Hey there, I'm James Herrick and I am Beef and Arable farmer from Leicestershire, UK. 🧑🌾
This page is all about what happens on my farm on a day to day basis. You get to see my daily routines, how we run our farm and hopefully learn a bit more about how your food is produced. You may also get an insight into me and what I get up to away from the farm. 🚜
The channel gets its name from my godson. He loves to visit the farm and see the animals and has always known me as Baldy…hence ‘Baldy’s Farm’.
Hope you enjoy the channel and if you ever want to chat about anything, leave a message and ill endeavour to get back to you. 🙂
Funnily enough coming back from school drop yesterday morning heading into Hinckley from Stoke Golding, and just before you put this video out, I clocked the state hedges on the Stoke Road and was a bit miffed at how overgrown some were, not just growth this season, but much longer. So it is now just you. :-) But I blame it on my grandparents' genes.
is there any real reason for having hedges around the fields? more than seperating the fields ofcourse! where i live its mostly just a small grass line or a fence line. hedges looks alot better thats for sure.
Enclosure Acts of the 18th C. wasn't it? Boundary delineation. But also they add biodiversity. Common Agricultural Policy and large mechanisation led to many being pulled up to make super-large fields for arable and easier to work. We have an old field hedge preserved next to our house; it's a place for the birds to nest, hide away from the cats, food reserves in winter (hawthorn/blackthorn) and the ivy flowers hum to ivy bees about this time of year (Sept-Oct).
Hey Dermot, yes we could. But we actually have loads of grazing in front of cows already so feel like we might as well get it in stock ready for the winter.
at last got the go from DEFRA to plant our herbal lay 😊 , sprayed old off now to start ploughing next week , you are not having a fun time , i hope it start to go better for you
Trade in your corn kit and buy a couple new or ex hire trailers 27 or 33 feet long. Mini super singles are the better option unless you can afford proper wide tyres. Some amount of bales there!
These things happen your probably right with those 30 year old tyres and rim now traveling at 40-50km not the 30they were made for. Back in the 80s a mate and I were doing a bit of contracting but mostly trading straw with some hay. Typically 14-15000 small bales per season all on tractor and trailers in the days before 40k .not sure how we did tbh. Young and stupid ?
Not sure on your particular trailer set up and the axles/hubs etc..... but on ours, we swapped it onto super singles and not had blow-outs or tyre problems since. I hope I haven't jinxed things by saying that.... but so far... worth the initial sting of swapping them. Like you say, 50k tractor... running maybe a little hot for the design parameters of the trailer. Whack it onto super singles, and then you're running lorry tyres which are a) harder wearing and b)higher rated and c)readily available from anywhere. Great vid as usual... it's not all sunshine and rainbows all the time ;)
we decided several yrs ago, other than our own 25 acres of straw, rest arrives on a lorry, £95 ton delivered. That looks great value against your hassle, and you have the time saved travelling.
As a loader driver as well I have to totally agree with you about people moving around in the field when you are trying to load the trailer. The most annoying thing!!
So it would be the same as far as efficiency goes but would be a lot harder to dissolve in the tank. Boom sprayers just don’t have the agitation needed to dissolve the urea and then the nozzles may also block if not dissolved correctly.
with the increase in cattle would you look at buying a square baler in order to make straw clearance more efficient? I'm sure the 20 series would hack a quadrant baler.
Probably not tbh. The cost of running buying one wouldn’t be worth it I don’t think especially when the contractor only charges £5 a bale. We want to reduce tractor size too so don’t want to buy anything that would need a higher powered 6 cylinder tractor to run. Usually everything is close to home too so rounds arent an issue. just a one off this year having too travel.
Great video as usual! RE: the dark arts of stacking straw - once you get the second layer on, you'll be able to push up the first layer, and then once the third is on, you'll be able to push up the second as you add to the stack. Straw stacking done!
Its amazing the quality of videos you put out to only have 10,000 subs definitely a hidden gem. Im starting to do some electric fence rotational grazing after getting inspired by your videos. 👍
Thanks so much. I actually really enjoy making the videos so it nice to know they are appreciated 😊 I hope the rotational grazing goes well for you. If you ever have questions, feel free to ask. It’s life changing when you get into it. 👍
