The Gross Output hamster wheel It’s not uncommon to hear no-till farmers talk about the ‘hamster wheel’ of tillage – i.e. that cultivation creates the need for more cultivation. This continues until you jump off the wheel and make changes, including those to your rotation and agronomy, breaking the bond that links tillage to growing …
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 …
February 2019 Despite not really wanting to start off with the weather it’s had such a significant impact on the farm in the last 12 months that I can’t really avoid it. Despite the late spring/early summer of 2017 being overly dry compared to an ‘average’ (what’s one of those anymore?) year, it turns out …
Learning from our mistakes! One of the strangely satisfying things about farming is the opportunity we get each year to wipe the slate clean and plant a new crop into a field. Whether the previous crop had ranged from outstandingly good to outrageously bad we all get the opportunity to start again! This year I’m …
Wilfred Mole writes about his farm. Our family are the current custodians of 2600 acres of land with a chalk geology in Wiltshire, England. We took ownership of Lower Pertwood Farm in 2006 and resolved to establish an economically and ecologically sustainable organic enterprise. As farmers we are observers. We observe the weather, the growth …
I have been farming using zero-till and biological methods for fifteen years and making my own compost has always been an integral part of the system. There are lots of biological inoculants on the market but if your soil is not in a good enough condition to live and multiply, they will soon die out. …
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 …
18 years ago, we bought our first self-propelled sprayer and it revolutionized access to land, it was light and well balanced and made fertilizer and crop protection applications easy. Our timeliness and the ruts we used to leave in tramlines all but disappeared. Back then If you had told me I would ever consider running …
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 …
Farming mostly light soils is easy, isn’t it? I’m often told I farm “Boys’ land” and well, I guess in many ways it is. A bigger working window, low slug and blackgrass pressure all seem to make life that bit easier for me than colleagues on proper heavy clay “man’s land”. My gap year from …
