So after a busy month of GCSE’s I am off school for the rest of the Summer-Yes!
Silage
The wet spring and more recent sunny weather has ensured that the grass has been growing quickly. This has resulted in a bumper crop of silage. The grass was cut and allowed to wilt for a couple of days before being baled and then wrapped in plastic. The bales were moved- carefully so as to not make holes in the plastic wrap- to a stack in the yard. The idea of the plastic wrapping is to keep the air out of the bale so it will keep for a long time even if it is damp. We grow silage to use excess grass, over and above what the cows will eat.
Livestock
All the sheep have been sheared in preparation for the hot summer and the lambs will be weaned from their mothers soon. The bulls have been turned out to grass with the cows so that they will get in calf over the next few months. We have been to both the Suffolk and Norfolk shows and were not overly successful at either.
Sugar beet
The wet, cold weather in April and May reduced the germination rate and growth of the beet
The sugar beet have had the second application of herbicide, the herbicide is very expensive as it is specially formulated to not damage the delicate beet plants. However, because of the fragility of the beet it is not very effective at killing all the weeds so to further remove them we have tractor hoed to remove the weeds from between the rows of beet.
Harvest
The crops are looking good for harvest; the winter cereals have benefited greatly from the rainfall and are growing quickly. The OSR (oilseed rape) is growing well, the only worry being a hail storm, which would be catastrophic if it knocked a large amount of the seed out of the crop which would then not be combined.
Spraying
The winter wheat has been sprayed with its final application of fungicide, named ‘Earwash’.The idea of this is to reduce levels of Fusarium Mycotoxin- wheat must have a level below a certain threshold in order to be sold. The thistles and dock leaves in the grassland have been spot sprayed to kill them before they can produce seeds. The OSR has also been sprayed with ‘Pod-stick’ which is intended to make the seed stay in the pod more so less will be lost in windy weather and during combining.