Celebrating at the Farmers Weekly Awards
It has certainly been a busy week, let alone month, since I wrote my last article.
The week started with two days in Wales at the First Milk AGM. The first day was spent at the Scarlet’s stadium looking at First Milk’s groundbreaking sustainability programme; it’s always interesting talking to farmers about getting more milk from grass with torrential rain beating against the windows.
Day two involved about 200 members listening to excellent papers from fellow Nuffield scholars Jim Baird and Rhys Williams, as well as Dairy Farmers of America’s Jay Woldvogel.
The next night I headed to London to see the Perkins family win sheep farmer of the year at the Farmers Weekly Awards. Congratulations also to the Morgan family for winning the pig category and fellow Yorkshireman Guy Poskitt for winning arable farmer and then overall winner. All this activity totalled 12-hours sleep in three very excellent, but tiring, nights.
Further congratulations to one of our newest members of Team Evolution, Mike Mateer, who has made it to boot camp in Farmers Weekly‘s Farmers Apprentice. Part of Mike’s role with the company is to develop the social media angle, so as a result he gave me no option but to start tweeting. It’s @Evo_Farming for anyone who needs more than a monthly update.
I promise next month will be more of a farm-based article, as I am heading to New Zealand for 24 days with a group of Irish farmers and two fellow Nuffield scholars.
Tom and Catherine Rawson are involved in three separate dairy farming businesses. The core activity is sharemilking about 1,000 cows on a low-input, forage-based system over three sites. Tom is also a partner in a dairy consultancy company.