Let’s take a look back at the last couple of weeks with Tom, P.X. Farms Farm Manager:
When you are embraced in the thick of it, it’s easy to forget all the things you have been doing. Though it’s still very wet here, with another 20mm just recently, we are still really busy. In a ‘normal’ year, we would be spring drilling, but we still have 880 hectares of spring cropping to put in the ground. It will be interesting to see how this impacts our spring crops, but fingers crossed we have a dry spell and, before long, we can get on.
Everyone is keen to get out of the yard and get back up on the land. Even though it has been a long winter since October, apart from these two frosty spells, about 60% of the winter cropping areas have had their first application. Whilst most farms do a three-way split of application, we have found two work best for us. By using an inhibitor product with the nitrogen, just to get back to the utilisation of the nitrogen, it stabilises it so there is less leaching. This obviously has a better impact on the environment, as well as reducing fertiliser applications.
We’ve been busy in the workshop doing annual maintenance on chaser bins ready to harvest and various cultivation equipment, and important safety maintenance like the Tilly tests continues on all the trailed equipment. We’ve also installed a new roof on some stables.
Out in the field, the diggers are still busy. We’ve hired another two diggers just because of the fact we’ve got so much water laid on land, and it seems a good use of time to put our team on diggers to facilitate water movement off the land, so we’re currently running four hire machine diggers.
We’ve also been doing a lot of work in the local community to help out clearing footpaths and digging out grips and ditches along the side of footpaths. This helps when people go for their walk around the village, so they’re not inundated with mud, and we’ve tried our best to keep the roads swept, which is always a challenge.
James and I were kindly invited to Harsewinkel in Germany to visit the Claas factory and the parts facility, which was a really great trip. They make around 30 combines a day and have an impressive setup. We had a golden handover for our fourth and final machine, which we’re expecting for this coming harvest.
Our grain stores are continuing to empty from last year’s crops, and our colour sorter has been cleaning some spring oat seed for us. There is some availability for the grain store, so get in touch with the grain store office—01954 210211, option 3.
I am looking forward to some drier weather.
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