This spring is shaping up to be very like last year particularly with temperatures although it hasn’t been quite as dry in April which is a great relief.

Although cereals are our largest area of cropping on the farm we have a similar area of spring crops split between sugar beet, potatoes , vining peas and salads so this time of year is particularly busy. We finished drilling sugar beet yesterday which is a relief as yields will start to drop on drillings from mid April.

Pea drilling in our group is just about 30% through. Planning for this crop is much more crucial as we need to be able harvest sequentially over a period of about 48 days. Early crops grow more slowly than mid to late season crops so we have to avoid overdrilling in March and early April. We will be drilling here over the weekend. Our peas are destined to be harvested about 3 weeks after we start and to show how elongated early drilling is we started drilling in the last week of February nearly 6 weeks ago. We hope to finish group drilling in the last week of May and harvest should be from mid June until early August – weather permitting.

We are nearing completion of the Farm shop and new café and hope to open in early May although we still await confirmation of change of use planning which is taking far longer than it should do. Covid restrictions meant we couldn’t open the Funpark for Easter but lambing is still going well with 70% of our ewes now lambed and 75% of our cows calved. Hopefully next year we will be able to open for Easter again. We start the drive in cinema next weekend and are now into planning for both the summer and Halloween events so plenty to do.

Finally some new additions to the family this week. Our Cocker Spaniel , Rosie, had 5 puppies this week . Both mother and puppies are doing well!

Stay safe and well, Richard.