Farm Update - September 2022

Wow, what a summer that has been … managing the school holidays childcare, motoring through harvest, launching a new business, and keeping everything alive (including ourselves 😂)! But we've done it and we can now take stock, breath, and get ourselves organised again. We hope summer has been a great one for you all and you've managed to enjoy the glorious weather. 

Harvest 

Harvest 2022 is done, and we can't quite believe it?! As we've referenced before, the hot weather we've experienced this summer has brought us many challenges, but it made harvest one of the most straight forward we have had in a long time. We were able to motor through the arable crops, get them in the shed, and get them sold, finishing harvest in record time. What a relief. 

All of the barley made the quality for malting, but sadly the oats were only suitable for animal feed. Our biggest issue this year was been some premature rain catching some straw that was literally being baled at that precise moment. Annoyingly it is still down on the ground, and we are waiting for a sustained dry period to enable us to bale it. It may be that the weather is never quite right to enable us to do this, in which case we will chop and spread the straw across the fields, helping to improve soil structure. Whilst this isn't ideal (as we'd rather have the straw in the barn!) all is not lost either. 

Cattle

The cattle remain outside enjoying our lovely river meadows. They are still being fed silage to supplement the lack of grass, but thanks to the recent rain we are starting to see a little bit of green poke through!  We have been keeping the cattle in a restricted number of fields to allow the rest of the farm time to rest, so fingers crossed the grass re-establishes quickly and we can preserve some of our winter feed.

Next week the cattle have their TB test which means a bit of a logistical challenge … all of the cattle have to return to the farm buildings for a 4 day period. We are going to attempt to get them back from the river meadows on foot (rather than doing shuttle runs in the livestock trailer), which will mean 100+ cattle being moved in one group through multiple fields and then up the road … wish us luck!

Sheep 

The lambs have now all been weaned and are enjoying an independent life! Our first selection have gone off to market, and we have selected a group to keep as breeding stock for this coming year. We started with 50 ewes 2 years ago and this year we will lambing near on 150! We never thought we wanted sheep but we have genuinely loved working with them (apart from when they escape) and now we couldn't imagine the farm without them! 

Environmental Work 

We continue to focus on our environmental work, considering this in all of our decision making. Over the coming weeks we will be planting our environmental mixes in field margins and corners. These provide an invaluable food source, habitat, and wildlife corridor for a host of beasts, bugs, birds and other animals. Normally these would have been planted earlier in the year, but (yep, you've guessed it!) the weather stopped play. With the ground as dry as it was we would have ended up with seeds sitting in the ground and not germinating so we made the decision to delay planting.

We will also be planting some cover crops and herbal leys which will be used for sheep grazing. Not only a food source for the livestock, these also contribute significantly to the soil health. Having the soil permanently covered  suppresses weeds and prevents soil erosion, but also prevents carbon and nitrogen leaching in to the atmosphere pulling it down and locking it in the soil. These crops are deep rooting which helps to reduce soil compaction, protect water quality, and redistribute carbon and other nutrients throughout the soil profile. The field with the cover crops will be direct drilled in to arable crops come spring, meaning all of this goodness in the soil is made available to the growing crop. 

Did you know that in one handful of soil there are more living things than there are people on the planet! It's mind boggling but is one of the reasons we focus so heavily on soil health. If you're interested we highly recommend the American documentary ‘Kiss the Ground’ available on Netflix. 

Don't forget to get your orders in ready for next week … 

James & Fi 

­­­­

­

­