September 2024
Is 2024 the year to forget?
Three weeks ago Chris asked me to write another article for DD and at the time we were still busy combining so I marked the email as unread and started to think about what to write!
And to be honest for the past three weeks it has been very difficult to find much positive to say about this past 6 months.
I know I’m not alone in feeling disappointed/deflated/frustrated/tired/perplexed (name your adjective!) at what’s been thrown at us this past year. From the 6 months of virtually continual rain starting last October to reducing commodity prices and increasing input prices particularly fungicides and machinery. Then to further disappoint we chose to apply Nufol to our promising group 1 blend (Nelson, Extase & Edgar) only for it to satisfy every milling criteria apart from Protein content. Then when we started cutting wheat in August there was Ergot to be found in certain samples which will require colour sorting.
Our combine, which was serviced extensively, didn’t really perform as its parts & labour bill would have you assume either! Stupid time consuming breakdowns added to the building frustration in the first few days of harvest which would see us cut 3000 acres between out 2 combines in nearly as many fields!
The Great British (Kent) public seem to have even less patience and tolerance of anything slowing their journey as they speed through the back lanes at break-neck speeds in their white Audis, even though they seem enthused by the first 3 series of Clarksons Farm!!
To add to my cheerful demeanour we agreed to take on an extra 13ha of land that had lavender beds in it and another 20ha which is recently grubbed apple orchards. The relevance of this is that the lavender is grown under plastic and anyone who has ever grubbed orchards will know that invariably there are roots, wire and stakes left behind!!
We also decided to bale most of our straw this year. For the past, well forever really, we’ve always chopped our straw but with strong P & K levels and an apparent shortage and demand for straw this year we/I decided to lay everything down in rows and sell to a local contractor. This worked splendidly with our local contractor FGS Agri sending in a brand new high density baler to follow the 2 combines at speeds of up to 20kph at times! This worked well and with a bale chaser following behind the fields were cleared quickly. That was until we got to our 120ha of spring oats which when cut at 13% moisture left the straw in the row/bale at 40%. The Polish baler driver Michael, after saying lots of rude words beginning with F, told us to leave it a week to dry out and he’d be back to bale it all up. With 120 ha of wet oat straw waiting for warm sunny weather it proceeded to rain for about 10 days!! The rows collapsed from sitting nicely on top of the stubble to hugging the floor and were soaked!! The weather eventually warmed up and we finished the last few fields of harvest, blew down the combines, had a beer or two with the harvest team and then I woke up in the middle of the night with the realisation that my entire first wheat area was made up of grubbed apple orchards, lavender under plastic and 300 acres of wet oat straw in rows on about 23 fields!!
It was at this time that I started thinking of alternative career choices! A call to my agronomist Tom Reynolds (affectionately known as Roundup Reynolds) is always good at these times of stress and desperation. He knows when to laugh and when to come up with some helpful advice! We agreed that the straw needed to come off the fields as trying to chop it up with toppers or flails would just leave us a potential slug haven. So yesterday my Polish baler driving friend returned, said lots of words beginning with F and duly baled 17 fields in an afternoon & evening!(Michael you are an effing superstar!)
Some of the bales weighed over 1000kg and tomorrows jobs is to work out what to do with 291 bales! (120×90 HD)
When looking back over the past few months the only real thing I can get excited about is the people I get to work with. To be honest I’m not excited by new tractors or machinery any more, but good staff who you can laugh, get upset and share our frustrations with are so important.
This year we joined up with my good friend Guy Eckley to cut our combined area together with our 2 combines. Whilst the machinery let us down at times the working relationships between us was what got us through a difficult and disappointing harvest. We were assisted by Guys sons and brothers George and Will Edmonds whose witty banter and expletive laden commentary on the CB as we took 2 combines with headers through Maidstone town centre kept our spirits high, and sometimes when you want to cry having a laugh is the best medicine!
For those of you interested in yields; disappointing in terms of quality but good quantity and the fact that its been almost all cut dry were bonuses. The wheat price continues to baffle me and some wheat and oats have been sold pre Christmas to help cash flow. We have some countryside stewardship capital works to do with concreting yards and putting in rainwater harvesting tanks which will need some cash to pay for before we can reclaim the monies.
With harvest now behind us we have that period before drilling that seems to get busier every year. Dealing with bales, topping CSS and SFI parcels, hedge cutting, muck/compost spreading and now drilling legume fallows all adds to the never ending to-do list.
The aims for the upcoming weeks and months are to get everything planted into good seedbeds. It’s really encouraging after 10 years no-till that I don’t have to burn lots of diesel and put hundreds if not thousands of hours on tractors cultivating soils that are already well structured with established worms burrows and no ruts on any tramlines to worry about. My trusty 18 year old tractor continues to purr along pulling the 12m Horsch Avatar drill and I really cant see anything I’d rather have to establish crops in our situation.
To finish I’d like to encourage you all, in the words of Plato (and Caroline Flack)
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle”
Take time to check on your farming friends and neighbours because farming at any time can be hard lonely and thankless. This year seems to be a stinker!