Farmer Focus: Gut feeling is our best decision-making tool
Andrew Wilson © Angela Waites Photography One of the best decision-making methods in my experience, is gut feeling. Sometimes a decision doesn’t even look all that sensible, but it’s rare that following one’s inner being doesn’t bear fruit.
Boy, am I glad I decided to lift over half my sugar beet on 14 January.
Conditions were decidedly tender underfoot, but we mostly kept afloat. From 27 acres, we put 1100t on the pad and in the shed that also serves as wet grain and short-term potato storage.
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It has pretty much rained ever since. Although we’ve had less than half the rain in January that some have endured, and we’ve managed to whittle off a few more acres at the drier side of the field to fill our contract.
Dirt tares are, predictably, higher than I’d like, and sugar is variable. The average adjusted yield is a very acceptable three-figure number per hectare, the best in the 19 years I’ve kept anything like a record.
Yes, a positive, in a season of mostly gloom. Who would have thought it?
We are yet to get going on fixing drains with the digger and jetter, mostly because we would get stuck, but also because I’d really like to desiccate the cover crops in the same fields first, to avoid grassweed-coloured surprises later in summer.
Walking these cover crops is interesting. It’s like the land is trying to communicate with us.
Don’t worry, I haven’t lost the plot yet, but there must be some reason why the same seed mix sown in adjacent fields on comparable land look quite different to each other.
Why have some species thrived, and some died? Why are certain weeds prolific and some notably absent? In some fields what I expect to see is pretty much what is there, but in others much less so.
I think we need to pay more attention to the why.
I drilled my first cover crop in 2011 and have learned a lot about what not to do, and had a few triumphs too.
There is always a better way to do everything, it just sometimes takes a bit of finding.
Extracting value from every cost has seldom been more important. I now find myself looking at the ground from a different viewpoint.