Jerry Flake factors out a tractor’s big rear wheel as he hoists a hay bale the scale of a Ford Focus into place – it’s a maybe shocking instance of the knife-edge on which most of the nation’s 185,000 family-run farms now discover themselves.

An already perilous state of affairs that has worsened since Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ tax-raising autumn Finances….

“After all, these giant tyres look strong however we’re farming with flint within the soil right here, so we’re fortunate if a tyre like that lasts a single season,” says Jerry, 67.

At a hefty £1,500 a pop, the frequent tyre replacements add to his household’s mounting payments. And there are six tractors on their 1,000-acre arable, sheep and beef enterprise throughout the South Downs Nationwide Park.

However the enticing rolling panorama could be expensively misleading.

For right here, “England’s inexperienced and nice land” is of relatively poorer high quality.

Jerry provides: “The soil right here is lower than 6in deep and beneath that’s unforgiving chalk.” In order that porous bedrock makes ploughing a fragile course of.

His spouse Jenny then sums up the state of affairs for the holding, which has been in the identical household since 1901: “Fairly merely, the farm isn’t worthwhile.”

Her childless brother Trevor Passmore died of most cancers in 2017 on the age of 67, leaving the farm in two shares to Jenny and to his nephew Andrew.

Jenny, now 70, continues: “Andrew was aged 22, so it was a really massive resolution for him to make.

“However he had all the time wished to farm and lambed his first lamb when he was three. Somebody stated, ‘Ought to that little one be there?’ I regarded round, and there was Andrew lambing a ewe.”

For Andrew, the farm was a shock inheritance which additionally got here with the money owed of earlier generations, that had been nonetheless being rigorously managed.

He calls it “a poisoned chalice. It’s residence and we’re the custodians of it, however because the farmer you might be on the backside of the record.

“Above you might be all of the household you help, then the employees and the companies that depend on you. The animals are bought at market and we help native butchers, tractor sellers, mechanics, vets, engineers, corn retailers and grain sellers, and quite a few self-employed individuals and small enterprises.”

The broader household now farms it collectively however, though Andrew works for as much as 120 hours per week, “breaking even” on the land and livestock is all that the present three generations can hope for.

Jenny provides: “It’s a lifestyle and sustains a whole household however years in the past we needed to diversify to outlive.”

She is the matriarchal mastermind behind Coombes Farm which is neglected at its easterly edge by the 90ft-high flying buttresses of Lancing Faculty chapel which could be seen from miles round.

Jenny explains her view on the farm: “We don’t take a look at the land as having a money worth – its worth is immaterial. What we wish to do is be capable of cross it on.”

In 1979, Jenny knew the farm needed to diversify to allow it to outlive, amid larger operating prices than ever.

Open farm days in earlier years had seen as much as 10,000 guests. She continues: “I’m fourth era and we used to make use of 22 full-time employees in my grandfather’s day.

“Now we battle to pay one individual full-time. We have now two part-time employees together with a 16-year-old apprentice.”

Therefore it’s the farm’s excursions, open lambing, annual maize maze, tenting, venue rent and agricultural contracting that collectively create the household’s earnings.The latest 12 months of open lambing resulted in 20,000 guests flocking down the muddy lane to the farm. That progress has continued with the help of volunteers.

Jenny says proudly: “We’re a working farm that opens, not a play farm. We discuss all the things truthfully and we present farming because it actually is.

“Not too long ago, I had two non-verbal kids visiting who spoke for the primary time whereas they had been right here.” One was a disabled teen, the opposite was a refugee.

“This little boy had come from a village the place all the things had been destroyed and his household had been killed.

“He had been put in London away from all that was acquainted and was not talking a phrase. However he began speaking to our lambs in his personal language.

“A farm is far greater than the land that it’s standing on,” she provides. Andrew concurs: “My grandad used to say that we’re custodians of the land for the subsequent era.”

The household are united in wanting their very own subsequent era to have the choice to proceed – that’s Connie, 5; James, three; Humphrey, one, and six-year-old cousin Jack, the son of Andrew’s sister Pamela, 32.

However even the redoubtable Jenny is having sleepless nights over the Authorities’s latest monetary thunderbolt of creating some farms answerable for inheritance tax for the primary time. It’s a extremely controversial measure, and the Each day Categorical is operating a campaign known as Save Britain’s Household Farms to attempt to have it dropped.

Andrew says: “Mum has labored her complete life for one thing that shall be misplaced when she passes on. It’s a laborious image to speak about.”

Jenny explains: “Once I die, Andrew must promote a portion of the farm to pay the inheritance tax due on my share. It would solely simply be viable for him to proceed with the farm after promoting to pay that.

“However when Andrew dies, below the brand new guidelines it merely won’t be viable for the subsequent era – and the farm must be bought.” The farm’s location within the costly South-East of England – the place land values are excessive – implies that as soon as the dying duties are paid there won’t be sufficient of the farm left over to farm.

Jenny continues: “As soon as a farm is gone, it’s gone endlessly. Folks maintain saying that I ought to depart my share in belief to Andrew now, however it’s important to survive seven years to cross on property positioned in belief, after which the place would I reside?”

For she would then be legally required to pay market lease on her farm cottage reverse the gorgeous Tudor farmhouse the place Andrew lives together with his spouse Gussie Harmer, 27, and their kids.

Andrew would then should pay tax on the earnings – however Jenny and Jerry should not have the cash. Like the vast majority of household farmers, they’re asset wealthy and money poor.

Jenny says: “When Trevor died of most cancers, we did all the things appropriately to make sure the way forward for the farm, however we will’t pivot this quick and what occurs if there are additional modifications?” She believes that the Authorities is failing to think about the affect of its Finances modifications on different members of the family:

“When somebody dies and a home is bought, it may be left in equal parts to the kids. However when you find yourself passing down a farm issues have to be made truthful for different family members, like my daughter Pamela.

“You may’t promote the farm to do that as a result of it is usually a food-production enterprise, so it’s already an advanced state of affairs which the Authorities has failed to understand.” Andrew says he has by no means seen his inspirational mum so involved concerning the sudden change in her household’s outlook.

It comes at a degree in her life when she may need moderately anticipated to be trying with satisfaction at a lifetime of laborious graft that made the farm all it’s, together with being a useful resource the place individuals within the area can study farming and the agricultural lifestyle.

Says Jenny: “It genuinely issues me what will occur sooner or later.

“It’s so changeable. We try to plan to do the appropriate factor. Andrew might have chosen a unique life if he knew this was going to occur, nevertheless it’s now too late for him to make new plans.”

The household’s fundamental herd is pedigree Sussex beef cattle, famend for high-quality meat and a peaceful temperament.

However on a latest blustery afternoon Andrew was utilizing a JCB agricultural fork-lift telehandler to unfold barley straw bedding in a barn for the shiny, darkish, cocoa-coloured Angus cross calves that had been introduced into the farm for the spring. They had been quickly busy exploring for tasty barley heads to crunch to complement their weight loss plan.

Close by, Charollais lambs – “common with native butchers for being leaner and with extra meat on the animal”, Jerry says – had been being fattened up over the winter within the heat sweet-smelling barn.

Chickens and dealing canines had been busy within the yard on my go to, as a responsible spaniel sprinted by with a stolen pheasant gripped in its jaws.

Younger Connie identified: “They grasp on this line earlier than we will eat them.”

Jerry says of his younger grandchildren, who he scoops up for images: “Farm kids have unbelievable frequent sense.”

The kids are sixth era of their father Andrew’s household, and seventh-generation farmers on their mom’s aspect – Gussie additionally farms her close by household holding.

Gussie provides defiantly: “The Authorities have focused the improper bracket. Farms are excessive turnover and low revenue, and we’re on the mercy of the climate and world occasions – most lately Brexit after which the battle in Ukraine which has had a knock-on impact on fertiliser and gasoline prices.

“The minimal wage has additionally been upped in addition to nationwide insurance coverage, so this had already made it harder to make use of employees. Now some vital subsidies have been pulled in a single day and we’re left in limbo. We don’t know what to place within the floor…”

A number of members of the family joined the latest tractor rally in London as farmers tried to impress upon the Authorities simply how dire their state of affairs is.

It took them three hours to get there at a high velocity of 30mph.

Jerry remembers: “We had been in a convoy of 30 Sussex tractors from our space, and there have been 650 tractors in all in central London. It was crucial to be there.”

Andrew sums up the household view: “It ought to be everybody’s proper to recent, high quality produce that has been produced regionally to excessive requirements – however the Authorities has pulled the grass from below our toes.”