A positive outlook
So far this year we have lambed on a viable grass crop, had a second crack at boats (beans and oats) and campaigned for the future of farming. When I say it’s been a busy year already, it’s been a busy year already.
We have a tendency as a farm to over complicate everything, so my 2025 goal was to keep things simple. We have tailored our rotation into something very manageable, which is: grass for seed, spring beans, boats, a 4-way hard wheat blend for Wildfarmed, and our 12 way soft wheat blend. The grass is down for two years which we’ve discovered has boosted our organic matter by a lot more than the fields who have yet to receive this rotation. It all looks lovely on paper but shed storage is going to prove interesting. The rotation was our goal and so far so good (touch wood).
As soon as winter crept in last year we introduced sheep, using our local sheep farmer to graze the whole farm over the winter. This took a bit of management because we had to get the timings right, the wheat can’t be grazed too late and the grass needed grazing for long enough to kill off volunteer oil seed rape. The sheep have been a welcome addition to the farm, we went all in and decided to graze as much as we could with 200 sheep. Going forward we know we will need a lot more sheep. We didn’t know the sheep were in lamb and one day Dad just said there’s a lamb in that field. I was just as shocked and since then there’s been lots of lambs in that field. Such a surreal experience lambing on a crop that I know we will harvest in 4 months. So keep your eyes peeled to see if afterbirth produces fertility spots in grass seed.
We did a mini trial on boats and discovered that both crops by themselves are a lot harder to combine than a bi crop. We’ve also discovered that the cost of grading and cleaning the seed isn’t as bad as we thought and with the SFI low input cereal crop payment it’s a very viable break crop for us. Another bonus is that we were able to use the graded oats and beans for this season’s seed. We are certainly still learning how to grow oats and beans, it’s all very new to us, so this season we have carried out some unintentional seed rate trials. We’ve been told that disturbing the soil slightly helps increase bean yields so on one field we’ve used the Horsch Joker to just scratch the surface and then direct drilled straight in. We did notice this year that our drill has come in very handy at getting seeds in the ground in slightly damp conditions and we were very thankful to be drilled up by the second week in March. Even if every time we got a blockage dad used a variety of colourful words and the cab now resembles a field.
Life as a farmer these days is not without worry and that would be an understatement. As a relatively new farmer I never really understood why Dad is so scared of getting the SFI right or making sure we have the right paperwork up to date. But since the labour government has come in, I get it now. I didn’t realise it was possible for the government to stop a whole scheme, I feel confused, let down and primarily a huge mistrust in politics in general. However, it has made me think long and hard about the future of our farm and makes me ever more determined to create a circular system on this farm. Minimize risks and increase profits, this goes hand in hand with regenerative farming. I’m going to try and be less lazy and get some compost on the go or even putting biologicals down the drill would be a start.
A few things I’m excited for going forward is getting more herbal lays drilled, we’ve struggled with this so far and we’ve only got one field partially herballed and even then it’s questionable. However we are powering on, I’ve noticed that when my sheep graze either forestry or herbal lay they don’t touch their mineral bar, so it must be a good thing. So far we have tried spraying the grass crop off, using a joker and ploughing. A shallow plough has worked the best with rolls to follow, but it is a slow process when your working on permanent pasture.
My plan for this year is to keep things simple, try not to stress about things you can’t control and to teach my Dad how to enjoy farming again because he seems to have got lost in the political side of farming, he forgets it’s the best job in the world.
