Autumn brings with it the busiest time of year
It’s all happening out there. As usual, autumn is the busiest time of year. As I write, we are drilling wheat into minimally cultivated land after peas, harvesting and delivering sugar beet to the factory, ploughing in the beet tops ready to drill more wheat, and hoping fine weather lasts, cutting a few bits of second-crop hay to add a few bales to our meagre, drought-hit supply.
I should remind you that we don’t employ the half dozen or more people needed to do all those jobs at once. We use the services of a number of neighbours who act as contractors for the various jobs, and it so happens that most of them are working for us today. We find it a highly satisfactory way to save expenditure on tackle and get a lot of work done quickly when conditions are right without incurring a huge annual labour bill.
When I hear CAP reform proposals include reducing SFPs for farms employing fewer than some, as yet-to-be-established, minimum number I worry the system we use may be at risk. I can only hope some way may be found to make those who use contract labour on a regular basis eligible for full payments.
However, that’s a topic for another day. At present the preoccupation is to get next year’s crops established. My observations suggest this is well advanced. On a quick trip from Norfolk to Wales and back last week, I saw vast acreages cultivated and drilled with rape that was, in many cases, a couple of inches tall. A few days later, driving through South Norfolk into Suffolk, it wasn’t just rape that had been drilled but, apparently, most of the winter wheat as well.
Following last year’s wet autumn leading to late drillings and poor root development, culminating in disappointing yields this side of the country this harvest, the urgency is understandable. Indeed, we’ve started a week earlier than usual ourselves. I just hope we don’t suffer from too much carry-over of disease, although I note warnings of it being a bad year for phoma on rape already.
In the middle of all this, last weekend we had a fright when a year’s build-up of horse muck from the livery spontaneously combusted. Horse owners are notorious for tipping out almost clean straw despite requests not to do so. The wet weather of recent weeks must have created combustible conditions which, combined with a sharp breeze, caused the fire. We ended up with four fire engines, three loaders and two spreaders around the muck heap, which we managed to distribute while still smoking onto the fields for which it was intended. No-one was hurt and we’re grateful to all who gave up their weekend to help.
With all this excitement it would be easy to forget we’re in the middle of British Food Fortnight – a 10-year-old promotional initiative that has grown to contribute enormously to the growing consumer trend to seek out home-grown food. Participants this year include thousands of shops and organisations including most supermarkets (except Sainsbury’s), catering companies, schools, churches, Harrods, Downing Street, The Archers and so on.
It’s a real success story and a credit to all involved. And next year the Olympics will provide an opportunity to raise its profile even more. As Alexia Robinson, who founded BFF, said: “Food and sport go hand-in-hand and buying British may be the best way for many to express their patriotism.”
• David Richardson farms about 400ha (1,000 acres) of arable land near Norwich in Norfolk in partnership with his wife, Lorna. His son, Rob, is farm manager.
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