FARMER FOCUS: I will spend less time in the office

With all winter crops drilled, sugar beet harvesting and loading running to time, plus spraying up to date, I can now look back over 2013 and forward to 2014.
While arable work has quietened down on the farm, livestock tasks are assuming a greater importance. We did our main sheep scanning before Christmas and then the 800 Dorset Cross ewes started lambing the day after Boxing Day. The mild and moist conditions of the past few months has led to an abundance of forage, with grass still growing and excellent crops of stubble turnips to graze. This led to the early lambing ewes being housed in a very fit condition.
With a much better-quality harvest in 2013 to market and prices having risen over the past three months, the year has finished on a more positive note than might have been expected six months ago.
So what about my resolutions for 2014? Well, I first looked back at what I wrote at the start of 2013 to see what I have actually achieved. I did manage to clear out the office and must admit that I haven’t missed anything. I did outsource administration of my environmental schemes to FWAG, as well as merging four “classic”ones into one new entry/higher level stewardship agreement.
However, my family wouldn’t agree that I successfully spent less time in my office than previous years, or that I am any more computer literate, so this is an area that I must continue to work on in 2014. Other office tasks will include updating the farm’s website in preparation for the Cereals event. Resolutions outside farming will include renewing my membership of the local gym, post-new year.
Following speculation about his future career, the NFU president Peter Kendall has indicated he would like to take up pig-keeping. While we have had pigs on this farm in the past, I would prefer to return to having cattle here, which have been absent since we parted with them after the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001.
Best wishes for 2014.
Former Farmers Weekly Farmer of the Year Robert Law farms 1,200ha on the Hertfordshire/Cambridgeshire/Essex borders growing cereals, peas, forage rape for seed and sugar beet. He also manages 500ha of Nottinghamshire sandland