We have now closed the gates on the tillage fields.
The heavy work of ploughing, tilling and sowing is finished and from now until next summer/autumn, it will be a question of protecting and bringing out the potential of what is sown.
The last week has seen hectic activity with the last of the winter barley sown and thankfully the wheat also completed.
Again we have two varieties of winter barley, one with as far as I know, almost total resistance to Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV), but the second is definitely susceptible and the earliest sown of it is already well emerged with the tramlines clearly visible but the field was sown in fits and starts during the broken weather.
As a result, we only got to roll half the area.
Later sown
The later sown was rolled in a day once the heavy dew had lifted - the tractor and roller kept going till almost midnight but the job got finished. It was then onto the wheat, both first wheats after a break crop.
One of the crops is for seed and has gone in after oilseed rape which, with the deep penetrating root and soil loosening capacity, always allows for easy ploughing.
The crop after beans was a different story.
The land earmarked for spring beans is, I have to confess, used as a back-up to take slurry if we don’t want to or can’t get out on the grazing or silage land.
With such a wet spring this year, we were really stuck during late February/early March if we had not had the beans ground.
It’s not that we put out that much – about 2,000 gallons an acre – but there is no doubt the land suffered some compaction in the process. We had done some subsoiling immediately after the beans harvest but that was well into September and it was limited to the tramlines.
Under pressure
As we ploughed for the wheat, the tractors were clearly under pressure with each pulling five furrows. But the job got done and after a day of a drying wind and sun, it was ready for sowing.
We finished on Saturday morning and on Sunday rolled the two wheat crops and closed the gates. The 2026 sowing season was finished.
Meanwhile the exceptional growth has let us continue grazing all the stores by day, with the most forward in at night for a top-up of silage and a bit less than 2kg of concentrates.
The ones further away from the yard and from finishing are on grass alone day and night.
While they have plenty of grass in front of them, they lack the bloom of their better-fed comrades.
