Farmer Focus: Let’s hope Brexit farm promises are kept

We are out. Not something I voted for or the result I expected, but I always thought it would be close.

It also seems it has taken some politicians that wanted out by surprise, and they now don’t seem to know what to do.

I asked several before the vote what would be involved if the country voted to leave the EU. They didn’t know then, and it looks like they don’t know now. 

Let’s hope we have some clear leadership to take us through this uncertainty and that all the promises made to agriculture are delivered.

See also: Read more from our Livestock Farmer Focus writers 

We needed some rain, now we have too much; it is making it difficult to make harvest and finish shearing. 

Very intense showers have caused some of our gutters to overflow and led to some localised flooding. 

It has helped fill out the silage crops, but now they are going past their best and the ground is really wet under heavy crops. 

As we have land split up, we make big bales of silage.

See also: What will it cost us if we leave the EU?

This allows us to haul bales as needed and lets us cut a field at a time if the weather isn’t looking too good, which is what we have had to do this year.

On the downside, it is not as efficient or as quick as it would be having contractors getting it all in the pit in one swoop.

We leave the whole crop and a bit of second cut to go into the pit. 

See also: Spring lamb sale a welcome cash injection

We have weaned and drenched the first bunch of lambs. They look really well with some good weights.

In a perfect world I would weigh them all and record the information, but we only have mechanical scales and it would be very time consuming to record manually. 

I find the electronic scales just too expensive.

We have had a spreadsheet back from the abattoir with lamb weights, grades and prices, but I’m struggling to input it into my farm software programme at present. 

I hope it is all compatible, or the reading at birth will be pointless. Must speak to someone who knows.

Mark and Helen Williams run 1,000 ewes and 40 suckler cows across 283ha of part owned and rented land.

Farmplan software

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