Farmer Focus: Why I’m feeling cautiously optimistic

Cautiously optimistic – that’s how I’m feeling.

Optimism is an essential trait if one is not to become consumed by the wacky world around us.

Seeing crops flourish this spring is good for the soul, even if you need special glasses to see the profit in them.

We got the oats tickled in a few weeks ago, and have sown our contracted malting barley.

See also: On-farm vining pea trials aim to tackle costly UK virus losses

About the author

Andrew Wilson

Arable Farmer Focus writer Andrew Wilson is a fourth-generation tenant of Castle Howard Estate in North Yorkshire. The farm supports crops of wheat, barley, oats, beans, sugar beet, potatoes, and grass for hay across 250ha. Other enterprises include bed and breakfast pigs, environmental stewardship, rooftop solar and contracting work.  

Contact:

Email: wilsonbrickyard@gmail.com

X: https://twitter.com/SpudSlingsby

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Thanks to the spring tine cultivator, some drying winds and the good old combi drill we got the seed in (after a few drainage issues and wet winter made patience the order of the day).

Nutrition all went in the seed-bed; the high winds dried the ground enough to let us get it rolled before the rain and a pre-emergence of flufenacet and diflufenican applied. Here’s hoping it makes the grade.

I am halfway through drilling our sugar beet and have stuck to last year’s successful formula of placing 40% of the nitrogen with some phosphate liberator under the seed, and potash, calcium, salt and sulphur buried with some pig muck and Limex.

The beet price is less attractive than last year and remains volatile, but crop performance, agronomic compatibility and harvest hassle factor still ranks it above oilseed rape in our rotation currently.

April is always a busy month for us. The second dose of nitrogen on winter cereals went on at the end of March. Recent seasons indicate early nitrogen brings greater benefits than later.

For once I am sprayed up, we’ve just had a pig batch change and are busy spreading the manure and some imported broiler litter on potato land.

With planting imminent, we’ve hardly time to dwell on the price of fuel or state of the open markets – just my luck to have a few tonnes to sell in a season where the market doesn’t want them!

Over half of our crops are grown on contract, and for all that sometimes shields us from market peaks, it is in times like these that we are pleased to be shielded from the troughs too, even if movement is at least a month behind.