Julian Gold — Farmer Focus Writer

Farm manager of the 800ha Hendred Estate on the edge of the Berkshire Downs. High-pH (8.2) silty clay loam over chalk, in a rain shadow. Regular Direct Driller contributor whose writing focuses on soil carbon, in-field biodiversity strips and the long road to substantial nitrogen reduction. First profiled as Featured Farmer in Issue 14 via the Agricology farmer profile and podcast series.

📰 Read articles by Julian Gold — Hendred Estate, Oxfordshire on Direct Driller → View author archive

Profile
Estate Hendred Estate
Location Oxfordshire, edge of Berkshire Downs
Area 800 ha (mostly combinable crops)
Soils Highly alkaline silty clay loam over chalk (pH 8.2)
Rainfall 679 mm (rain-shadow location, dry springs/summers)
System Regenerative; CTF since 2012 (10m system); reduced/no till
Livestock Small sheep flock grazing cover crops + permanent pasture
Rotation OSR → wheat → spring barley → spring/winter beans → wheat → winter barley/2nd wheat → OSR

Issue 14 — Photosynthesis Facilitator (July 2021)

Julian’s first Direct Driller appearance came as the Featured Farmer interview, conducted in July 2020 by Janie Caldbeck for the Agricology podcast series and reproduced for the magazine.

“I really see myself not as a farmer, more as a photosynthesis facilitator”

Without access to rotational leys or imported FYM, Julian treats the atmosphere as his primary carbon source:

  • Grow big high-yielding crops that photosynthesise hard
  • Cover crops between winter and spring crops to keep root exudates flowing
  • Minimise cultivations to avoid re-oxidising the carbon back out
  • Return all crop residues, including difficult chopped winter and spring barley straw — “I’m loath to cart carbon off the farm”

Controlled Traffic Farming

  • 10m CTF system since 2012
  • Trafficked area down to 20% of soil surface; frontline tractor down from ~850 hours/year to 400–450
  • Compaction confined to known wheelings, allowing efficient direct drill and scratch till

Cover Crops and the Sheep Flock

  • 6–7-species mixes (spring oats, rye, tillage radish, vetch, phacelia, stubble turnips, forage rape) drilled straight behind harvest
  • Sheep graze from mid-October through winter; by spring there is little residue left, just spray off and direct drill
  • Where sheep numbers don’t reach, lower-biomass cover mixes are used to ease termination

The “Sabotaging the Factory” Analogy

“Industrial agriculture has been sabotaging its own factory premises… the production line is the food production… but if you see our factory premises as the ecosystem we’re operating in, we haven’t been diverting money into maintaining the factory premises.”

ASSIST In-Field Biodiversity Strips

Hosting the multi-agency ASSIST trial. Strips of wildflowers planted down the middle of fields, 90m apart (every three tramlines), on the principle that ladybirds and carabid beetles only travel a short distance from where they live — edge-only margins cannot deliver in-field pest control.

  • Wheat tiers infected with aphid colonies at varying distances from strips to measure beneficial reach
  • Anecdotally: in-field-strip OSR field had 100% rape establishment vs the two control fields with severe slug damage in straw-thickened combine swathes

Bee Hive Mindset Change

Getting his own beehive ~10 years before the article triggered a profound mindset shift on insecticides — from “ephemeral bees out there” to “damaging my own bees.” Cited as the moment he started thinking beyond soil to the wider ecosystem.

Nitrogen Reduction Trials

  • Companion cropping spring beans + spring oats in alternate rows in a 2ha 30m strip
  • Yellow trefoil trialled as living mulch — too vigorous, currently out-competing spring beans; switching back to small-seeded white clover
  • “If UK agriculture is going to reduce its carbon footprint to zero by 2040, we can’t do that without reducing N fertiliser substantially.”

Drill Choice

  • Dale drill + Köckerling drill (both tine drills, both second-hand) — Köckerling for trash-heavy situations, Dale for direct drilling through dry crusts into wet spring soils
  • 10m Wyberg straw rake bought for ~£4,000 with a third of the tines removed

Future Vision

“The perfect vision of a farming system for me would be all spring crops, the whole farm growing high biomass multi-species cover crops, stock rotating round the farm, mob grazing cover crops, and with a lot of environmental strips in all the fields.”

The constraint: he’s a manager not an owner — “Can I sell this vision to our owners? And can we reduce our fixed costs low enough… to be able to withstand a lower output system?”

[Source: dd-issue-14, 2026-04-13]

Issue 16 — A Big Scary Shopping List (January 2022)

A column dominated by mid-year office work — budgets, cashflows and an “eye-watering” wish list of machinery investments aimed at preparing for life with high-priced (or unavailable) nitrogen and the possible loss of glyphosate.

Disappointing harvest 2021

  • Low-yielding OSR
  • A large area of Firefly wheat broke down to Septoria
  • Disappointing Extase yields
  • Spring barley flattened by August rains
  • High prices compensated, but the message is stark: minimise reliance on bought inputs and maximise free benefits from natural ecosystems

“The fifth pillar”

“I advocate that minimising the use of synthetic N should be the fifth pillar of Regen. Ag. to sit alongside the other four that are usually quoted.”

For years he supported the idea of an N tax or quota — never gained traction — and the gas-driven price spike has now done the same job. He’s “excited at the prospect of finally being able to grow our harvest 2022 crops with significantly lower N levels”.

The Köckerling drill verdict

The 10 m Köckerling tine drill continues to give “sterling service” — particularly good behind silly amounts of chopped winter and spring barley straw. But it moves a lot of soil, giving a second blackgrass chit during the drilling pass that even a big pre-em stack can’t fully control. Conclusion: needs a complementary low-disturbance disc drill so he can pick the right tool for the right job.

The shopping list

  • A plough, “for occasional shallow rotational complete inversion” if glyphosate is lost
  • A shallow disc cultivator for mechanical stale-seedbed destruction at extremely shallow depth
  • An inter-row hoe — for mechanical weed control if needed, AND, more excitingly, for late-spring cover-crop establishment under standing cereals to “harness the wasted sunshine of July, August and September.” Likely needs a stripper header to combine the resulting green base
  • Already moving away from high-biomass grazed cover crops on heavy land (poaching damage in wet winters affecting following spring barley) — has been impressed with the Hutchinsons Maxi cover mix, lower biomass, partly frost-killed

[Source: dd-issue-16, 2026-04-13]

Issue 18 — Rolling on the Frost and Grazing the Wheat (July 2022)

A direct continuation of the January piece — Julian got two frosty nights in early February and rolled 30 ha of cover crops on his 10 m CTF wheelings, achieving 100% kill on areas rolled before dawn (below -2°C).

Grazed vs ungrazed cover crops: real comparison at last

For a few seasons Julian had suspected that grazing cover crops was hurting following spring barley. This year he grew the same seed, drilled the same day at the same rate with the Dale drill into both grazed and ungrazed blocks of the same field.

  • Establishment: 50–60% in grazed, 70–75% in ungrazed
  • Crop on the ungrazed block has grown away noticeably better
  • “I will be surprised if the yield is not significantly higher”

The new strategy: subsoil-then-cover for spring crops

“Going forwards I am now thinking that fields destined for spring barley will be subsoiled straight behind the combine and then immediately sown with frost susceptible cover which will not be grazed and will be direct drilled into good soil conditions after frost/glyphosate destruction.”

Sheep as winter cereal disease control

The “regen-aggers” will scream — but Julian still wants livestock integration. He has previously run small-area mob-stocking trials in winter barley with measured benefits: less disease, shorter crops at harvest, NIAB-TAG leaf inoculum testing showed massive reductions in Septoria and yellow rust in grazed wheat areas. This year a much bigger area is grazed alongside ungrazed for proper yield data. The hypothesis: grazing winter cereals lets you drill earlier in good September conditions and then remove the leaf area to capture the late-drilling benefits (BYDV / Septoria pressure reduction) without the establishment risk.

Drill collection continues

  • Has ordered a Horizon disc drill with row cleaners to address previous hair-pinning problems
  • Bought a Weaving IR drill for an annual maize-undersowing contract — and now wondering whether to reconfigure the Horizon to 25 cm row spacing instead of the ordered 20 cm so it can sow late-spring inter-row cover crops with one extra coulter

“Factory premises” analogy

In response to media calls for UK agriculture to bin environmental work and concentrate on out-and-out food production:

“Industrial businesses divert profits towards factory maintenance whether or not they get grants. Agriculture is working within natural ecosystems that I see as the ‘factory premises’ For too long industrial agriculture has concentrated on the food production line and ignored the factory premises.”

Hendred Estate’s “factory maintenance” includes mid-field wildflower strips, with one north/south strip experimentally planted with native hedging and hazel coppice as agroforestry to extend pollen and nectar availability for beneficials.

[Source: dd-issue-18, 2026-04-13]

Issue 21 — The Horizon Disc Drill, Maize Undersown Grass and a Grazed Cover-Crop Settlement (April 2023)

Julian’s first column with the Horizon disc drill in the field. Used through autumn and spring for cereals and beans, with very encouraging early results — particularly less blackgrass germination behind the drill, which was one of the main reasons for the purchase. “Patches in fields which normally have high populations are much cleaner than they are usually after drilling with the tined Köckerling drill.”

Trying to be clever

He nearly got caught out by attempting to “stack” the blackgrass benefits of disc drilling and late drilling — when the autumn weather broke they were left waiting for the right conditions. The December frosts saved them, and the Horizon worked beautifully drilling into frosted ground with no soil damage, even rolling afterwards on gentle frosts.

Maize undersown grass — a Year 1 success

The first foray into sowing grass between maize rows with the Weaving IR drill delivered an unexpected win. Drilled into dry ground; the seedlings sat tiny for months; after the maize harvest they “romped away”, giving useful soil cover for slurry and digestate spreading and a tack-grazing income stream over winter.

The grazed vs ungrazed cover crop trial — the verdict

A direct continuation of Julian’s Issue 18 trial. Combine yield-meter results (same combine, same CTF lanes, same settings, similar moistures, all combined within a few days):

Field Treatment Yield
Ambling Way Grazed cover crop 4.56 t/ha
Gravel Hill Grazed cover crop 5.13 t/ha
Stoney Hedge No cover crop 6.50 t/ha
70 Acre Ungrazed cover crop 6.03 t/ha
Churchmere N. Ungrazed cover crop 6.26 t/ha

The economics now look interesting in a different way: leaving a cover crop ungrazed and taking the Countryside Stewardship payment of £124/ha is markedly more profitable than the £30–40/ha a sheep grazier might pay (75 sheep weeks/ha at 45 p/head/week), particularly given the apparent yield hit on grazed cover crops in the following spring barley.

A continued grazed-winter-barley trial

Last year’s small block showed only a tiny yield drop (10.13 vs 10.10 t/ha) but with no input savings on the grazed strip. This year a bigger 2 ha block is grazed out in the middle of a 40 ha hybrid winter barley field. Julian flags how easy it is for “a lot of anecdotal results flying around in the Regen. Ag. space” to influence whole-system change without proper trials, and stresses the need for replicated comparisons rather than wholesale conversion both ways.

[Source: dd-issue-21, 2026-04-13]

Appearances

Issues 14, 16, 18, 21, 25

Related Pages