Issue 30 – Contents
Inside this issue:
September 2024 Alice and my pre harvest holiday was with Wild With Consent whose website promises ‘This is wild camping, but not as you know it’. I have always asked for Alice’s consent before going wild otherwise she would have me arrested. What the website actually meant that we could camp in a remote place …
September 2024 Another year has passed and although I am without doubt a bit older, hopefully I am a little wiser from all the errors that I have made. We have tried to devise a rotation based around predominantly first wheats, interrupted with break crops of grass seed (down for two and a half years …
September 2024 The deluge of the last few days, following the wettest winter since 1836 and the drought of the previous year, make it abundantly clear that we’re now farming in a fundamentally different water cycle. Improving the capacity of our soils to infiltrate and percolate heavy rainfall is going to be critical for a …
Reflecting on last season’s challenges and the lessons learned Jeff Claydon, Suffolk arable farmer and inventor of the Claydon Opti-Till® direct seeding system, outlines some of the changes he will be making for the 2025 harvest. August 2024 The title of my last article ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (Issue 28 – July …
Innovation: Fun but potentially painful I was recently nominated for the BBC’s food and Farming Awards under the “Farming for the Future” category. Awards are not really in my comfort zone and I thought hard about whether I wanted to accept the nomination. What convinced me to accept the nomination was the fact that the …
Based in Aberdeenshire, Ian Partridge owns and runs, along with the family, 800 acres of mixed farming with around 550 acres dedicated to cereals and the rest put over to 200 head of cattle and 12,000 chickens. Looking to streamline his crop establishment practice and work the soil less, Ian has recently shifted away from …
The 2023/4 seasons weather has presented significant challenges. Despite these difficulties, Winter crops sown in August and September 2023 held up relatively well. The OSR drilled in early August looked strong and mostly survived CSFB. Premium Crops contract HEAR (high erucic acid rapeseed) and HOLL (high oleic low linolenic) OSR varieties, which carry a premium …
Written by Ian Clayton-Bailey from BTT UK At Bentfield Bury Farms, the winter wheat and barley were meticulously sown using specially imported Bourgault Tillage Tools 6-inch openers, a departure from the standard 4-inch versions commonly seen across the UK. This decision, made by Farm Manager James Mayes, reflects our unwavering commitment to innovation and efficiency …
Enhancing Crop Establishment: The Advantages of Wider Seed Bands in Modern Agriculture Read More »
September 2024 A year since my last article here and it has been an interesting period. With our 6m Weaving GD drill we acquired last summer we managed to plant all our planned autumn crops in 2023. The ones following catch crops were easiest travelling on the green, the ones after beans on stubble were …