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Farm Diary May 2012
Written by Liz   
Friday, 18 May 2012

May Diary

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The weather has certainly changed since the last website diary in March! The spell of warm, dry early spring weather broke at the beginning of April. Since then, we have seen over 5 weeks of very wet weather with cool temperatures and sometimes very cold weather due to northerly winds.

By the middle of May the farm has received over 160 millimetres of rainfall. In fact in one week we received 82mm which is more than the total for the first 3 months of the year!

As a result, the last 5 weeks have been very challenging due to short spells of infield water logging. The river Granta has burst its banks more than once, briefly flooding one of our Sugar Beet fields.

Luckily we have had enough dry spells in between the showers to keep most field work up to date.  Unfortunately, we have not been able to complete potato planting. In fact we managed to finish one of our fields on the 14th of the month which is the first time the planter has ventured out of the barn for 4 weeks. Fortunately we only have 12 hectares of Organic salad potatoes to plant, which providing we can plant in reasonable conditions in the next 3 weeks or so, should still be able to reach their full potential.

Early march planted potato crops have emerged well and will be initiating tubers by the third week of this month. However, we are very nervous at the prospect of ground frosts which are forecast over the next few nights. We managed to weed our first field of organic potatoes recently and providing we can weed again over the next couple of weeks weeds should not be too much of a problem in this crop.

We have managed to keep up to date with the gas burner to remove weeds in front of the carrot drill and also in front of emerging organic onion crops. A brief spell of dry weather at the weekend allowed us to hoe most of the crop but very wet soil conditions in one of the fields has prevented us from finishing this task at the moment. The wet weather has produced a flush of weeds so we are keen to remove these before they become too large.

We are concerned for some fields of sugar beet. The cold soil conditions have almost halted crop growth for 3 weeks now. We are up to date with weed control, but we desperately need some warm weather in the coming weeks if this crop is to reach a satisfactory yield this year.

The rains certainly came in time for the cereals. Both first and second wheat crops look very well and providing they receive some sunshine in the next few weeks they could yield well. Disease pressure from Septoria is high but fortunately we have kept up to date with fungicide applications. Thanks for this go to our sprayer operator Chris, who completed some of the fungicide spraying at 1.30am one morning!

Organic Wheats look well and are relatively free from weeds and disease apart from one crop where the wet weather prevented us from a 3rd pass with the weeder.

Winter oilseed rape crops are in mid flower and have responded well to the recent moisture. They will be receiving a fungicide around the middle of the month. Spring rape crops have emerged well and our efforts have been spent keeping pigeons from grazing the emerging seedlings.

The second true leaf is emerging on early march drilled onion crops. They are looking ok at the moment and we are hoping that the forecasted hail showers over the next few days will miss these tender plants.

Our Hinxton Farm has recently been surveyed for breeding birds for a second time by a local RSPB volunteer. Already 3 new species have been noted since the last survey 3 years ago including whitethroats and yellow hammers.

Planning for Open Farm Sunday in four weeks time is going well and we will be having some new activities for this year including pollinator surveying, health and safety demonstrations and some challenging competitions.

We are all hoping for some nice warm sunny weather in the next few weeks not only for the crops but for the open day on the 17th June. Fingers crossed!

Andrew Nottage

16th May 2012

Last Updated ( Friday, 18 May 2012 )
 
Open Farm Sunday 2012
Written by Liz   
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Open Farm Sunday - 2012
 
Sunday 17th June
 
Plans are well underway for our 7th Open Farm Sunday event on Father's Day - 17th June 2012.
 
The event will take place from 2 - 5pm and there will be things to do for all the family.
 
Come and join us for an afternoon on the farm!
 
Further details to follow!
 
 
 
 
 
 
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 17 April 2012 )
 
Farm Diary March 2012
Written by Liz   
Friday, 13 April 2012

March 2012 Website diary


March has been a very busy month for us on the farm. Almost 15mm of very welcome rain fell over the weekend of the 4th of March, a few days after we finished planting our conventional onion crop. Since then we have been busy planting into some excellent, all be it, drying seedbeds.

Sugar Beet drilling commenced on the 12th and although seedbeds were ideal, drilling was a frustrating affair for the first few days of the week due to heavy overnight dews and dull overcast days with little wind. Rain over the following weekend meant that we finished planting on the 23rd in superb conditions helped by warm spring sunshine. The early drilled fields are emerging nicely but we have noticed the odd sign of mice damage which we are monitoring closely.

The rain in early march has caused some capping in one of our February drilled Onion fields due to the very warm weather in the last few days of the month and we are making plans to apply some water to soften the land to enable the small seedlings to emerge.

Soil conditions have allowed us to use our weeder harrow to remove any small weeds from the Organic Cereals and most fields have had 2 passes.

Spring Oilseed rape is rapidly emerging from moist seedbeds and our attentions will soon be moving away from controlling pigeons from the winter crop to keeping them off the spring varieties. The winter crop will be on flower in early April and we are monitoring the crop for pollen beetle over the next week or so.

Conventional wheat crops have recently received their first fungicide and second application of Nitrogen fertiliser. Later drilled crops following sugar beet look well but they will be in need of some moisture soon to enable them to reach their full potential.

Potato planting commenced on the 12th of March with the variety King Edwards on some rented land into some of the best soil conditions we have seen on the farm. By the end of the month we hope to be almost 85% through planting with only organic and seed crops remaining to be planted in April.

Planning for Open Farm Sunday on June 13th continues when time allows.

We have only received 60mm of rain since the start of the year, some 35% of what we would expect in a normal year. We have been working closely with the Environment Agency to lessen the impact of the drought if the dry weather continues into the summer, and we have altered some of our cropping away from vegetable crops to less water dependant types such as spring oilseed rape and sugar beet.

On a lighter note our local radio station, Radio Cambridgeshire, hosted their breakfast show with us recently, reporting on the drought situation and how it is affecting farmers.  During the show, Jeremy Sallis, the shows presenter along with Andrew Nottage on drums and Johnny Dee, a reporter on guitar with some brilliant backing singers, performed a drought themed song live on the radio. 

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Photo Courtesy of BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

Andrew Nottage

Last Updated ( Friday, 18 May 2012 )
 
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