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With the dairy gone we have moved to growing crops and rearing
beef cattle – this form of mixed farming is very popular in this area as the better land can be used for combinable crops and the heavier clay wet fields are used for growing grass to be grazed by cattle. We are also entering the new SFI (sustainable farming initiative) and hope to add more flower margins and buffer strips to improve biodiversity on the farm. There’s a lot to learn and we certainly haven’t had the easiest autumn for us to start that journey!
Photos above of this autumn's winter wheat drilling campaign with its ups and downs.
Top left : How it should look
Top Right : How most of it looks after the monsoon of October and November
Bottom Left : The reason to be a farmer - early raising sun, machinery working well, cracking on with the drilling mission
Bottom left : What happens when you push your luck in a wet field. Very fustrating
We will have a small piece in each newsletter going forward documenting the progress of change and challenges of farming in this new way.
As part of our farming business now involves rearing beef cattle from calf to finished animal for slaughter, we will have beef boxes available to purchase next summer. We will go into more depth on beef rearing in future letters.
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