It’s funny how a few dry days in winter makes everything look better on farm. As I write, we’ve tray tested our brand-new-second-hand spreader and spun some urea onto backward crops and the strip-tilled wheat after sugar beet, where Canada geese had given it early growth regulation.
I’ve made a start putting some PotashPlus onto root land and the cereals that’ll carry the spreader without making a mess to endure all season – I’ve had to be picky where to go, but we’ve made a start. Sulphur is particularly lacking this year and it’s important to get calcium and potassium on as early in spring as we can – it’s a job less when we get drilling too.
I’ve managed to catch up on some spraying with ‘twinkle toes’ – our recently acquired lightweight sprayer – which so far has been a good buy. This machine is an addition to the fleet as we’ve missed our local lightweight spraying contractor more than we thought following his forced retirement. I detest big ruts so we bit the bullet and invested.
The theory is, this’ll do wet winter spraying then go onto narrow wheels to spray beet when it needs spraying, instead of when I can fit in around everything else. It’ll then desiccate oats and beans and finally do some pre-em herbicides while the bigger trailed sprayer does the heavy lifting in the cereals and potatoes. A key member of my team is keen to do some spraying so our timeliness ought to improve one way or another.
We lifted the last of our sugar beet on 18 February which looks to have yielded nearer 80 than 70t/ha. If it matches that delivered so far, we should fill our contract which is good. For sure, our 2025/26 crop will have to yield much more to meet the financial performance of this year’s crop, due to the c.20% reduction in price.
Sugar at 17%+ is helping my adjusted yield to stay the right side of the dirty yield which is always my yardstick. We’ll continue growing it for now, but the future doesn’t look rosy.
That same week we also started emptying one of our potato stores, albeit a month late. Quality is decent and they’ve stored well without any in-store sprout control at all. The boffins mostly disagree with me, but this happens every time we have a cool summer. Conversely, every time we have a hot growing summer, things are always lively in store over winter. Coincidence? Not here.
Politics are as testing as the weather at the moment, but unfortunately, we’ve a more personal matter to attend to as we had a sudden bereavement within our team recently. I never find the recruitment process much fun, but that’s where we find ourselves at the moment.
The other permanent member of my team is still on his adventure down under for a few more weeks, so I consider myself incredibly lucky to have some brilliant neighbours and great friends who’ve stepped in and helped me out more than they perhaps realise this past month or so. You know who you are, thank you all very much indeed.
In these testing times it’s easy to be bogged down in the ‘what next’ and the ‘why bother’, but it’s not the first occasion farming has hit tough and uncertain times. We’re a resilient bunch and if we didn’t make decisions with a longer term view, nowt would get done, such is short-term volatility.
We’re not as affected by the chancellor’s diabolical proposal as some, but my take on the current situation is quite simple – if an investment in infrastructure is self-financing, get on with it. If it generates more profit without increasing risk dramatically, get on with it. If you enjoy what you do, and can make tweaks to strengthen an enterprise, crack on.
Similarly, if that enterprise/variety/crop/block of land is consistently the weakest performer, change it. I love being part of the potato industry and for a long time I ran with a ‘don’t turn down an opportunity’ policy, but six years ago I halved my potato area. Any regrets? None whatsoever; life is far too short for that madness.
For sure my eyes still roll regularly, I curse the weather, irrigators and the electric bill, and it’d be nice if just for once, we had an easy ride of a season. But hey, it’s not a perfect world and if it was easy growing spuds, everybody would be doing it.
Have I gone soft? Certainly not. Recent unfortunate events have tweaked my focus, but last month I said we had to get fussier and challenge poor standards – that hasn’t changed!
This spring will see us dip our toes a little further into the world of nature-friendly potatoes and with that an exciting retail opportunity. We have more experimenting with companion and bi-cropping, and a few more tweaks to make to enhance natural pollinators and aphid predators.
Before all of that though, I am for the first time on this farm, hosting the YFC ploughing match that I’ve been a part of organising for the past 28 years. And, on the eve of it, a training afternoon for budding novice plough-folk. We’ve even have a few horses coming to plough, it’ll be grand.
This article was taken from the latest issue of CPM.
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