Ron Duncan
Ron Duncan
Ron Duncan farms 222ha
(550 acres) in partnership
with his wife and eldest son
at Begrow Farms, Duffus,
Elgin, Moray. Crops include
winter wheat, spring barley,
swedes and beetroot,
alongside a pedigree
Limousin suckler herd
ON the first of the month I suddenly realised it was just days to my next farmers weekly deadline.
What had we achieved since the previous article? Not much. Rain every day meant we had only just finished spring barley and all our wheat was still ahead of us.
But as the song goes, "what a difference a day makes". The sun came out and the wind blew. Combines rolled into tired-looking but still-standing wheat and while it is easy to make rash claims of 4t/acre when moisture content is over 25%, we finished at 17% on Oct 4 with what I believe will be an above average yield overall.
Weather damage and a customer with a big carry-over of spring barley can make it a soul-destroying crop in a year like this. But the first cheques are arriving and we are reasonably pleased with £82/t plus bonuses for low nitrogen. The problem is penalties for high moisture content are eroding the latter and we have a substantial heap in the dryer, which is only worth £60/t dried today – not good enough. We will hang on for a few weeks until the harvest rush is past, though that may still be some time in the later areas. Barley straw is in great demand but severe wind damage means lots of rowing up pre-baling is needed, work we did not really need.
We did get stubble turnips sown in perfect conditions in September and lifted all our beetroot as no other growers could move for wet conditions. An amazing return of nearly 37t/ha (15t/acre) was achieved despite the crop only having 17 weeks in the ground.
Now we are concentrating on land preparation for next years crops. Oilseed rape in the area has appeared quickly, but we have had to shelve winter oats for this year, as it is now too late. We aim to grow our normal winter wheat area, half min-tilled, half ploughed. *