Farmer Focus: Wet weather pics on social media are heartening
John Pawsey © Jason Bye One of the many good things about social media is that although there are some in the farming community who only post portrayals of agronomic excellence, there are enough farmers out there who post pictures with warts and all to keep one’s own mental health indicator from leaving the amber zone and entering the red.
It has been hugely heartening to see many of my fellow agriculturalists generously adorning my X feed with tractors up to their rear axles in the ubiquitous wet spot.
See also: Farmer Focus: Trip up North reveals extent of crop damage
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Even our no-till brethren have temporarily ceased that annoying post of traversing their fields in a pair of carpet slippers after eighteen inches of rain, showing a dirt-less sole due to perfect aggregation and “Swiss cheese” levels of worm holes.
Dodging the showers, we managed to get our winter bean and wheat bicrop sown by the end of March, which was the date my seeds person said that I was allowed to sow the blend up to.
I don’t, however, suspect the wheat will come to anything.
The small amount of spring barley we have this year went promptly in after that.
We are now left with a few days of drilling our home-saved spring oats, which have been going in at 270kg/ha to make up for a poor germination score.
Although ploughing will soon be illegal, our open inverted soils are the fields we have been able to get on to with relative ease, as their increased surface area captures more sun and wind.
Presently, we are dealing with minimally cultivated fields which were sown with a green manure last autumn.
These soils have lain tighter and wetter over the winter and have proved more of a challenge, although we are eventually getting there now.
When it comes to harvest time, I normally look forward to spending an hour on the combine at lunch, and posting a few pub yields from the middle of my fields.
However this harvest, I think I’ll give it a miss.
