Categories

Saturday morning dawned and by 7am I was getting on the road to the first farm to collect the fodder. By 10:30 I had collected the load from the last of the farms, just north of Banbury, had a group photo of myself, Georgina, and the final donating Farmer taken by the local paper, and began the run to Somerset. All loaded and ready to go I stopped twice in the first few miles to check the ratchet straps as the heavy silage on the top of the load... 

You can’t have escaped the news of the devastating floods that are continuing to affect Somerset residents and farmers. The news clips struggle to convey the magnitude of the problem, but when, as a farmer, I saw farms completely underwater, farmhouse and all, it became painfully clear that they face a problem that eclipses anything we’ve seen locally in my lifetime, if ever. Soon after the floods had begun to have a serious effect, my... 

In a spring where you would be better off planting rice than any other crop, it will be with some trepidation that some farms will be waiting for the waters to subside and the fields to dry out to see what state their grassland is in. Some fields maybe that badly damaged that a total reseed will be necessary but hopefully many of them would be in a reasonable enough state to recover from the floods but could maybe benefit from a bit of a refresh.... 

Grass is pretty capable stuff.  Many UK farmers rely on its ability to produce fodder for livestock year on year, and it does it almost regardless of the conditions it is exposed to. But this resilience has a downside – we don’t always realise that our grass is starting to struggle because, with the addition of a little “sugar”, it keeps on growing and giving. In this edition of our blog, I’m going to look at one of...