The week ahead looks like there is going to be an explosion of activity with the good weather and we will be no different on the farm.

People often think as tillage farmers that the winter must be a quite time but our business is inverse to this. We are incredibly busy now but will only be maintaining crops for the summer months before Autumn harvesting begins.

A big part of our system, especially as we have expanded, has been the use of agronomists or crop specialists. I have a Masters in Agronomy from the UK and lots of other agronomy-related certs but with crops like carrots, daffodils and parsnips, having these fancy letters and parchments only further highlight in my own mind how little I know about such a key area.

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To this end, we use as much outside expertise as possible. I’ve always been amazed how farmers here don’t make more use of independent crop consultants. The independent part is a key word in that.

Regardless of how good or bad a consultant is, I have never failed to gain something from a consultation, be that from the preparation that these meetings require or by the consultation itself.

As we have decided to grow parsnips, a new crop on the farm, I had my fourth separate consultant in the yard during the week putting some eyes on my cropping plan for the year ahead. I don’t always agree with their suggestions and ultimately it’s me who will be left holding the can, but it’s very useful to have a different angle on some of the key issues.

We will be putting five acres under plastic and another 10 acres in during the week, ahead for our earlies. This will hopefully get the ball rolling harvest wise in late August. The remainder of the crop will be seeded over the coming two months to allow staged maturity for harvest.

Hard to believe but a worry I would have before we drop the drill, is will it be too dry for too long? If we could get two 10mm showers on Saturday and Sunday while I’m away at the rugby, and an Irish win of course, that would be great.