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Over the Farm Gate is kindly supplied by John Jefferies- Farmer Director
It’s here!!!!
Harvest has started. Exciting times. A farmer is able to get all of his toys out of the shed and use them all at more or less the same time.
Harvest is also the culmination of a full seasons work. Where you get the opportunity to see what has worked well and what has not. I often think that driving the combine is the “king of jobs” as you have the best view of the incoming crop.
For me harvest stared last Sunday afternoon and a friend came out to the field and captured this photo during the evening. I first cut some hybrid barley, which produced a rather disappointing 7.4t/ha. However, the conventional 2 row barley has been coming off at 9t/ha, which is very pleasing. What I now need to do is try to work out why that small field of hybrid (luckily it was only 2.3ha) was so poor. I might have a clue in a further field of barley. Here the drill (or drill woman) missed a 12m strip. This was spotted and in mid October was patched in with hybrid seed. This small area of hybrid made the yield monitor on the combine dance up to 10.5t/ha. The only differences between this small area and the small field was the 3 weeks later drilling date and not using a plant growth regular called Terpal. I suspect it is the latter of these two possibilities that cause the 7.4t yield. In which case the lesson is to drill later and not use the growth regulator.
Elsewhere I have an exciting little project. As a 22 year old I worked in Australia for a very short period of time. My travels were cut short by my fathers untimely passing. However, I worked on an irrigated farm in New South Wales, where it was possible to grow 2 crops per year. Wheat followed by Soya beans. Ever since then I have always wanted to grow 2 crops per year. So this is the year I am trying. The scene was set as the barley came off quite early and as there is ample moisture (from all these showers) and as I had 350kg surplus spring barley seed. So on Wednesday evening it was drilled. I see 3 possible outcomes.
1. A harvest of a good crop of malting barley in late October
2. A harvest of a poor crop of feed barley in late October
3. Sheep grazing in November.
I hope for outcome 1, but expect outcome 3. Updates to follow. But a mere 30 hours after drilling, the barley has germinated.
In other news. As part of the mid-tier conservation scheme I grow small areas of wild bird food. This was drilled into crisp, bone dry soil at the end of June, just before the forecast rain. It is now doing rather well and will feed a good number of birds this winter.
