Hello and welcome to the jottings of a farmer in Suffolk who, despite his best efforts is still farming.
This is my favourite time of the year, when the trees have finally come out in full leaf and the birds are in full song, the oilseed is in full flower and the sun seems to be pulling everything upwards as if on strings.
Apart from my wheat crop that is, which seems to be suspiciously short at present and could do with a good rain. That's a commodity in short supply at the moment as we have had only 17mm this month on top of only 17mm in April. No doubt it will start to rain either during Wimbledon week, which will be good for me as I dislike tennis, or when the combine gets in the field, which won’t.
In the early morning when I walk up to the farm the bird song is wonderful to hear, coupled with the fantastic soft, misty and almost ethereal light makes this time quite special for me. Last night I went for a walk when the children were finally in bed, although we are reaching the stage when my eldest son goes to bed after me, and the sense of satisfaction of looking over my farm at dusk gives one a feeling of immense inner peace. It's hard to explain but I enjoy my farming at times like these.
We have had one square kilometre of our farm monitored by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) since 1999 and we had a mere 12 bird species recorded on the farm at that time including pheasant, woodpigeon, and rook - not a good base line, especially for songbirds. Last year the number of species was 58 a huge increase in ten years, almost 500% although I think they may have missed our mallard ducks on the list first time around, oh and our house martins and blue tits.
I cannot point the finger at any one cause of this increase. I am not even sure it is my influence that is helping, but I do not use insecticides in the summer months unless I really have to, Bruchid beetle being one example, and I do not use slug pellets unless the infestation is fairly severe. Although we grow oilseed rape in the rotation and we use the plough occasionally, we do not power harrow anything. It took me some years to climb out of the ever unfathomable spiral of using pellets to control slugs. We still have slugs but they are eaten before they get a chance to damage the crop. Mostly, provided the badgers do not eat them, the rout of slugs are eaten by a prickle of hedgehogs or a building of rooks or murder of crows, I am never sure which.
Nontheless, in some case, despite the hordes of predators’ we have lost a small area of crop to the blighters, but at about £1.35 per kilo up to £3.40 per kilo to buy pellets, the cost saving outweighs the occasional small area of crop loss. Beside the crop loss coincides with the rabbit warrens.
The summer months also encourage me to get the BBQ out at weekends and late last year my old faithful, Big Red, fell apart after some 26 years of service. So last November I asked the local engineers to make one for me to my own design, well OK a copy of one from South Africa. It duly arrived yesterday looking gleaming in its galvanized state and now the weather has taken a turn for the warmer it’s time to try it out. I am a bit concerned that the galvanizing might taint the food slightly, possibly with the added attraction of lightly poisoning the food, but only time and a few steaks and sausages will tell...
Richard Styles, NFU blogger
No comments have been made.