The last week or so on the farm has centred on plans: winter housing plans, spring grazing plans, ideas for a cattle handling facilities revamp and ACRES plans.

In comparison to working out if ACRES is a runner, the first three mentioned are pretty much straightforward.

Working out what stock will be finished over the next few weeks and who will be first to grass in 2023 should dictate what yard they go to for the next few months.

Grazing has largely remained the same as two weeks ago, and with grass growth powering on more than expected with the mild weather, I’ll see how long they can stay out.

It’s bounced back to such an extent in some paddocks that I’ll go back to them rather than hold it over.

If rains continue over the winter, then carrying high covers in some of the wetter paddocks until spring isn’t an appealing option.

As the farm isn’t set up for sheep, leaving the few cows and calves that are unweaned back to those paddocks over the space of a week could save a few bales in the long run.

Having smaller groups of stock and giving them a larger run means ground is holding up reasonably well, all things considered. I’ll see how close I can get to December at this stage.

Cattle crush

After serving the farm well for the best part of 50 years, it could be the last winter where the current crush is used. It’s in the yard where most of the finishing cattle are and over the last year it’s been used primarily for TB testing.

It’s been used four times from November last year to September this year and there’s at least three more TB tests due between now and March 2024. A bunch of wilder spring 2021-born weanlings got smart to it also and made the system much more risky, so the time to change has come.

The thought of running young bulls who are weeks out from finishing next spring doesn’t appeal to me either and just like the crush, I’m not as young anymore too.

ACRES

All the aforementioned plans are easier to get my head around compared to ACRES. The flagship environmental scheme reminds me of that riddle of how to move a fox, chicken and corn across the river but only by taking one at a time.

As roughly half of the home block is a designated Special Protection Area (SPA), access to the scheme shouldn’t be an issue but finding measures that suit the farm and time limitations are much more of a challenge. Within the SPA, trying to get a field where there’s ryegrass content of less than 30% is challenging to say the least.

Presently it looks like planting hedgerows will be the main option. Making this choice on paper is one thing but finding the time to get around to the tasks when they vary from paper to physical work could be a challenge, but not insurmountable.

I had held back planting hedges in some parts of the farm in recent years as I knew hedge planting was going to be a focus in the replacement scheme for GLAS.

The on-farm issue with that is that the areas that would have benefitted from a hedge are in the SPA, and are therefore ineligible. Tree planting could be a runner but it might be worth checking out the new forestry programme instead given there’s a longer time frame involved.