I thought I’d try to avoid talking about the weather, but there’s not much going on thanks to the weather, so I’ll have to moan about it! We have had one of wettest autumns in memory (certainly since I joined the farm) and that has left the countryside looking rather sad. Crops that were drilled into good conditions have gone backwards and anything drilled after the second week of October looks awful.

We are planning work for the Spring, and it looks like there will be a lot to do. The sick looking crops will need fertiliser as soon as the application window opens. We also have a fair amount of spring drilling to do, most planned, but some due to crops failing to establish due to the unrelenting wet conditions. As soon as we are able to in the New Year, cover crops will be sprayed off. A large part of our spring acreage will be direct drilled having cultivated ahead of the cover crops, but we also have ploughed land that will need further cultivation before drilling with spring crops. Spring crops on our farm are spring barley and oats, which come to Camgrain, and sugar beet.

Winter is a good time for estate maintenance. Tasks involve hedge-cutting, tree shearing and ditching. Drainage is a topical issue at the moment, and we are reviewing fields to see where drainage can be improved. By maintaining hedges and ditches we can ensure that drains run freely and take the water away. Once we know ditches are working properly then we look to see if existing drains under the fields are working, or need repair. In some cases, the drains are very old (we have some hand-drawn maps from the 1930s! see picture) and the drains are at the end of their lifespan. If that’s the case we will compile quotes for replacement schemes. Working drains are very important on our land. Although the cost of new drains is high, it is one of the best investments that can be made on a farm and can turn fields that under-perform into high yielding areas. It is also the case that we need our land to be able to cope with the increase in extreme weather events. Well drained fields are better able to cope with the torrential downpours that seem all to frequent at the moment.