Since we are still under COVID-19 restrictions, I thought you could tag along with me, on a virtual walk through some of the crops. It’s a pleasant balmy afternoon and, besides, you’re probably dying to get away from your own place for a snoop around someone else’s farm.

We’ll leave the farmyard for the first field, Coran, which is a decent size (18ha), gently sloping and nice to work. Last year it was in wheat but this year is relegated to spring barley (Planet variety). Sown into a min-till seedbed, it established very well but the 12-week dry spell (30mm rainfall) took its toll. I’m pleasantly surprised as to how it’s looking.

Yes it’s thin – too thin – but it has perked up with the rain and is now nearly normal height, which means it should flow through the header without too much cursing. Yield wise? Something around 100t, if we’re lucky. Last harvest, we took 222t of wheat.

Gerald Potterton inspecting some of his crops. \ Jack Caffrey
Now we hop across the gate into the Twenty Acres. With leggy, September-sown Husky oats – and volunteer barley – it’s a low-input crop and a bit grassy.

It’ll need pre-harvest Roundup very shortly – the barley admixture will send it to the feed bin with some noises from Chris in Drummonds. Harvest 2020 is almost upon us and the year’s quota of fine weather might already be used up. Great.

It’s better than barley. Anything is this year.

We’re now in Gaffney’s field. Not my favourite field because there’s a pylon and about 10 poles, so it’s a complete pain to drill and spray. It’s in ploughed first wheat (Costello) after beans, sown Halloween. The plants are green to the ground and sprayed with the new fungicide, Questar, at flag leaf. But the unsprayed areas around the poles are as clean this year, a legacy of all the dry weather. The ears looks short but there are plenty of them.

Local notice

Now we scoot across a grass field which has just been aerated with a borrowed one of those spiked roller thing-a-me-jigs. Over the gate and into the Far Lawn which is direct-drilled spring barley – better than Coran but still not exciting. This field has a road on three sides which made sure all the local gurus could see I sowed it with not one, but three blocked coulters.

Gerald Potterton farms tillage and some beef at Kildalkey, Co. Meath. \ Jack Caffrey.
Now we’re at the red gate of Tubber (all our gates are painted signal red) but it too is in spring barley following failed wheat. The Bateman has been practically redundant this year with all the low-input spring barley. It’s a particularly heavy soil, with a great wheat yield history but spring barley is not its thing. Enough said.

We’ll quickly leg it to the Hill field which is in a second wheat, Costello. It walks better than I thought with some take-all, despite the November sowing. But, yeah, I’m happy enough, it’s better than barley. Anything is this year.

And, finally, winter oilseed rape. I pull a pod but the seed’s still green. It may be ready for Roundup, by the time you read this. It’d better be because I’m off to Clare on Saturday and nothin’ is gonna stop me now.

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