Comments on the vagaries of our climate in farming circles would
certainly keep you a deal warmer than the disappearing sun has managed
for most of our summer. This harvest is likely to go down in
agricultural history as one of the longest and protracted of recent
decades, it may yet get a record for the most un-harvested crop! As
summer begins her slow slide towards autumn the days develop a different
feel; dewy mornings and slowly shortening daylight hours together
contrive to defeat man and machine at the harvesting game. A huge area
of crops remain nationally and indeed locally, that have yet to see a
combine.
Here as everywhere, harvest has been more stop than go, there have been
very few windows of opportunity when crops were ready to be harvested
and this could be done at a moisture content in the grain that meant
that no drying of the crop was necessary. In a more normal year grains
harvested at the beginning of the day will often require some drying to
ensure that they will store without problem, typically this may involve
taking grain from 16-17% down to 14.5%. Usually as the day warms this
rapidly reduces to the point where no drying is required and the
majority of the days harvesting is placed in store at or below 14.5%. We
enjoyed these conditions for a fifteen day run between 13 and 27 July
that enabled us to gather in all of our winter barley and winter oilseed
rape crops, as well as being able to bale and cart the resulting barley
straw.
Rainfall wise the July total indicates a wet month with a total of
76.8mm of rain, luckily however 71.8mm of this fell in only four days
and the majority of that before we had begun our harvest. By contrast
August recorded 68.5mm but this was spread throughout the month and on
the days that were dry there was no warm sun and crops remained
stubbornly at around 16 -18% moisture all day. At this level a modern
combine will soon outpace the grain drying facilities, so that a growing
backlog of many tonnes of wet grain soon develops. This can quickly
become a major frustration as it ultimately reduces the effective
capacity of the combine. Nationally many all crop farms have moved to
growing a greater proportion of wheat, so the wet August has greatly
magnified this problem.
On the livestock side we have been pulling our hair out! We are never
great fans of turning cattle out to grass in early spring. This year
though has been our latest ever; due to wet weather but particularly
because of the threat of Blue Tongue Disease which kept all confined to
the sheds until the weather brightened and we had secured our doses of
the vaccine needed to combat this new threat to our animals.
“Experts” love to trot out the phrase ‘modern farming practices’ when
mentioning seemingly anything that has shown even a hint of decline.
With Blue Tongue the disease depends on an infected midge as a vector to
bite an animal. The midge normally lives in Sub- Saharan Africa, but
because of ‘modern consumer habits’ are able to hitch a lift in a jet
load of flowers or vegetables all the way to Holland. From there it is a
quick trip in a lorry with hardly a wing beat of effort needed.
The double dose of blue tongue vaccine has added to our normal spring
vaccination programme, barely recovered from this the cattle then faced a
T.B. test. This involves a vet effectively injecting all of our animals
on the holding with a low dose of TB virus at two sites on the neck of
each animal. A few days later they return to “read” the result. If it is
found that an animal has two equal sized swellings as a result of the
injections they are classified as inconclusive. DEFRA then suspend all
animal movements on or off the holding for six weeks. The inconclusives
are then retested; in our case two young milking cows were again
inconclusive. Although both animals appeared completely healthy they
were taken and slaughtered to check for internal neck lesions. Very
predictably both were found not to have a trace of TB. We then had to
wait a further six weeks, still under restriction, when all animals were
again tested. Thankfully all passed and the restrictions were lifted a
week later. We could then relieve the pressure on our calf accommodation
and move a large number of male calves to other local farms for their
beef enterprises.
We do not buy animals in and are in a low risk parish, however the
expense of this farcical exercise, some compensation for two healthy
cows and the time of local and DEFRA vets are covered by a government
unable to accept that it is continuing to fail badgers, cows and farming
families, particularly in the seriously affected areas.
Lastly the wet weather has meant that the milking cows are already back
indoors, as cows sheltering under a hedge don’t eat, as well as looking
very unhappy.
Angus Dart
