Grass could play a bigger role on Farmers Weekly’s western Barometer farm near Wolverhampton before too long, Andrew Blake discovers

If Simon Collins had been able to choose when he took over from Andrew Blenkiron as manager at Chillington Farms it certainly wouldn’t have been when he did – 1 Sept 2008.

“Andrew had hoped to have finished harvest by then, but the wheat was only a quarter done, and we didn’t finish combining the beans until the end of that month,” says Mr Collins.

The sodden autumn, general financial upheaval and rocketing inputs prices, especially of fertiliser, all added to his new challenge.

“Andrew had bought some inputs quite well, before the prices really took off. Now they’ve come back down a bit, so by the time we get the rest we should be about back on an even-keel budget.

“He also bought a Clayson 8060 combine which allowed us to get on to fields where we didn’t dare travel with the heavier CX860.”

Mr Collins also pays tribute to the efforts of the two tractor drivers he inherited – John Dunbar and Darren Simmons.

They were out ploughing beans down between Christmas and the New Year and still drilling Soissons wheat on 8 January, he notes.

The latter’s yield will inevitably suffer, he admits. But having sown the variety on frost in his previous role as a Cotswolds farm manager as late as 15 January he is not unduly concerned.

“At least it’s nearly all in. There’s only one 7.5ha field that we’ve failed to drill.”

It was an autumn in which the farm’s plough and power harrow/drill combination really paid off, he believes. “It meant we never had too much land exposed to the weather which we probably would have had if we’d been min-tilling. We just snatched what we could whenever the conditions allowed.”

On the downside a significant area of the winter oilseed rape looks unlikely to be worth leaving.

“I reckon about 60 of our 260 acres of Castille sown at the end of September and early October will have to be pulled up and sown to something else. It came through OK, but then rabbits and pigeons hammered it. But the real problem was the light sandy soil. It slumped badly and went very tight, leaving the plants no chance.”

Fortunately no herbicide has been applied to those areas, so there are plenty of spring alternatives, he notes.

“Bryce Rham, our agronomist, is quite keen on spring rape to maintain the rotation, but I’d be worried about it droughting out on this land. I’d prefer to try spring barley for malting, if we can get a contract, or even spring wheat.”