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Suddenly we are mentally preparing for the harvest. With the first-cut silage done, we had a brief window to get some fresh concrete down on the yard.
As the tillage area has grown at the expense of cattle, we have been reliant on a good concrete base to take heavy grain lorries. The days of being able to bring tractors and trailers to local intake points are gone as one by one they have closed down with large central depots now the norm – helped, I must admit, by the excellent motorway network that now services the region.
The winter barley will be the first crop sometime in early to mid-July. With the beans as a new crop, the harvest now extends well into mid-September.
The weather since just after last autumn’s Ploughing Championships has been really difficult
In the meantime, we are getting the slurry out on the first-cut silage ground. This was a field where we had got excellent control of docks and I was glad to see no damage to the clover.
The weather since just after last autumn’s Ploughing Championships has been really difficult, with an autumn that for the first time meant we had unsown winter wheat and oats. They had to wait until mid-February and then had a deluge that gave us the wettest February on record, to be followed by a ground-cracking drought.
We have spent a lot on plant protection and biostimulant products in an effort to make up for the poor sowing conditions and the subsequent floods and drought. The rain over the weekend let the drought induced curled leaves of the seed wheat straighten out and the fully headed crop now looks well.
I am still wondering how much my winter barley straw is worth, with so little sown in the area
The spring-sown oats intended for the gluten-free market have also headed out but the crop is thinner, shorter and with a lower grain count per panicle than its October-sown counterpart.
I am still wondering how much my winter barley straw is worth, with so little sown in the area. So far, we are OK for grass but we will wait another week or so to decide whether to graze some of the land we had closed for second cut silage or, weather permitting, to take an opportunistic crop of hay.
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