January is meant to be a quieter time of year on most farms but, as with all livestock, there is always plenty to do.

We have our first batch of ewes lambing in a couple of weeks so after we have pregnancy scanned - which should happen this afternoon- they will be inside having spent the past couple of months with the main flock grazing stubble turnips. That crop was drilled as soon possible after the wheat was harvested and provides valuable feed over winter and makes a fantastic entry for our 2022 Sugar Beet crop.

We always have a good quantity of farmyard manure produced from the cattle, pigs and horses. In the past we have always been able to spread this prior to drilling the stubble turnips in late summer when hopefully ground conditions are good, and we do not do too much soil damage. The nutrients from the FYM mean we do not need to apply any other artificial fertiliser for that crop or the sugar beet. However, in 2021 the Environment agency decided to ban all muck applications until the spring to avoid what they thought was significant risk to water courses from runoff. We managed to get round the rules by ensuring our soil samples showed the need for nutrients for the stubble turnips. These rules are going to be amended for 2022 but what it highlights is yet another regulator trying to potentially reduce UK farm output but accepting that imported food from around the world can be grown without the same environmental protections we have here!

We are busy planning for our Easter event at the Fun park – the Spring Bonanza! We haven’t been able to run this for the past 2 years, so we anticipate a big demand for this. Hopefully we will have plenty of lambs for the public to see. The farm shop is a bit quieter this month which I think we expected. We have suffered from staffing issues with Covid which meant I had to spend the day on the Fish Counter – a new experience for me- luckily all went I think, and I managed to get my fish breeds right!

As well as being a director of Camgrain I also chair our pea group. We have our annual pricing negotiations in December and January. We have not had an increase in price for several years and in order to keep the crop competitive we had to make the case for a significant increase against a background of supermarket own label frozen peas being heavily discounted in the ongoing supermarket price wars. Our arguments that those price wars should not impact on grower pricing won the day and we have achieved an increase of about 14% for 2022 – a good result which will keep the crop being grown in Norfolk and Suffolk

One other job that is ongoing is pigeon and goose scaring – the geese will leave back to Scandinavia in a few weeks, but pigeon numbers keep going up, so make for a challenging few weeks until crops start to grow again in the spring.

Stay safe and well

Richard Hirst