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Maybe I just didn’t notice before but I have never seen land drains flowing as vigorously in early October as they are this year.
Normally I expect to have all the winter barley in by the end of September.
This year I was at ease with crossing into October as I was assuming we would run into less problems with barley yellow dwarf virus following the withdrawal of the very useful seed dressing, Redigo Deter.
In fact, not only have we not sown any winter barley, we have not yet begun to plough and I see very little ploughing done in the area.
The national implications of this weather continuing are serious
The constant heavy showers have left land saturated. The national implications of this weather continuing are serious and this enforced idleness is bad for everyone. Not surprisingly, in the mild wet weather, the oilseed rape has made terrific progress despite it being sown a week later than normal.
We have the slug pellets out a while with a hired-in quad having left hardly a mark. We are now wondering what is our fall-back position if we don’t get any winter sowing done but I think it’s still too early to panic.
Like most grass farmers, I suspect we have oceans of grass
On the cattle side, practically all the cattle are in, the light bulls coming in now have gained hardly any weight in the last six weeks and we have abandoned trying to zero-graze fresh grass for them, with the moisture contents so high, as well as the damage done to land by criss-crossing it with tractors and machinery.
Like most grass farmers, I suspect we have oceans of grass and, while the temptation is to simply let cattle out on it, there is no point in walking it into the ground so we are sticking with giving a generous daily allowance and then moving the electric fence on.
I have contacted one of my regular sheep customers to see if he wanted some after grass
The damage to the ground is acceptable, especially at this time of year but the covers are too high coming into winter.
I have contacted one of my regular sheep customers to see if he wanted some after grass. Not surprisingly, he said to come back to him in a fortnight or three weeks.
Meanwhile, we have the new concrete in the yard able to take traffic, so we can take delivery of cattle to carry over the winter but as the Brexit uncertainty rumbles on with results impossible to predict, I am still putting off buying steers.
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