End of March update on Harry's Farm includes a look at bulls on farm and what to look out for on footpaths, wind damages a stone wall and the oilseed rape takes a turn for the worse.
As a retired ex farm manager and agronomist it’s great to be able to keep in touch with the realities of farming. Love the simple explanations of the everyday issues. Keep them coming and Thank you.
He can't be that wise if he's still using chemicals on his crops. Organic farms are just as productive as chemical using farms theses days and the crop carries a premium. It's a no brainer.
@@JohnSmith-vy4lh in Harry's other video due to euro rules he was not allowed to use a specific type of pesticide to control flea beetle on oil sead rape, result being a 70% loss of crop. Not good. :-(
@@JohnSmith-vy4lh I agree there is, but it is very complicated and relys on variables outside of human control. Moisture content of soil, frost or no frost, amount of rainfall after using replacement pesticides due to low rainfall causing burn damage to the plants leaf structure. All a bit complicated instead of the old type of pesticide.
There’s a beautiful word in the Irish language to describe the playing and skipping that cattle do when released into the fields for the first time after winter - ‘macnas’. It translates as ‘playful abandonment’. Came to Harry’s Farm from Harry’s Garage - the best two channels on YT. Keep up the great work👍
Always informative and interesting to a fellow grower, I just wish our shoppers would see what we have to go through to get the product on the shelves then they all may purchase only british produced food .
@@mitchbuchannon6637 : That is simply not true, it's an urban myth. NZ and Aussie farmers do not export much to the UK and rely on premium prices for a better product. And, it's not fair to compare Marlborough region wines with British wines (or any others), they have an unfair advantage of tasting sooo damned good. The transport costs alone put us out of ever being competitive in the UK regardless of the new FTA which tapers off to zero in 15 or 20 years from now.
@@buildmotosykletist1987 it’s very true, just have to compare the price of nz lamb in nz vs nz lamb in the uk. It’s cheaper in the uk. Same with dairy. We pay more for dairy we make than people do in country’s we export it too
Re the bull on his own, my neighbour in southeast Dordogne has several herds of Limousine beef cattle and I've notice the bulls often graze some way off from the cows. Last autumn's calves have just been put out to graze and have tripled in size over the winter. I saw one that had been newly calved last year struggling to get to his feet for the first time. I had a couple of collies, now alas dead, who used tease the cattle during our twice daily walks. I was worried the grower might object but he laughed to see the interaction between dog and cattle. My new dog is a braque who ignores all other animal life except cats. Great videos and always fascinating.
Thanks Harry for another great update. The cattle looked very good after their winter indoors and glad to be out on fresh grass. I bet that the resultant beef will be an excellent quality with all that lush grass. And if the bull can be persuaded to part company with his grass and do his business you might get some lovely calves!!
Lovely video Harry thanks again, good to hear people ANYWHERE are wanting to know where their food is coming from and that hopefully they want it to be local.
Hello again 'Harry', so good to here your insight to real farming, not sure where else I would get such down to earth information, great to watch/listen. Regards, RichardA.
Love your videos, always watch them thanks! But Neonicotinoids are not a ‘very minor unproven risk’ - they are well proven to damage bees and other pollinators which we rely upon for vital crop pollination. I also do wonder whether you need so much fertiliser and weedkiller applied on everything - have you thought about trying just one field without chemicals to see the difference - you might be surprised how little! As an organic farmer we work without any - livestock is the key, the manure goes straight onto the land and provides fertilisation. For weed control, the livestock are allowed to graze the new crop lightly soon after it emerges - they remove the weeds & and break up the soil, and the newly fertilised crop comes back stronger. Try it with your cows on a test field - you may be surprised!
I totally agree with you, those Channel island dairy breeds can be devious nasty little buggers . I talk from experience I had a few close scrapes as a lad on the farm .I
Yeah, I've had Fresians and Jersey's... You didn't enter the paddock with Jersey's unless you were on a tractor, and even then it would charge you and lift the implements with it's horns. Fresians are definitely friskier than most beef breeds, but I could always walk into the paddock with them.
@@IBAdrianHarris The one I was familiar with belonged to my neighbour, it was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, I forget it's pedigree name, but it was known locally as Stalin. It sent more than a few ill informed trespassers to the Gulag, lol!
Sir, absol brilliant, thank you. I am not a Farmer, a friends son farm's on the fells in the Lake's and usually listen to Farming Today, R4 0545, so have an interest in our Green and Pleasant Land!!
Really enjoying these round up videos. Super interesting to be able see the changes that occur over time around the farm with the development of the crops and the challenges that arise along the way.
There are other farming youtubers and it's all about "look at my big tractor" and "how loud can I shout at you?" and there is Harry's Farm which is about... farming. This is what I'm doing, this is what has happened, these are my struggles and these are my successes. Love it.
Lovely video Harry. Gentle delivery, lots of great content... well above my pay grade... but fascinating ‘behind the scenes’ info. Buy British... you bet! 👍🇬🇧
It's absurd that we are bound by these rules banning a pesticide on the rape, but the same rules are not applied to those exporting here? Great Vid, Harry. 👍🏻
Thank you for another brilliant video on the real world behind our valuable farming industry. As if you haven’t got enough problems dealing with every element of nature, it is infuriating that politicians, most of whom know next to nothing about farming methods, should ban the use of a seed treatment like Neonicotinoid without thinking of the impact on our own crop yields yet they are quite happy to allow the mass import of rapeseed oil from countries where this treatment has not been banned. Such double standards beggars belief! We can only hope that our brilliant scientists can soon devise an effective alternative that leaves no doubt of its efficacy to target only the cabbage stem flea beetle.
In the veg patch we use companion plats to help reduce pest problems. I guess that's not feasible on that scale of with the combine. Great info and insight as always. 👍
Yes, I haven't lost any family on the North side of the line. yet. But on the South side, freedom to kill your fellow countrymen and women! So all you Southern freedom types. JUST HAVE A BIG THINK!
Informative as always, Harry. Regarding your comment, Harry, is it really surprising that future crop prices in the UK are shooting up? It's not really surprising if you consider Brexit, and it's now more difficult to get good deals on crops from the mainland, and the UK will also be forced to devalue (which it stubbornly doesn't do much) to be able to export what it used to the mainland and moreover, export extra goods to the mainland/EU to compensate for unexpected cash crops imports. Harry, it would be wonderfu if you made a whole video devoted to farming/Brexit/EU/ national farming subsidies and in a politically incorrect way state your position. As long as you present your arguments and make use of your expertise as usual, I imagine we'd all be very interested.
when I was younger the family had a boxer dog and she loved going for walks in an area where horses were left in a field the dog and horses were hard to pull apart both want the company of each other
Lamb is an interesting one. It is, of course the off-season for lamb. On top of which no shipments of NZ lamb have been sent over here to spoil the new season market this year, probably due to the dual influences of a greater demand from China and the impression that NZ exporters got that the UK market would collapse due to Brexit. Which it may well still do of course when UK lamb floods the market in a few month's time and the traditional export market to the EU is found to be 'difficult'. Just look at the pigmeat market where they can hardly give pigs away just now, in contrast to lamb.
I got chased by a bull once as a kid. Learned a solid lesson that day. When I say chased, I was about 10 or 11, down in Wales where my grandparents lived and it took an interest in me from about 50 yards away that I didn't like, crapped myself and legged it over the stye.
Great stuff. As an investor for a pension scheme, really interested to know about the carbon (and offsets). Seems the business case isn’t there for timber unless you sell the offsets, but you want them, so renewables appears more viable investment. Interested in sequestration of crops too!
You really should be a Government Adviser Harry.....could you get one of their “Expert’s” to come on a film and talk about the logic of banning that chemical and yet importing a million tons of crops all having used it but in XYZland. I doubt the idea would work...too busy checking their monthly expenses claims and setting up nice days out on “essential journeys”. Good luck this Spring and fingers crossed for a good Summer and Harvest! 🙏🙏😀😀😀
Our local farm in Sussex has Devon cows, and when walking past with my dog they get a bit twitchy, especially with their young. Does make me a bit nervous, but I just talk to them and make my way past. One lady nearby wont walk in the field she's so scared! I thought if you shouted "Cush" they went away. Well that's what Siegfried Farnon said.
Another good and clear explanation of things going on! Strange decision regarding the insecticide being banned here, yet allowed to be used elsewhere, however I suppose this is the first, and won't be the last.
A farmer friend of mine told me his bull that he introduced to his cows had such a great time with the herd he found him the following morning stone-cold dead, with a smile on his face.
As an organic farmer I am qualified to reply .Our dairy cows give 7500 litres per year ,and we grow oat crops around 2.5 tonnes per acre.As indigenous species such as oats ,grass ,clovers and herbs do better than non indigenous we stick to these.
Very good watching as usual, I wondered (as a non farmer) would it not be helpful to plant more hedges? Seems like they'd provide a lot of shelter from the winds?
Hedges are actually quite expensive to maintain. Even more so now with the price of diesel. Having smaller fields isn’t very helpful as machinery gets bigger.
Cattle are thee most serious countryside hazard in Britain & Ireland, over the last 10 years there have been 78 fatalities. Most of them were herdsman, the rest walkers with dogs; Mothers with calves are particularly spooked by dogs. Bull's shouldn't be placed in fields crossed by a footpath and doing so, leaves the farmer liable to prosecution by HSE. Data from NFU website 2019.
Saw QI last night. Apparently bury your cotton underpants in the soil, if they are eaten away then it is good soil. Another one is seat your bear bum on the soil and if it is comfortable you are ready to plant. Farmers use this theory?
Hey Harry, wondering if you’ve thought about reviewing a grey fergie (or possibly on Harry’s garage) as they’re such a interesting and historically significant piece of machinery
Thanks for another informative video 👍 Regarding the seed coating. Is there a specific reason why the EU banned its use and why can't we develop an in-house coating we can use? We're good at doing things like like, we just lost touch while under their control!
Hi Harry. I think the cows will be calving about May June time. the bull will be there to bull the heifers and any cow's not settled yet . No damage to rape in my area Central Scotland . Some winter crops are a bit patchy due to a very wet winter. Prices are up World wide , think its due to demand from China .
I did wonder about exactly when they'd be calving, as they obviously wouldn't come into season straight away. But then May-June seems too late to me too because working back 9 months brings you to August-September time and surely the bull would have covered most of the cows before that? Yes, the buying power of China over the past few months is really changing things..
Farmers need a licence to grow hemp, which depending on whether a Home office visit is required ranges from around £600 up to £1400. Also Farmers are have to process the crop on site (as certain parts of the plant are not allowed to leave the farmer's land) and may only sell the stalks and seeds. The rest of the plant must be discarded. There are other hoops to jump through. All combined it's a fair bit of hassle to grow a crop that you can only sell half of as the rest has to be destroyed (all the CBD oil containing parts of the plant cannot be sold.)
Sorry I’m new here and something you said put me to think... When you say you have sold your future harvest of wheat, what do you mean by that, with the meaning you have sold a crop in tons which haven’t grown? So I’m guessing that number has come from what usually the harvest is? what would happen if your crop would fail? Or is that just agreement that you will sell your crop what you grow to that individual company for that price, whatever the harvest is?
BY the way, I wonder how Harry’s getting on with the barn remodel! Last time we saw it was in the middle of removing a silo or something? What’s the latest on that one H?