Farmer Focus: Morale and winter forage up after rain

It finally rained, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. We had been holding off drilling the forage crop as the forecast was looking very hit and miss. There seemed little point putting seed into dry ground without knowing whether there was enough rain coming to get it away.

See also: Tips on choosing brassicas for home-grown winter forage

About the author

Louise Elkington

Louise Elkington runs 500 breeding ewes and a small suckler herd in Lincolnshire with husband Chris. Gelston Lamb sells all meat produced on the farm through pop-up shops, deliveries and catering. They have 54ha of grass on a farm business tenancy and agreements for stubble turnips and hay aftermaths.

Read more articles by Louise Elkington

Thankfully, the waiting paid off. We had 20mm of rain before drilling, leaving us with a beautifully moist seedbed and ideal conditions to get the crop in.

Once it was drilled, another 35mm followed, which was just what we needed. It’s one of our latest forage crop drilling dates, but the crop is already up and looking promising. Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that the flea beetles don’t find it. 

The rain has also given everyone a much-needed lift. Seeing the farm start to green up again after such a dry spell has done wonders for morale.

However, some of the paddocks where we shut the ewes up and fed haylage have taken a real battering.

They have been grazed down and burned off so heavily that we may need to overseed some patches to get them back into shape.

We were also lucky with the weather for our recent pop-up shop on the farm. While we desperately wanted the rain, we really didn’t want it on the day, as wet weather definitely puts people off making the trip out.

Thankfully, the sun came out and we had a really successful day. People genuinely love coming onto the farm and buying directly from us, and it’s brilliant to see that connection between customers and the family farm.

The next job is getting the ewes ready for the tups. We’ll give them one final MOT, make sure they are all in good order and get a bolus into them.

All our breeding ewes have now been vaccinated against bluetongue, as we simply didn’t want to take the risk with them. We have, however, decided not to vaccinate the lambs, rightly or wrongly.

As autumn approaches, we’ll soon be back into “joint” weather and the BBQ products will start to slow down – something the butchery team probably won’t be too disappointed about.

We’re always working on new flavours and products, though, to keep things interesting and give customers plenty of reasons to keep coming back and supporting us.