With the beans finished and the harvest behind you, there’s nothing more pleasant than fine, early autumn weather. There’s a crispness to the early mornings with the dewy grass strewn with gossamer after the money spiders have been busy overnight. A still, cool night followed by early morning sunshine induces them into frenzied activity.

There’s already the slightest turn in the leaves on the trees – perhaps brought on a little earlier by the dry soil. In the soft early autumn sunlight, the leaf colours can look spectacular and full of promise for later on. It could be a good autumn for colour after all the sunshine.

And the farm takes on a lovely look with the hedges neatly cut and the stubble still a warm shade of yellow. Not that we have much stubble left undisturbed; it’s mostly all been min-till cultivated and in superb conditions. It should be an ideal autumn for min-till provided the heavens don’t open in the second half of September. The recent showers have added enough moisture for weeds and volunteers to germinate in the stale seedbeds.

With the soil naturally fissured, I’d hope that the land could take some rain and remain workable. The temptation is to begin sowing cereals but to start now is just inviting weeds and disease (particularly BYDV), which could be problematic for the entire season.

The oilseed rape has been sown into excellent seedbeds, which are fine and firm and not conducive to slugs moving around. But you can’t underestimate slugs and pellets may be warranted but, unlike most years, we’ll wait and see.

One particularly heavy field where the seedbed usually resembles cobblelock tilled up really well after one run of the Horsch Joker. It too has been sown with oilseed rape, a crop you couldn’t contemplate most years in this field because of the slugs and clods combination. The GLAS cover crops are sown and at least this year they may produce something worthwhile.

Against my better judgement, when I replaced the seed drill two years ago I went for a seed and fertiliser combined type as opposed to a seed only. Yes, I know putting the fertiliser down the spout for winter oilseed rape and spring barley is advantageous but fertiliser is so corrosive it should be confined to just the fertiliser spreader.

Of course, I knew this already but was persuaded otherwise by the trainee manager, who is progressing well through a tough 10-year apprenticeship.

While the paintwork is reasonably good on the Horsch Sprinter, things such as bolts and jubilee clips corrode and probably the electrics which I’m not happy about.

The Sprinter does nice work, which is why I bought it, but it’s a demanding machine to operate. Like most modern machines it beeps and messages you for every known and unknown reason which drives me mad. It thinks I’m a complete muppet. The New Holland combine excelled itself at this and the Claas is only marginally better.

But the Sprinter demands your full attention. So much so that I think I’m going to have to take the bull by the horns and go for full-on high-tech auto-steer on our next tractor as it’s become impossible to drive straight with all these distractions and false alarms around you. Needless to say, the trainee manager agrees with this approach.

Incidentally, a friend of mine talked about retro-fitting auto-steer on to his aging John Deeres but I was tempted to say try fitting power steering first. And, oh, I’ve kept you waiting but the spring beans yielded a staggering 1.26t/acre.

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