Paul Warburton
Paul Warburton
Paul Warburton farms
208ha (514 acres) of mostly
chalky loam at North Farm,
Shillingford Hill, near Oxford.
He is an owner-occupier,
running the business in
partnership with his wife
Hilary. Cropping includes
feed wheat, feed barley
and oilseed rape
OUR weeks holiday in Scotland late last month was most welcome – my wife drove, I "farmed" each field as it passed together with part-time map reading, and we passed acres and acres of wheat and barley not cut.
The picture on p69 of last weeks farmers weekly must have brought tears to the eyes of the Scotsmen concerned – 180 combines gobbling up 32ha (80 acres) of French wheat in just 18 mins 14 seconds!
Here in S Oxon, with ever present memories of this time last year, it has been non-stop drilling. Staggered meal times, night oil, min-till techniques and less hopper filling thanks to lower seed rates mean we have only Soissons and spring wheat left to sow. Those will go in from mid-October.
A good start was made in the first 10 days of September but we stopped due to lack of rain. I reasoned it was better to keep the seed in the bag than put it into a very dry, knobbly seed-bed. Patience was rewarded with 5mm of seasonal soft, refreshing rain and two more fields were planted. A further 30mm since has done wonders for the oilseed rape and early sown wheats.
Sadly the grain market is slipping. I was offered £90/t spot for my Soissons, but it is behind the Consort so cant be loaded. Our trader enquired whether my barley would malt. "Not a hope," I said. "Too high in N."
That reminds me of my days in the grain trade in the 1960s working for RHM. During harvest a senior company member came in with a sample of barley and showed it to our buyer George Wickham.
"It is a good sample, George – go for malting."
"No it wont," said George. "It is pinched, cuts steely, has poor colour and shape."
"But George, he is my best customer and he has got his own combine," said the senior company man, believing these to be the key criteria – happy days and a far cry from today. But the barley still went in the feed bin. *