Spring the Summer Long

The good news is that the good spell of dry weather has continued allowing us to get most of the spring drilling done. As I write, we have about 14 hectares to do out of 137, so we should get finished this week.

The bad news is that the good spell of dry weather has continued, meaning that we have only had 120mm of rain here so far this year. Put that together with the total rainfall for October – December last year of 101mm, and things have been dry. Nature has a habit of balancing things out, so we are in for a prolonged wet spell at some time. The other take on this is that we have had quite a wet decade, so perhaps things have turned a corner, and we are in for a few dry years?

The fertiliser spreader has been in action this week, putting the final fertiliser on the winter barley, and the spring barley has also had its ammonium sulphate. This gives it some nitrate, as well as all the sulphur it needs for the season.

The new cultivator has also been in action, though it is beginning to show its sore points. It is really designed as a stubble cultivator, but we are using it also as a primary cultivator (that is cultivating ground that has been ploughed).

Because the ploughed ground is so hard we are losing bits off the tines, mainly the points. We will have to have a think over the summer as to what modifications we may need to make for this type of work.

With the price of agricultural machinery compared to the price of the produce we grow, using a contractor to do some of the work is a necessity. For example, we can’t justify the capital cost of a seed drill to do what we have to do, and besides, with the wide range of soil types we have at Cults Farm, finding a ‘one size fits all’ drill is not easy.
In our neck of the woods, there appears to be two types of contractor. The first is where someone has decided to set up a contracting business. The second is where a farmer has bought a large piece of kit – bigger than he probably needs – and then does some contracting with it to help spread the cost. Usually the second type is where a son has come home to the farm, and is quite happy to do this sort of work. The contractor we use is Iain Brown, who I’ve known since my days at Uni in Aberdeen. We have been using him to do all our drilling for over 20 years, and he has various types of drill, along with various sizes of tractor to pull them. When he comes in, he isn’t long in covering the ground.

So what are the drawbacks of using a contractor? Well, you have to be patient. Usually when your ground is fit to drill, so is the ground of most of his customers, so he can’t always come to you when you phone him up. Last weekend in the glorious sunshine we had to watch our neighbours drilling while we waited. To be perfectly honest, he couldn’t have done much here anyway, as not much was fit enough. Euan arrived on Monday afternoon and was here until Wednesday afternoon when the rain arrived. For a while on Wednesday we had 2 drills going, one 3m, and one 4m, so they hammered over the ground. Thursday was fair, but our ground was wet, so the 4m drill went away elsewhere where it was drier. It has rained on and off since then, so with a good forecast for this week, we are waiting patiently again.

The warmer weather has brought both winter and spring crops on quite quickly this week. We were spreading fertiliser on the winter barley – the first dose of nitrogen of the spring, and the first sown spring barley is just beginning to peep through the ground.

The week began with gale force winds, freezing conditions and snow, and ended up in almost summer like conditions – a typical Scottish spring week really. The maximum temperature recorded on Tuesday was 4.8C, with a ‘feels like’ temperature of -3.5C. Saturday brought a maximum of 16.8C, although a cool breeze meant it only felt like 14.8C. Although there wasn’t a lot of rain during the week it was enough to stop us, and then the wind was so cold the ground dried out very slowly.
Amazingly drilling continued at the start of the week until we were snowed off on Tuesday afternoon. Euan had managed to dodge the showers, and drilled just under 100 acres (40 hectares) in a little over 3 days. We haven’t done any since then due to things having to dry out, and the contractor being busy elsewhere. With a good forecast

for this week, we aren’t too bothered, as when he does come, most fields will be ready.
There was some activity though. We rent out some ground for carrots to Edenwood Farm, and they made a start to prepare the ground. Fertiliser was spread, and then the deep ridger appeared, complete with GPS system.

When the weather did improve at the weekend we were able to get on and roll the fields of spring barley that had been sown. Rolling serves a double purpose, firstly firming up the seedbed, and also pushing down any stones that may be near the surface. Rolling is also a fine job to learn how to drive to a mark, and to be able to judge turning widths etc. Cameron was given the job as his first tractor work, and was getting on fine once he got the hang of it.

The final story of the week was the purchase of a new cultivator. We’ve been needing one for a while, but not really found what we were looking for. We got this one on demonstration from McLaren Tractors, and so far it has done all that we have asked of it, so it is here to stay.

And so we start again. The winter has been very kind to us this year, and we’ve not had a lot of rain. The ground has dried out fast, so we were able to get a start to drilling some spring barley this week.

Of the 3 varieties we are growing this year, Concerto and Laureate are destined for the malting market. Both of these varieties are new to us, though Concerto has been around for a few years now. We’ve avoided Concerto because it skins and splits easily – that is the husk can come away from the grain at harvest time. This can lead to rejected loads, and has been a problem over the past few years. However, maltsters can be a fickle bunch. They decide which varieties they want, and if you want to sell to them, that’s what you have to grow. The agronomic qualities of a variety are usually further down their list of priorities.

Laureate is a new variety that has done well in malting trials over the past couple of years, but hasn’t really been tested commercially. It will be interesting to see how it does, as it shares the same problem as Concerto – that of skinning.
The third variety we are growing is Belgravia. This is being grown for the feed market, and therefore on land that is perhaps not so conducive to producing a good malting sample. Up until last year, Belgravia was a stalwart of the malting market, but it is now out of favour (see above comment about fickle maltsters). It is a fairly bullet proof variety to grow, so we see no reason to stop growing it. We are also hopefully covering our backs a bit, in that although it is currently out of favour, if we have a wet harvest and skinning/splitting is really bad, then they could well accept it. We shall see.
The land down the bottom (north) end of the farm is light and sandy, so we are able to start drilling earlier there. The photos show the drill being loaded with seed (yellow bag), and fertiliser (white bag).

The drill places the fertiliser alongside the seed, so it is readily available for the growing seedling. This gives it a faster start, and leads to a slight increase in yield. It is more costly to drill it this way though. As usual, all our drilling is done by Iain Brown, as he can bring in

the right type of drill for the various soil types on the farm, though in this case using a power harrow on the lighter soil is perhaps overkill a bit.