Everybody needs good neighbours

Too often farmers see their neighbours as competition, I do not agree, collaboration and Co-operation are key. Thanks to the help of a lot of our neighbours and employees, we finished harvesting our winter wheat on August 24 - the earliest I can ever remember. In 2002 I wanted to finish before going back to school on September 5 and in 2008 we had hardly started wheat on August 24.

This year on many occasions due to the rain, our full trailers of corn have been parked under a neighbours closest barn in the middle of the night, to keep them dry in anticipation of rain until the morning. There have been a few twilight shifts. One night we finished cutting at 2am, it was 4am by the time I got all of the trailers home and got to bed. Waking up to rain the next morning is actually quite refreshing when you know your hard work the night before to finish the job was worthwhile.

One of the managing directors during my graduate scheme once told me that he wanted managers who can make decisions. Sometimes you might not make the right decision but once the decision is made, you are in charge of the situation. The worst thing is not making a decision and not being in control of a situation. The weather cannot be managed but every opportunity to harvest we made the most of it and we try to finish blocks of land so we can move the combine in the mornings when it is too wet to harvest. We can now push on with autumn cultivations.

Overall cereal yields are below average due to the dry May and June. Oilseed rape has been our best crop, averaging 1.7 tonnes/acre, It would have been better if it wasn't for one poor field. Next year we are dropping winter barley to grow more OSR due to gross margin, the varieties will be Windozz and Nikita. The only advantage of barley is early harvest and high quality straw.

At the time of writing, I haven't worked out our average wheat yield but can confirm it is closer to three tonnes per acre than four. The heavy land seems to have preformed best.

We still have 25 acres of spring beans to harvest. These will not perform well this year, the crop is half the height of last year. We do like growing protein on the farm to feed to our cattle though.

We have bought a stubble rake this year, which is used to encourage weed seeds on the surface of the soil to grow. It also disturbs slug populations, complimenting our strip tillage system. Additionally, we have bought a set of Cambridge rolls with paddle boards off another very good neighbour, finishing our strip tillage system and leaving a level and consolidated seed bed.

This article marks a year of my columns, something I really enjoy and I hope you do too.