Perhaps the government does know what it's doing, however dramatically reducing food supplies does not sound like whatever it is doing is in our interests.
Cats may not solve all such problems but they sure can help. My youngest took out half a dozen medium size rats, 4 squirrels and several small rats in last 6 weeks not counting the ones I didn't see. A few barn cats seem essential to me as non-farmer but I grow a lot of stuff.
This is one of the reasons I enjoy Harry's Farm. As someone who is not a farmer he educates us non farmers into the problems that our farmers in every day life have. WELL DONE HARRY. Anyone out there who can do the same for our fishing industry?
Whenever I watch Harry's Farm a little worm in my ear keeps saying"Farmers have to always moan about the weather, its either too hot or too cold, too dry or too wet, when its perfect for one crop its a disaster for another...." I grew up in the countryside and every year would be the same. If farmers could control the weather they still wouldn't get it right.
@clivewilliams3661 you wouldn't be saying stuff like that If you were in farming doing the job. .you're idea of them "moaning " is just them venting and basically confirming life isn't perfect so yes it will never be 100% so never be quite right.
@@paul8161 You clearly don't know farmers because the many that I do would concur with my comments, they are fully aware of the irony of it all. This year has been difficult for arable farmers like Harry, where the rain during spring was excessive but for livestock farmers it has produced a bumper crop of hay, which is particularly welcome for winter feed given the dire state of the ground that meant keeping livestock in barns longer than usual.
@clivewilliams3661 . I don't know farmers, I grew up in the countryside and went to an agricultural college. U might want a rethink on that insight and still live in the countryside..oops. 🙄.plus having someone agree with you or your point of view doesn't make you any more correct like it's some kind of pi££ing competition. It just means someone agrees with your opinion, like someone could agree with my opinion..
@@paul8161 I too grew up and still live in the countryside and count many farmers as friends and all of those would probably agree with me and they would recognise the comment, which is a traditional one that I first heard 60 years ago and was/is common in the farming community. My comment was never meant as a slur and I doubt that any farmer would see it as such. It would be a real shame if we had to live in a world that was PC such that we were in constant fear of upsetting someone.
@@richardmosley4549 when the gas prices went up a few years ago one UK company that suppled the UK with over 100% of 3 different vegetables and 50% of another 3 to 5 type or fruit or vegetable asked the government for help because the gas bill used to heat the company greenhouse went up 12 million over night the government told them to get lost - the company closed it doors and sold its land to a house building company within the the afternoon and that how the government got rid of a lot of UK food security and supply
@richardmosley4549 it's much more complicated than that, but remember it's his choice what to do with his land, not the government. To most farms, especially in more productive areas, the money they're offering for such schemes is piffling,
I'd hardly call rapeseed food. And as for sheep, they're not profitable and have been subsidised by us for decades whilst decimating everything in their path
The Government have doubtless taken a bit of £obbying by food importers, supermarkets and the like. No domestic food production means lots of profits to be made on imports in a shortage market - slightly more serious than loo rolls.
What happens if all the farmers grow the same thing? Market crashes and there are food shortages.......so you need someone to manage who's growing what to keep everyone happy. Not complicated
Put in bee hives and the honey you harvest will sell rather rapidly. Your famous neighbor could sell it for you. My wife's uncle had a trailer with 20 hive boxes on it. He got paid for parking the trailer on some farmer's cropland and got great-tasting honey in return from his bees. Great pollinators for many crops. Our problem with our 1 acre of tomatoes and peppers is that the surrounding farmers spray to kill bugs but it also kills the bees. We have had to resort to hand pollination of our zucchini, yellow squash, and even our cucumbers. We grow this much because we have the land, we have 2 Category O 3-pt hitch-cultivating tractors, and other than what two 80-year-old people like us eat and can for our own use, 98% of the crop goes to a local food bank.
Hardy: Now why did you get two tickets for Chicago when I wanted to spend my honeymoon in Saskatchewan? Laurel: Well the man said there was no such place as Suskwet... Sus... Susquashed...
Yep, Borage is an amazing plant...it just keeps coming back each year, with no input. It's now already taken over two and a half veg patches, and the bee coverage, as usual, is insane. And you can eat the petals and leaves in moderation, make teas etc...medicinal. Great stuff. Good luck with the wheat.
I remember helping out at harvest time combining with sound mechanical machines with very few electrics/electronics. It stands to reason that in a farm environment you will have vermin and they have a reputation for chewing wire and cable. On the old machines the only wire was usually thick gauge for the starter and the solenoid that could resist a chewing. Fine control wiring can't. It should be up to the manufacturers to build a combine or any agricultural machine that is fit for purpose and vermin proof.
@@venklar According to the Google god, there are about 800 parts in a combine harvester. However, I would guess that the computing power in a modern combine would be enough to put a man on the moon. All that electronic trickery and gimmickry will be vulnerable in a machine that is left in a vermin infested barn for 49-50 weeks a year without being used.
@silverdrillpickle7596 I've done 38 harvests, I've never had a major breakdown mainly because of proper care of my machine, most are not looked after we'll in my opinion.
Government agricultural policy is misguided. Farmers have to follow the money but national food security is far more important. It doesn’t help net zero either as shipping in food from other parts of the world is counterproductive.
What do you mean by food security though? The UK hasn't been self sufficient in it's food supply since... when? We're a small country with almost 70 million people. The UK will always be importing a significant % of it's food. It'll be even more the way the environment is collapsing too. There is no simple answer.
Very interested in your Borage. About 20 years ago I grew some in Scotland and it was exported to Canada and used for Medicinal purposes. My local Bee man brought some hives over to help with the pollination and he got some lovely honey Very mild and runny. Very much enjoy your two blogs or whatever they are called.
They're probaby mostly honeybees - the wrong bees. It's the wild pollinators that need saving. Numbers have been going down 1-2% per year since the 1940s. The last few years they have crashed - according to a lot of entomologists.
Yes, pretty isn't it......but it is not FOOD is it. We are far too reliant on overseas food. The Dockers could hold the whole country to ransom if they chose too.
Our 90 acres of SFI was devoid of bees until mid July. They have appeared, but not in the numbers of last year. The wet start to the year has really hit the insect, butterfly and bee populations
Harry - here in TX we leave hunting vehicles out in the field, and vermin eat through wires and fuel lines. We have found decent plugin ultrasonic repellents deter them. I put them in all my outbuildings now over the winter where I store stuff that I care about.
"Let them eat honey!" HOWEVER: no bees means no pollination means no food production for humans. In the United States, we have been having a collapse in bee populations over the last ten years or so.
@@jamesellsworth9673 Ten years? Here in the UK pollinators have been going down over 1% since the 1940s. We've lost 90-95% of pollinators and it's not getting any better. Most don't care as they don't appreciate the natural world, even if it is translated in pounds, shillings and pence.
I remember when the majority of towns and cities put flowers and plants around the parks and town/city centres. Our local town used to have a load of fantastic raised flower beds to attract bee's, but they had to be removed because of health and safety, as some stupid person might have fell off it.
That is short term thinking and dangerous for our health and food security. We live in an ecosystem and ignoring that is the road to worse problems than more costly food. The synthetic ecosystems we have implemented in agriculture today require massive amounts of engineered seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides that are poisoning us and the ecosystem we need to survive. It is a complex problem and symplistic answers lead to worse results. Lets try to learn a better, more sustainable and healthy way.
@@brendanmoran397 If we don't grow our food responsibly the ecosystem will do that for us. No, its possible to sustain life without killing it. Its a balance. Extreme solutions are in nobody's interest, so is doing what we have been doing for too long. Our bodies have become a science experiment by chemical producers that care about nothing but profits.
With reference to your wire chewing issues. Manufacturers are now using plant based compounds to cover wires instead of plastic. Ford are having problems with their ABS system wires leading to the front discs. My friend has replaced 3 sensor units one his brand new car because a fox is chewing the wires.
@@Pesmog you can minimise the rodents chewing wires or even making nests in a Combine harvester or even a bailer, by opening all of the panels on the machine as rodents like rats and mice don't like the light.
Or maybe a person could install some LED lighting that ran off the mains (I think that's the right word in the UK) that you just plugged in while the combine wasn't being used in the off season to illuminate all of the under hood parts.
I worked on a farm in Essex at the end of the 90s that used to grow Borage on a fairly small scale 10-20 acres. We would bag it up in hessian sacks and use a multi hose blower to dry it... I also remember it be in VERY itchy if you got it on your skin! Also had to use a combine header with 'conveyor belts' rather than an auger...
Our wild flower mix, which was a beautiful selection of cornflower, poppies etc has turned to grass in its second year. If we had wanted to get rid of poppies in a wheat crop it would have been impossible.
When we have massive basic foodstuff shortages and have to import what we need (at who knows what price), I wonder who will get the blame? It is about time farmers took complete charge of agricultural policy in the UK and told our politicians to play in the children's' sand pit where they belong.
I’m on the Suffolk coast at the moment and a farmer friend told us that the chat amongst local farmers growing OSR this year is that it’s the best crop they’ve had for years. Been very wet here like the rest of Britain which is unusual as it’s normally the opposite.
I have some Borage in my garden, the bees absolutely love it. I have about thirty plants but there are hundreds of bees on it, the buzz from the bees is amazing.
Bees (and beekeepers) love borage as it flowers when other flowering crops have usually finished. If I remember correctly, the seed is harvested for gla but it's a very fine seed that takes a bit of managing. It's also risky, in the sense that the plant can be knocked over by wind/rain and the seed spills onto the ground. That's why people say; if you grow borage once, you'll always have it. It does look beautiful though and, as you say, it attracts bees from miles around. It produces a very light honey with not much flavour but it doesn't granulate quickly like osr does. For that reason alone, it's quite sought after.
Great that you're doing things to benefit wildlife around the farm! Would definitely recommend contacting your local wildlife trust to see if there's some easy low intervention win wins projects you could undertake!
The borage looks lovely and the bees love it - I don't think you'll have any choice as to whether or not you have borage in that field next year as, I find, it self-seeds very easily!
Borage + honeybees = great honey. So you are making a beekeeper somewhere near you very happy. Of course you could have a couple of dozen bee hives along the edge of your field then both you and the beekeeper could see an increase in yield. More seed for you. More honey for the bee keeper.
Patience is definitely a virtue the wheat on your farm looking good harry.lets hope for a good harvest after a frustrating season last year.as you say hope this corrects itself cos the government say they don't need correcting until the champagne and caviar becomes non existent keep up the good work and look forward to your next video
I live on the edge of the Chilterns near Maidenhead, and there is quite a lot of grain grown nearby. It's been interesting to me in the last few years of watching Harry's and a few other channels how much variation there is in harvest time. Most of the grain near me has been harvested over the last few days. Last year it was a few weeks earlier than Harry too. I wonder how much of the variation is down to varieties grown, time of drilling etc. I guess there is also a factor of folk deciding to make the most of the dry weather rather than gambling with getting rain, mould etc. There was a bit of rape nearby too, but that was combined several weeks ago.
Bumble bees & bees love purple flowers. Fare play ta ya, your a true farmer. A farmer to me, is people that understand there planet & Nature & can work with it. We all need to remember, nature / Earth doesn't need Humans, but we need nature / Earth 🌎👌.
You can get a unit which emits a very high pitch noise that rodents hate…I don’t have one on my van but an electrician I work with has one on his van, the noise is just audible and annoying, but if in a barn away from other people probably not an issue? Super channel! Thank you!
That's a bit of an urban legend. Yes, many plastics use soy as a base (Henry Ford himself experimented with it) but at the end of the chemical process there is not a trace of the original soy. No taste, no odor, nothing. It's now a polymer, indistinguishable from any other. Look at bamboo textile products: made from bamboo but ends up being ordinary rayon, which doesn't resemble the original in any way. Mice and other rodents like to chew. They don't particularly care what they are chewing on, because they are not eating it. You can tear out all your soy-based wiring and replace it with something else, but the mice won't notice and will continue to chew.
Good to see you back. Were in the middle of winter here ( central wheatbelt of West Oz) and are unsure of how the crops are going to go as the rains were so late.
@@TwinPotManThe first part of your statement was correct, civil servants don’t do anything, but they do it at home now and not in the office. Oh yes and since the gift from China, there are significantly more of them employed to doing nothing nowadays. Obviously I discount any time that the civil servants spent disrupting, thwarting and conspiring not to implement government policies impartially (however stupid the majority of those policies were). They are supposed to be apolitical, but like the majority of the civil service it is a joke.🏴🇬🇧
That one wire on your combine being eaten... is either the wires insulation is made out of plant based material/ bio or whoever fitted it transferred oil through skin contact for the rodents to pick up on.. stay safe 🏴
That borage field is incredible! Ive never seen such a crop! Im a gardener by trade and many of my clients have green alkanet popping up in their beds and margins. A few times ive been asked 'how to eat the borage'.. Its not borage! Its alkanet and not great to eat unless you like poisoning yourself!
As far as I am aware there has never been a minister for agriculture who has ever been a farmer, it might help. We all know that the government intends to compulsory purchase farm land to build houses on it to house all the long term uninvited visitors to this country.
latest info Canola seeded in canada to produce 20million metric tonne with more now being crushed locally for domestic market particularly here in Saskatchewan where most Canola is grown in canada. Gov projects 6.9 million tonnes for export. Canola still in bloom here, but with very hot july no real rain expect crops will mature quickly. Dry hot weather may reduce yields here. Happy Harvesting all and STAY SAFE.
Think your Chief Mouser will be getting a P45 and looking for a new home. Catch the Grey Squirrels for a great pie or casserole. Great crop of Borage, the local Farmers Market will be happy to help you sell a very versatile herb. Any local Beekeepers that can put their hives on your farm in exchange for a few jars of Honey.
Harry to help against nibblement,I find that a mixture of GT85 and chilli 🌶 works a treat Recipe: get a spray bottle of GT85 and 6large hot chill peppers cut the fruit up finely and keep the seeds in add the spray and simmer in an old saucepan for fifteen minutes alow to cool and then when you have put the combined harvester away and blown off the dust spray the wiring with the mix it smells good and lasts well and the advantage is that once it actually evaporates what you get left behind is a mixture of the chilli and PTFE which keeps the dirt from forming on it and also keeps any moisture out Best of luck with the harvest
Borage of course makes a great liquid fertiliser so perhaps take a cut and process? Plow the remaining back in as a green manure. What do others think.
I've had rodents damage two of my cars. I once had to find a garage to rewire part of the lighting system on Christmas Eve, or spend Christmas at home on my own, because my car lights didn't work. On one occasion, I had a nest with bones and a dead rat, which I had to peel off the engine. I cannot describe the smell. Especially when the dead rat was by the intake for the ventilation system. The smell of death or not being able to use the demister in the rain were my choices. That smell took ages to go away. This was in a city and due to slobs not using the communal bin store properly. Long story cut short - I sympathise!
Harry: You can deter rodent by putting mothballs in mesh bags all around the components of concern. I use them in my stored classic cars - very effective.
Hello Harry, Maybe you could harvest the seeds of the Borage? I don’t know what the seeds are worth, but it looks to me that other farmers would like to have such a field of Borage. And looking at the schemes of the government, “birdseeds” are going to go up in price. Thank for your regular updates, very interesting to watch as someone who doesn’t know a lot of farming. Greetings 👋🏽
Great video Harry, I agree that the government has a master plan over food production. Of course, we do not need to grow food, we should be growing wildlife instead, and we will save the planet, so long as we charge the transport and growing carbon costs to the producing countries when we import massive amounts of food. Food security isn't an issue, the world is safe at the moment, and the UK has a low profile on the world stage. So that is OK. The UK legislators are urban intellectuals, have never seen a crop growing in a field, they surely don't need to-they they obviously know exactly what they are doing, and if it all goes wrong, don't blame them. Of course
Emotive @harrysfarmvids as always. Once UK govt recognise the importance of food security again, the grower (you particularly with borage) are going to be left with an awful weed burden which is difficult and costly to remove to bring back into production. This must be remembered and factored in when entering into SFIs now etc as these schemes come and go but you’d like to think you’ll be growing food on that land again at some point in our lifetimes. How’s the 930?!
Nice little update Harry, looking forward to seeing a successful harvest. Do you use baited rat stations immediately around the combine? Maybe a pest control expert could advise you on a more robust way of keeping these rodents out of the shed, or at least off the combine. Cheers!
Could have been a beech/stone marten? Here in the Netherlands at least they are infamous for chewing through car wires, so a combine is probably on the menu as well
It is worth bearing in mind that we are in the first year of the renewed schemes since Brexit. Whether you approve of the SFI schemes or not, the fact is the lag time from concept to implementation is about 6 years. The world is a very different place. The PM's (at the time) wife Carrie Johnson is rumoured to carry a lot of sway in shaping the push towards environmental schemes rather than food security. It will be interesting to see what the new government do, watch this space in 2030!
