Farmer Focus: Major project to get water going uphill

After nearly blowing up Farmers Weekly’s Twitter account with my combative opinions in my last article, I’ve come to some conclusions.

My opinions may or may not be accepted in a rational way, especially on Twitter, where certain participants try to cancel your views in a version of one-upmanship in performance politics.

I believe life is about to get much tougher, with very difficult choices for many people.

I’m more like Geoff Boycott than some might like. Certainly don’t expect Eddie Izzard. 

See also: Fire crews use What3words to save cow stuck up to neck in mud

About the author

Doug Dear

Opinion Columnist

Doug Dear farms 566ha (1,400 acres) of arable crops and runs a custom feedyard, contract-finishing about 4,000 cattle a year near Selby, North Yorkshire. Most cattle are finished over 90-120 days for nine deadweight outlets, as well as Selby and Thirsk markets.

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The beef trade goes on at pace, with unprecedented numbers in and out of the feedlot and, as I’m all about full-on production, a lot of our sand land is double-cropped.

We are growing stubble turnips after winter barley, followed by muck and then potatoes or maize. We are also redraining some land between sheep coming off and the next crop going in.  

The parcel of land we are dealing with is at the divide of a watershed.

Do we go into the Derwent, where the Environment Agency continually messes about with water levels?

On the Derwent the clough doors (flap valves) have no freeboard and, in places, due to lack of maintenance, there is so much flotsam and jetsam you can walk across the river without getting your feet wet.

No, we aren’t doing that, we are going to do it the hard way. We have decided to go into the Ouse, which requires a far more complicated scheme, to reach a pumped outfall.

Physically, we are trying to make water go uphill, and as good as Sweeting Bros (our contractor) is, that’s not going to happen.

So, all the soil I have saved from other projects has been used in our “low-hole” land reclamation project to bring the cover up over the laterals by an additional 400mm.

Then we’ve had to have a supervised dig over Transco’s 2ft-diameter gas main, to get our carrier main over the top.

We are being careful not to “ding” it. All this effort to end up with a solution that works to manage the drainage of prime agricultural land.