Farmer Focus Arable: Contractors make short work of carrot sowing for Martin Lawrenson

With a long spell of fine weather everything seems to be happening at once.

Potato planting is progressing well and we’ve finished drilling all our cereals. We’re also grading potatoes which are going for peeling. The price is disappointing but at least it’s better than we had expected as they were still in the ground a month ago.

All the carrots have been sown by contractors who arrived a couple of days ago in the early morning and had the job done by mid-afternoon.

I have also bitten the bullet and purchased the rest of our fertiliser after holding off as long as I could. I think we’ve saved quite a bit by waiting for the price to ease, although I was hoping that it might have come down even further.

I was speaking to a local wise man the other day about the lovely weather, when it would break and prospects for the year ahead. He cheered me up no end by predicting it would be another wet summer like the last two.

Apparently this year has 13 new moons just like the past two. This only happens about every 50 years and the last time it occurred there were three wet years.

Then I heard someone say that it was going to be dry because the weather follows a seven-year pattern. And someone else quoted the old saying about flowering trees: “Oak before ash, we’re in for a splash. Ash before oak, we’re in for a soak”.

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