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 …
I have always found that pioneering a different system of farming is a lonely task, there is lot of contradicting advice out there but ultimately you have to make the decisions yourself. I have read stacks of books on soil biology and regenerative agriculture and follow all the latest ideas from around the world, but …
Tim Parton looks to the future in farming and sees microbes taking a leading part in crop and animal production To quote Rudyard Kipling, “If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs….” – seems quite appropriate at the moment. Something, as farmers, we are good at living with, is uncertainty: …
Clean Slate Harvest has been and gone and was fairly straight forward here in Kent, all bar the Linseed came in dry. Harvest ended well with the Linseed and the Lentils performing well, previous to them it was a real mixed bag. Glad to being starting with a clean slate for harvest 2021. I had …
The 2020 season in the Scottish Borders Neil White’s farming is a constantly evolving system which includes a comparison of Mzuri direct drilling with a ploughcombi in this difficult season. It was a long and wet winter here, crops struggled, but most made it through the relentless rain into a bright, dry but cold spring. …
A few weeks ago I was really falling out of love with growing wheat. Like all difficult times you get the chance to re-assess what you do and I believe we need a complete re-think of wheat growing in the UK. Since my last article in the December edition it continued to rain, about 680mm …
Well first things first! I just re-read my last article and how things have changed in just a few months! In many ways the whole world has changed. Since writing my last article on the 25th February the whole country has entered lockdown, the rain has stopped falling from the sky (although its been wet …
If I was ever to write the script for a farming based horror movie I think the title may simply be “2020’’ ! Last time I wrote it was December 2019 and we were only 60% through our autumn drilling campaign. Well behind our usual planned October finish. The new 12m Horsch Avatar had been …
Thoughts and lessons learned from the season. Where to start??? Well the earth on the farm went from very wet over winter to very dry. April was the sunniest it’s been since 1929 I believe, with the drought being broken towards the end of the month by some very welcome rain. We have been treated …
What a season we have had! Its years like this when we can really learn a lot about our farming system and what we are trying to do. So, it went stupidly wet stupidly quickly. We have had some really easy seasons in the past 5 years where we have been able to drill later …
