Farmer Focus: Insufferable smugness and lots to ‘understand’
© Jason Bye Continuing from my last report, February saw us crack on with spring oat drilling, but rain unfortunately stopped play with just three days to go. It’s not stopped raining since.
I suppose rain was on the cards after such an incredibly dry and sunny February.
See also: The benefits of integrating trees into productive arable land
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To say that I am feeling pleased that we got so much drilled when we had the chance is wrong. Insufferable smugness is much nearer to the truth.
In the meantime, our spring barley is putting on a wonderful show with its bright green rows and the first sown oats are now emerging.
Just before the deluge, we managed to get an extremely weedy early drilled crop of winter wheat inter-row hoed with our System Cameleon, which I think was a first on our chalky boulder clay in the shortest month of the year.
When we do manage to get back on the land the workload will be huge.
The whole farm has to be hoed, wild bird mixtures need to be cut, cultivated then re-sown and the last cereal crop in the rotation has to be undersown with next year’s fertility leys.
On the drizzly days I have been attending numerous online meetings, mainly starting with the prefix “understanding.”
These include: “Understanding biodiversity net gain”, “Understanding how to replace your Basic Payment” and “Understanding the new Environmental Land Management scheme.”
The last is my favourite as “we don’t actually understand it ourselves.” It’s top of my list.
Even though making future financial plans around a scheme that hasn’t been fully developed is tricky, recent increases in options look promising.
It appears at last we are going to be rewarded for what farming organically has delivered at Shimpling Park Farm over the past 25 years in terms of increased biodiversity and healthier soils. We have surveys to prove it.
