Down on the Farm
When I was a lot younger, the coming of the Midsummer Fair to Cambridge was always a time of wonder and excitement with all the lights, candyfloss and the rides, but now I view the whole event totally differently.
Down the Fen road, where the fields are looking their best whether from the blue of the linseed or just the one of many shades of green, the scene has been totally defaced by the arrival, in advance of the Fair, of white transit vans, caravans, piles of rubbish and other items discarded by our travelling community.
On their arrival I always pay a visit and politely inquire as to how long they
intend to stop and to request that they do not leave any mess. In the vast
majority of cases I am wasting by breath. When will ratepayers demand that the
council make the perpetrators of these acts pay for the clearing up operations
after they have gone? We suffer the eyesore and inconvenience to (and sometimes
safety of) our horse riders, cyclists and walkers; don't hurt our pockets
as well.
Enough moaning, farming continues with the crops looking promising thanks to the rain we have had in the last week or so. I try not to make predictions about good or bad harvests, but this year I will be able to see precisely how each field has done because my new combine harvester, a Claas 580, will tell me, with the assistance of those clever satellites in the sky!
The combine knows where it is in the field down to the nearest five meters and with this information and onboard scales it will give a yield map of the field. If one part of the field is then vastly different from another part, we can look for reasons and try to address them. Causes can be due to a number of factors, such as compaction, weed pressure or nutrient variation, the latter of which would hopefully be overcome using the technology I described in last month's issue with variable fertiliser applications.
As most of you who are keen gardeners will have noticed, there is a tremendous amount of insect life about this year. Some of this is beneficial to our farming methods, such as the bumblebee and the ladybird, but others, like the orange blossom midge and aphid are not. Flies however, do not affect the crops we grow, but they have been giving the cattle a lot of stress.
A plan of action was needed and with all the farm staff assembled we decided what to do. With the cattle in two batches, cows with their calves and a field of maiden heifers (young cows), we needed to round up each group separately. We started with the cows and calves; four of us, one on a quad bike, and achieved the task in a reasonable time. Once they were in the corral we needed to move them into a race so one of us could pour on the fly repellent, that will hopefully last them for the rest of the summer. All was going well until disaster one struck, well a cow struck me to be more precise, flattening me on the concrete!
Not to be discouraged, we carried on with the job, which was completed in due course. After a quick cuppa we moved to the field of heifers. Ed, the stockman went with one of the other men to get the cattle to move towards the corral area and yes, not our day, disaster two; heifers in a hurry charged, instead of towards the corral, to the far boundary, a river, and swam to our neighbourÕs field to join his cattle.
We raced round the three mile track to reach the other field to separate the cattle and retrieve ours, only to find a locked gate. An apologetic phone call was made to our neighbour with assurances that we would sort it out the following day. With the gate now open we made a temporary corral with gates and trailers so as we could round them up, load them up and take them home, unfortunately they didn't seem to share our master plan and ran us ragged. Much cursing and yet another plan was hatched - bribery with cattle cake!
After ten days of eating cake, Ed managed to "get them" all bar three. At the time of writing there are still three in the wrong field, I have a plaster cast on my left arm for the fractured wrist incurred from the impact of being flattened by a cow and the grain stores are still not clean. Ho hum!