Robert Neill awarded 2013 Nuffield Farming Scholarship

Spring born calves have all now been vaccinated and wormed, and all of the oldest calves have been weaned. We are hoping to get all of the calves weaned and the cows settled onto their winter ration before the end of November, when we will be blood-testing all the cows for the Premium Health Scheme and TB, and they will all be pregnancy-diagnosed.

We had two weekends recently, which involved a bit of travel. Jac had a successful trip to Berlin to run the marathon. That’s two of the marathon majors now complete, along with New York two years ago. The weekend after the Berlin trip we were both in London, where I had a Nuffield Scholarship interview. I am delighted to announce that I was successful and have been awarded a 2013 Nuffield Farming Scholarship.

At the time of writing this article, we are finally wrapping our last field of silage. A couple of dry days has allowed us to eventually clear the field, but the snow clouds have been moving over us for the past few hours. At least that is one more job completed that should have been done weeks ago. Just hope we can harvest our beans before we write our next article.

All of the grain we have sold has now been uplifted. Unfortunately we haven’t yet received payment for the final few tonnes. Maybe there is still a problem, because the lorry driver tipped our wheat in another merchant’s depot. The lorry driver did receive a certificate that day for all his hard work – unfortunately it was a P45.

Robert and Jac Neill run 300 Limousin-cross cows on 1,082 acres at Upper Nisbet in the Scottish Borders. They farm 600 acres of cereals, and all progeny from the suckler herd are finished on home-grown fodder and sold live throughout the year to local butchers. Robert was 2006 Farmers Weekly Beef Farmer of the Year

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