June 2025
It doesn’t seem possible, but it is 10 months since my last article. I was at that point concerned whether our late summer drilled Pollen and Nectar mixes would be good enough for the year ahead, and indeed while some were good, a few areas unfortunately looked poor.
In late October I drilled the Winter wheat, mostly Skyfall and o1 field of Extase. I should have been more patient as some of it was drilled in conditions that were probably too wet. With the following dry period it would have gone better a week after I finished!
The trailed Weaving GD drill again did a superb job of planting in challenging conditions, and it emerged well, with just a few blocked coulter issues in one field that barely show now. In fact, all the wheat came through winter looking very good.
In the spring we took the view that some areas of the Pollen and Nectar mix were not good enough, and these areas also had some annoying blackgrass, so I took the opportunity to spray them off and then redrilled.
Our 2023 SFI agreement continues to give agronomic gains with opportunities to clean tricky areas of blackgrass ahead of spring sown options, 6m grass strips to ease LERAPs, and excellent first wheat after a year or two of muti species Pollinator Mix ‘break crops’.
This is all alongside the huge environmental outcomes, with the multi species crops being a joy to see, with all sizes of wildlife enjoying them. I am however slightly concerned that our increased area of Winter Bird Food crops could lead to an obesity crisis amongst our local Wild Bird population!
The wheat came into Spring looking well and raced through the growth stages. Although some lighter areas of land are now showing drought stress and yield potential must be affected to an extent. It is pleasing that we have almost no blackgrass showing, making this year one of the easiest for hand rogueing.
I am very pleased with our refined system that works well after 9 years of all No till establishment. The occasional soil loosening has proved essential, as has reconsolidation afterwards. The drills both have liquid fertiliser kits which allows us to apply some amendments to the soil, including Manganese which seems to have reduced significantly our requirement for foliar applied manganese in early spring.
We haven’t applied any Lime, Phosphate or Potash fertilisers for 9 years but recent soil analysis shows still excellent indices, which is pleasing as I was concerned that we might be mining nutrients. We may be doing that very slowly, but the system we have seems sustainable. Our use of Nitrogen has been reduced, and we use less fungicides. Yields are still generally very good, with the exception of last years small area of second wheat. This years second wheat looks much better.
Because we are spending a lot of time off farm on other projects, and we have virtually no on farm grain storage, the crop rotation has evolved into a mixture of First and Second Winter Wheats, with our SFI whole field options as break crops. This is a lower risk system and means farming for us is part time.
We have also made a decision to completely retire from the farm in October 2026. We could have done another 3 years before the Farm Business Tenancy was due to end, but the time feels right to go next year.
Both our sons have good careers away from agriculture, which means we have no succession to plan. In some ways this may seem a shame, but we are proud of their achievements and very happy that they are getting on with life away from the farm.
We are looking forward to our last year of farming. The machinery dispersal sale is booked for September 2026, and we are refurbishing a house in our local town that we bought a few years ago to live in. We have been fortunate having tenancies on 3 different Cambridgeshire County Council owned farms over the last 36 years, but we now look forward to hopefully seeing another young family have a chance to farm here. I just hope they don’t have a plough…
While we will undoubtably miss the farm, I am looking forward to having more time for other interests, which may include a bit more consultancy work, definitely more music and some steady cycling. We will also hopefully get some more travelling done, including exploring with our campervan.
We will also miss the fun of welcoming visitors to the farm. We have welcomed hundreds of visitors over the years from all over the world, and shared knowledge of our farming system, and our triumphs and failures. We hope to continue meeting with people and I may have time for a few more speaking opportunities which are always fun.
