Farmer Focus: Rain welcome but dry spell now needed for silage
Billy lewis © Richard Swingler The last time I wrote, there was the possibility of another drought. Thankfully since then we’ve had nearly the perfect amount of rain for the time of year.
Crops and grass alike are a lovely shade of green and really beginning to move at pace.
If anything, we could now do with a good spell of dry weather to allow us to get on with some more silage-making.
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This is probably no consolation to farmers in some parts of England, who I understand are having a seriously difficult time with the lack of rainfall. Here’s hoping you get a good drop before long.
Now that all of our livestock are outside for the summer, we’re getting the sheds cleaned out and have begun composting some of our muck.
The old Morawetz compost turner has been dragged out of the nettles, pumped with grease, not looked at too closely and put to work for another year.
It has got upwards of 1,000t to get through in the next couple of months, so hopefully it will manage to stay in one piece.
I’m currently awaiting the results of our second round of plant sap analysis to come back, ahead of T2 timings.
The first test came back with the usual list of culprits. Wheats mainly low in magnesium, copper and zinc, so it will be interesting to see if this issue has been resolved since the nutrients were applied at T1.
I’m amazed that in this day and age we are still having to send leaf samples away to the Netherlands.
By the time the samples arrive there to be tested, the results are fed back to us to be analysed and the products are delivered on farm; the optimum timing for the application of the nutrients is quickly slipping away.
If anyone from Defra happens to be reading this and by some miracle has a bit of spare funding to get rid of, a laboratory in the UK capable of doing this would be such a good asset for growers.
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