Arable Farmer Focus: Potatoes are growing fast for Martin Lawrenson
All of our first crop of hay and haylage has been baled and stacked in the barn. Even though it has hardly rained here for two months, we still managed to get the grass rained on although it doesn’t look like it has affected the quality.
Yields are pretty good considering the crops of silage cut locally, which are well down on normal. Hopefully, demand in the winter should be quite good as most people are expecting there to be a shortage of fodder and straw due to the dry weather.
Potato crops are growing fast and look as good I could have hoped. Although dry, they seem to be thriving in the warm sunny weather.
I always look forward to our first feed of early potatoes straight out of the field. Boiled and with plenty of butter accompanied by lamb chops or bacon makes one of my favourite meals. We should be able to start selling them in a couple of weeks and hopefully yields will be as good as the crops look.
After our annual review with Chris, our bank manager, I mentioned that I may have a visit to Cereals 2010 as I hadn’t been before. He said he wouldn’t mind coming too so we decided go down the night before and stay near Cambridge to get a good start the next day.
The plan was to go out for a couple of quiet drinks and a bite to eat and get an early night. As we walked unsteadily out of a nightclub at 2am in the morning, I couldn’t help wondering where we had gone wrong.
The show, though, was excellent – although when I was looking at some of the expensive new kit, Chris did go a bit pale. I couldn’t decide whether it was the thought of spending all that money or the beer from the night before.
