Half term was spent with the family. Normally, I have to physically remove myself from the area to be able to switch off, but this holiday we just relaxed in the garden in the sun. It is so important to have a break to physically and, more importantly, mentally relax.

The crops have come on in leaps and bounds and are looking better than last time I wrote.

The maize has started to look like a crop after spending a little too long underground for my liking.

About the author

Robin Aird

Arable Farmer Focus writer Robin Aird manages 1,500ha on the north Wiltshire and Gloucestershire border, with a further 160ha on a contract farming agreement. Soils vary from gravel to clay with the majority silty clay loams. The diverse estate has Residential, commercial and events enterprises. He is Basis qualified and advises on other farming businesses.

Contact:

Email: robin.aird@charltonpark.estate

Read more articles by Robin Aird

See also: Hybrid rye chosen for low inputs and climate resilience

The spring wheat still looks stunning and I think this will be the crop of the year, but there’s still time for it to change.

Winter barley is grain filling and I have been told it’s not as bad as I said it was… obviously I’m too hard on myself.

We did some septoria winter wheat leaf testing on leaves two and three with Bayer, which showed no disease across either variety with the flag leaf just emerging.

This got me excited about the prospect of saving money on T2s. We then had 90mm of rain over the next fortnight, and I started to lose my confidence about cutting rates.

The day before spraying we did another test with SwiftDetect, which turned the sample around in less than a day.

This showed a little bit of disease, but gave me the confidence to save more than £4,000. Time will tell if this was the correct decision.

I believe this technology is the way forward, and will help in the reduction of chemical use.

Earlier in the spring we had a block of ground tested by NRM for a carbon and organic matter audit.

We chose a block that had no livestock on it for more than 40 years, but had sewage cake and a few farmyard manure applications over the past 20 years.

We were very pleased to see we were well above average and just below the top quartile. Still more work to do, but we’re moving in the right direction.

It was interesting to see we have an average organic matter content of 5.7%, and our best field has 146t/ha of organic carbon stock.

We carbon offset a few of our events on the estate and, hopefully, we can use this data to offset more in a new way.