like, oh, maybe, and then he'd run away.

In Europe, the age is 40, so you're there.