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I sometimes wonder if it’s worthwhile trying to make much of a plan in this farming life.
The bitter pill of experience has taught me that rather than having a concrete strategy in place for the year ahead, a wiser move may be to look back through five or six old diaries, to learn from what has happened before.
After making a note of your abysmal failures, consider the one or two events that could be deemed successful and try to temper your ambitious proposals for the forthcoming season with a large dose of reality.
I ignored this strategy back in the springtime by planning to reseed 12 acres that would eventually be cut for silage.
Just like on other occasions, my imagination went into overdrive
Of course, that was long before there was any sign of drought conditions, and this sort of blind hope was further fuelled by those lovely pictures in the seed catalogues of huge crops of luscious grass lying in perfect rows.
Just like on other occasions, my imagination went into overdrive, and now I am trying to find even small positives to stop me looking like the local idiot.
Bottom line
Here’s the bottom line – The sheep were taken off this field in early February, and silage was cut in late July. It didn’t yield the fourteen bales per acre that you might imagine, but slightly less than five (that’s 57 bales from twelve acres).
As usual, I’ve had to ride the gauntlet of neighbouring comments, and to be honest, most of them were said out of kindness and sympathy (you know the tone folk use when your favourite dog has died).
It really was fuel and ammunition for all those people who believe you must plough a reseed
“That reseed is quarely greening up now,” really means “I’ve never seen as many weeds in my life.” And “that drop of rain should help thon hill” can also be reinterpreted as “it would need something because it is a total disaster.”
It really was fuel and ammunition for all those people who believe you must plough a reseed.
The field was cultivated and sown (as discussed in detail a few months ago) without ploughing and struggled with the weather conditions. If a glance into the crystal ball showed unusually dry weather, then undoubtedly the traditional methods are best, but to be fair, this year would have tested those practices too.
Perspective
After stacking the bales in the yard, I slunk into the house and whinged and moaned my way through lunch.
As usual, my wife put things in perspective, by asking if I was happy with the quality of grass. I said yes, and before I could return to my tale of misery and woe, she then enquired if it wasn’t just lovely to be sailing up and down the road on such a glorious morning.
I furrowed my brows (further) at this and grudgingly admitted that it was, indeed, a morning that made you feel glad to be alive.
I left the house in search of someone as miserable as myself
She then asked if I remembered that same field a few years ago, when it rained for three days on the freshly cut grass and we couldn’t even get into the wet corners with the machinery.
In danger of getting a fairly acidic response, she also reminded me that I had been saying just the other day about how well the lambs were thriving in the hot weather. At this point, I left the house in search of someone as miserable as myself – it’s important to know when you’re beaten.
Mood
This tiny bit of amateur psychology did manage to lighten my mood and reminded me that I tend to dwell on the negatives far too easily (is that just me or is it an age thing?)
Then, lo and behold, we got 27mm of rain a couple of days later, and suddenly, my reseed was transformed into a proper field of grass. I’ll have to stop now, or I’ll end up telling you it’s the best field of new grass in the country.
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