I think most farmers are talking about either fertilizer or the drought. Today however we have had a sprinkling of rain but it was very much hit and miss around here.

Depending upon where your farm is, so luck of the draw! We have had 7mm today so pleased with this and means we can now put more nitrogen on the Wheats and Spring Barley’s, we’d been delaying applications because of the drought / low temperatures and price of Nitrogen.

Above, the graph shows the rain we’ve had for the month of April (13mm) almost 3 weeks without rain.

The drilling of Maize we have also held back on due to lack of moisture in seed bed, but now we will get this drilled up this weekend with the fertilizer dropped down a spout by the seed to give it a kick start. Fingers crossed for some more rain soon as the amount today will quickly be absorbed or evaporate in the wind.

I thought I’d update you on HS2 with some pictures as most of you are unaffected by this huge project. It is hard to get Stone or fuel delivered to farms locally around here as HS2 is consuming everything and everyone. They are on a recruitment drive at the moment to ramp up earth works.

The amount of lorry movements and earth moving is just unreal. The last picture shows the vast width of country being taken for the line with service road being formed above right of yellow digger. The railway line runs to left of yellow digger up the hill. This cutting in forefront of picture is only half the intended depth, its hard to photograph the immensity of this line. I just hope its worthwhile now a lot of people are working at home!

Stay safe and well

Jo