My role here is a perfect mixture of practical hands-on farming combined with farm office duties of planning, number crunching and record keeping.

As a newcomer I’m constantly comparing agriculture here with that in the UK. Most sources say agriculture, forestry and fishing contribute about 1% to the UK’s gross domestic product. In Canada, agriculture alone contributes 8%.

Here it’s plain to see how important farming and farmers are in society. Every other vehicle is farm-related and seed companies and tractor dealerships advertise on local radio. Agriculture is a well-respected industry, and rightly so.

People willingly pull out of my way as I take a tractor and cultivator down the road. They smile and wave as I trundle by, a far cry from the UK, where I was accustomed to ignorant motorists speeding past and “hedging” my tractor and grain trailer.

It seems Canada is as confused as the UK over whether to use metric or imperial measures.

The potato store controls are all marked in degrees Fahrenheit, yet the weather is discussed in degrees Celsius.

Spraying is in litres/acre, yet the bowser is calibrated in gallons.

Nuts and bolts are a mix of both metric and imperial, sometimes on the same machine, depending where it was made.

Yields are either in bushels or tons. But is that a short ton or a long ton?

This season all our fields have been soil sampled, an especially important task given the ridiculously high fertiliser prices. Luckily, the farm has a history of compost applications, so phosphate and potash levels are generally good. But much consideration has gone into deciding what to apply where, given that the viability of some crops is debatable at current prices.

Now, where did I put that calculator and list of conversion factors?

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