January 2023 Attempting to make farming less of a gamble…….. In my very early years of farming, I remember chatting to a good friend of mine who works in the investment banking world. He trades daily on the commodity markets. I mentioned to him that I didn’t think I could deal with the stress of …
What a different a year makes… Steven Lear fine tunes his arable cropping, and looks toAberdeen Angus to produce some low cost beef After the soul destroying previous two autumns when we managed to drill very little winter grain, this year has been rather refreshing. After cutting all of our spring crops in half decent …
We didn’t think we would get a wetter autumn than last year……we were wrong. I definitely remember farmers telling me that last autumns rain was only a freak occurrence and it wouldn’t occur twice in as many years. Well nature had other ideas and it has meant that after 130mm of rain over the first …
The Jet stream has kicked our arse, but we are still smiling…. With little winter crop in the ground and spring still feeling like a long way off our attention has turned to the cattle. I’m glad we baled every last bit of straw in the summer as we are going to need it going …
Mother nature was going to give me a kicking at some point! Since starting our no till journey, a couple of years ago, I haven’t really had too much to complain about. We have had two easy autumns where we were able to get a decent amount of ground drilled without too much of an …
There has been a bit of a backlash towards conservation agriculture methods in the media of late. Mostly from two camps of people. Those that are afraid of trying it and those that are afraid we might succeed…. When we first started our journey into no-till I was a little bit worried about row spacings …
It’s called a fools spring for a reason…. The dry winter has meant that we have been able to get the first round of fertilizer out onto cereal crops this year nice and early. The wheats and barleys are looking a picture and are still tillering out nicely. The disease pressure looks low so far …
A Great Year to Start No-Till…… This autumn has been a good one for progressing into no till. The weather had done any subsoiling that was needed by cracking out the soil to a depth of two foot in places. In late September I was getting a little worried. I had been told that late …
A baptism of fire into Direct Drilling They say if you want to see the sunshine you have to weather the storm. That couldn’t be truer of this year. From one of the wettest starts to spring followed by the hottest start to summer I can remember in my 34 years. The first ever crop …
