Great video ...terrible to see land being encouraged out of food production in a country / world of food shortages ....we have the same madness over here.
It’s horrendous here now. We are as wet as at any time during the winter, it won’t stop raining and I think we’ll have a third of the farm without any crops in between abuse late drilled spring crops don’t perform and with rock bottom prices, it’s a disaster.
Great video again Andrew, sad to see your farm so wet. You are such a fantastic perfectionist, makes it even tougher for you. It must have big implications for grain production in the uk. Interesting perspective on the SFI, I think you are right. Land is for food production
Great video Andrew as always, the Weather has changed alot this psst 30 years I remember back in the late 80s to early 90s we had all of the ploughing done around November for spring cropping. It's near impossible now to even drive in a field never mind plough it. The climate has definitely changed. As of today there is next to 0 ploughing done in the county and rain continues.
Great mid week update Andrew, Farols yard is impressive with all the different machinery they have. Lets hope we get some decent weather soon, as we sure could do with it .
Andy speak to our mate and turf the suspect slipping banks. We have this issue on a much bigger scale when the Cut level is dropped too quickly. Happening far to frequently for no reason whatsoever
Good video with a good mix of everything you and everyone involved has been up to. Very interesting shame some of the bank slipped but at least Barry was still on site , bound to happen with the mix of soils you have then with even more wet stuff added in.
The weather must be getting all farmers down. Great mix of what's going on, the tech is something else. The one thing I remember about the London tube is the whoosh of air you'd get when at the platform. The contrast between country and capital was huge - each perhaps wondering how they put up with it day after day.
I wouldn’t be too rigid regarding a drilling cut off dates just yet. This year is so different from last year. 2012/13 was similar to now and the highest yielding Spring Barley I had in 2013 was drilled 7th May!
But grain prices are about half last year so need to fa tor that in. Also, we’ve had so much rain that we will go into a long dry spell which happened last year after the spring crops were put in and that is the worst thing for spring crops I think. I’ve looked back at my rainfall figures for 2012/13 and we had rainfall all the way through to Harvest, there was no dry spell like last year or we might have this year. Interesting times! Mark
Afraid we are rapidly running out of time for spring crops. We’re a month off drilling at best here in east Anglia on suffolk clay. Spring yields will now be affected.
Very much so. I’ll Soil are wetter than they were this time last year, and even then we didn’t plant many crops until at least the middle of April and the yielded appallingly.
Hi Andrew do you believe that, straw and crops will be short this year because of the wet winter. Because us livestock farmer need the straw, so good crops are important 😮
I forgot to mention Straw when I was talking about the spring drilling, but yes, I really feel that could be the case I’m afraid. With Farmers going into SFI Straw might be tight most years, it’s an unknown yet.
If a field is too late to sow with money crops, would you put in something like alfalfa that gets ploughed back in for soil improvement....or is this not best practice these days.
Brilliant update again Andrew, I’m certain that one of those lovely combines would look good on your farm 😂what a cracking idea using the Polaris for the field mapping brilliant. Isn’t it incredible how the rain can do that much damage to the bank bloody nightmare.
@@WardysWaffleAndrewWard it would be mate yes it’s not looking good is it? There’s farmers down here inching to start planting potatoes but it’s not even close yet.
Oh yes I was going to tell you about Red Tractor. My brother is an arable/beef farmer and contracter who is red tractor assured, but his two neighbours aren’t red tractor assured, now they all tip there corn in the same store and my brother sells it all under his red tractor number and nothing has ever been said and it’s been done for years, so like you said not fit for purpose.
Watched an article this morning on the theft of GPS unit from farms. A gang was caught and it triggered a nationwide rural police inisutive to combat the thefts. Come on a long way since I used a Vicon ferterliser spreader 50 years ago. Lets hope you can get your crops in and not put your productive land into SFI. See you Sunday
SFI "sustainable " that sounds strange . Not growing foodstuffs on fields for 3 years ? so that means food shortages for same period !!. Don't build any houses for 3 years and there will be a housing shortage ,don' t fish for 3 years = fish shortages !! Am I missing something ? . very interesting stuff for us non farmers ,trying to make sense of what goes on. Thanks Andrew.
Exactly! It’s madness but we can’t make a profit growing food at the moment. So much is wrong with our country. One of the main reasons I do these videos is to show what we have to do and how difficult farming is. Thanks for your comments.
It’s not easy but I get about a lot so manage to talk to lots people and share ideas and get ideas off them which helps a lot. Farming is not what a lot of the public think, that’s one of the main reasons I do these videos. I’m quite a positive person but the current situation is not good. I’m in Portugal with Olly and Martin having a chill!
Could you use some matting or structural netting to reinforce the banks where they are slipping? More expense, I know, but it might save money in the long term. Was the lady with the blower the wagon driver? You usually refit helpful drivers.
So you mentioned that you use liquid fertitzer does work out cheaper than bagged granules?? I would think application is easier too? If you leave fields farrow would you look at drainage work and blanket speading manure on? Great blog, still catching up
Hi just a quick one would it be worth putting a slab underneath the drainage pipe in the dyke so the water does not erode the bank by hitting the slab first then dispersing
So worrying to see the water on the fields and with a wet outlook for the weather. Would it be possible to use the GPS on the Polaris to record and map the land drain outlets so that in future years when they are covered by plant growth they can be easily found for maintenance purposes?
Hi Andrew. You look very at home down there in west minister. I vote for you to be prime minister. Instead of prime minister question time on Wednesday we could have wardy’s waffle instead 😂
What makes you choose a Heath Robinson type set up on the Polaris to map your fields? Are there not more ready made precision solutions/services that can do a quicker, more thorough and accurate job?
We have only borrowed the wiring harness, modem, and frame, it sits on from Farols, when we have finished mapping all the fields, it will go back. The screen and dome off the Househam sprayer. If it was ours and staying on the Polaris permanently, we would’ve done a lot better job and hidden all the wires, etc
That mapping - you can do it with an ArduSimple SimpleRTK2B and agOpenGPS - wont' cost you more than £500. Some money the green kit costs, absolutely ridiculous. A bloke on TFF fitted a quad bike out with AOG, no problem.
@@WardysWaffleAndrewWard the mapping option at that price, no (although it provides visual guidance for manually turning sections off yourself). Some people have built machine boards for section control and variable rate and we're working on shapefiles integration. I did a variable rate demo Xmas '22 with it. However, another team is working on ISOBUS integration, free as well. And there's a demo of that on my channel if you're interested
We’re trying to have one map that all the machinery uses and we have only borrowed some of what you saw. We’re also integrating it all into Gatekeeper, The screen and dome are off the sprayer and we can use them on other kit too. I’ll look at your video, cheers.
@@WardysWaffleAndrewWard we can save/load Isoxml as well now, no idea if JD can read that, but it opens up a few more avenues to integration. Also, there's a guy working on farmOS (also free) for record keeping and such.
Not at the moment but that’s one thing we are going to use the Polaris for. That is to map those patches and put the maps in the sprayer so it does just what you’re suggesting.
Well you must be giving that some serious thought for the future of the farm. Would you reduce the amount of spring hectares in place of a crop like this Would you mind touching on this a bit more in one of your future videos if it fits in with what you have planned to talk about. Thanks for the reply. 👍🏻
Great video again 👏 . Could you drill a cover crop of it gets to april and its no drier?. Will you be using plowrights to drill your sugar beet again?. Anyway Great video keep up the good work 👏
