Last year due to the dodgy growing season and summer drought there was a severe shortage of straw, not to mention grain, resulting in livestock farmers struggling to source enough bedding to get them through the winter.
This year the crops have yielded well and there is more than enough straw to fill the barns ensuring the cattle and horses have ample litter during the long winter months. The rest we have sold to our neighbours and what is not required is chopped by the combine and spread across the field which helps to boost the organic matter in the soil.
Harvest is progressing steadily as we have moved onto the winter wheat which is yielding a decent crop. The humid days have delayed starting up the combine until well into the afternoon as we wait for the moisture level to dip below 15 per cent.
The days are already drawing in with the sun setting noticeably earlier each evening. Everything appears to be happening earlier this year, and there is already a sense of autumn in the air.
We have been fortunate to have been spared the torrential rain which has devastated communities in Yorkshire and Derbyshire. The inconvenience of the occasional shower delaying out harvest is insignificant compared to the sight of flooded fields with dead sheep, hay and silage bales submerged in the mud, and tractors stuck up their axels and worse.
Listening to a Yorkshire farmer being interviewed by a moronic BBC lackey determined to blame someone for the weather, one had to admire his composure when he responded saying, ‘that in all his 60 years of farming, he had never experienced such extreme conditions - but such is life!’
Farmers across the country are now well into the harvest, reaping the rewards of the work they have put into the crop since last autumn. This includes preparing the seed bed and sowing the seeds. Applying a variety of nutrients to boost growth and productivity, and protecting it from weeds wanting to swamp it, and bugs and diseases hell bent upon destroying it.
Sitting up in the combine watching the reel ease the crop through the augers and sending the grain into the tank, in a year when most things have gone according to plan, we are grateful and relieved to have for a change the appropriate weather at the right time.
The instances of members of the public being injured by cattle appear to be on the increase. It is doubtful that the cattle are to blame for they mostly mind their own business unless distracted or unsettled.
I recently received a call from a member of the public complaining she had been terrified as she was walking across our fields. When asked why she said she had not noticed the cattle until half way across the field. Asked her what they had done to upset her so dramatically, she said, “They were in the field where I was walking”, apparently lying down!
Surely people who choose to walk across farmland should expect to encounter livestock. This particular woman wanted a notice warning her that cattle were in the field. As she had in fact emerged from the wood where there is no public access, I rather think her complaint was unreasonable and unwarranted.
The Brexit Party played a useful role during the European elections but now we have a passionate pro-leave Prime Minister who has vowed to honour the democratic will of the ‘People’s Vote’, and has vowed we shall leave on 31st October, Mr Farage and his Brexit Party are surely surplus to requirement.
Brecon and Radnorshire now have a Remain Lib-Dem MP which is clearly not what the majority of the electorate wanted. If Mr Farage continues to compete against pro-leave conservative candidates, he should seriously consider his conscience.
This year the crops have yielded well and there is more than enough straw to fill the barns ensuring the cattle and horses have ample litter during the long winter months. The rest we have sold to our neighbours and what is not required is chopped by the combine and spread across the field which helps to boost the organic matter in the soil.
Harvest is progressing steadily as we have moved onto the winter wheat which is yielding a decent crop. The humid days have delayed starting up the combine until well into the afternoon as we wait for the moisture level to dip below 15 per cent.
The days are already drawing in with the sun setting noticeably earlier each evening. Everything appears to be happening earlier this year, and there is already a sense of autumn in the air.
We have been fortunate to have been spared the torrential rain which has devastated communities in Yorkshire and Derbyshire. The inconvenience of the occasional shower delaying out harvest is insignificant compared to the sight of flooded fields with dead sheep, hay and silage bales submerged in the mud, and tractors stuck up their axels and worse.
Listening to a Yorkshire farmer being interviewed by a moronic BBC lackey determined to blame someone for the weather, one had to admire his composure when he responded saying, ‘that in all his 60 years of farming, he had never experienced such extreme conditions - but such is life!’
Farmers across the country are now well into the harvest, reaping the rewards of the work they have put into the crop since last autumn. This includes preparing the seed bed and sowing the seeds. Applying a variety of nutrients to boost growth and productivity, and protecting it from weeds wanting to swamp it, and bugs and diseases hell bent upon destroying it.
Sitting up in the combine watching the reel ease the crop through the augers and sending the grain into the tank, in a year when most things have gone according to plan, we are grateful and relieved to have for a change the appropriate weather at the right time.
The instances of members of the public being injured by cattle appear to be on the increase. It is doubtful that the cattle are to blame for they mostly mind their own business unless distracted or unsettled.
I recently received a call from a member of the public complaining she had been terrified as she was walking across our fields. When asked why she said she had not noticed the cattle until half way across the field. Asked her what they had done to upset her so dramatically, she said, “They were in the field where I was walking”, apparently lying down!
Surely people who choose to walk across farmland should expect to encounter livestock. This particular woman wanted a notice warning her that cattle were in the field. As she had in fact emerged from the wood where there is no public access, I rather think her complaint was unreasonable and unwarranted.
The Brexit Party played a useful role during the European elections but now we have a passionate pro-leave Prime Minister who has vowed to honour the democratic will of the ‘People’s Vote’, and has vowed we shall leave on 31st October, Mr Farage and his Brexit Party are surely surplus to requirement.
Brecon and Radnorshire now have a Remain Lib-Dem MP which is clearly not what the majority of the electorate wanted. If Mr Farage continues to compete against pro-leave conservative candidates, he should seriously consider his conscience.
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