This week I had the pleasure of attending my first ever Oxford Farming Conference, along with George Dunn. The OFC’s mission is to inform, challenge and inspire. It certainly had that effect on me! The conference began with three fringe meetings and the one that I joined was the launch of The Land Partnerships Handbook […]
It’s 6 months since my last blog and I’ve been reminded that I’m not a natural blogger! So what has been happening since May? On the farm we have had a pretty good summer, with crop yields and quality considerably better than feared during the dry spring. The winter barleys did mature a little prematurely, […]
Firstly, a bit about what has been happening on the farm this spring… March saw us lambing. Since becoming engaged to anExmoorfarmer’s daughter, my son Simon has shown much more interest in matters ovine! However, it is Dad who had to get up each night to check the ewes! Our flock of North of England […]
This is the ex National Chairman’s terminal blog! The TFA have come a long way very quickly over the last three years. I remember thinking that three years was a long term, it has not seemed so. It has been both an honour and a pleasure to be the TFA National Chairman. This has been […]
It has been a few weeks since my last blog and it is nearly Christmas. The ground is solid, we have land to plough, but the plough won’t even penetrate. We have sugar beet in the ground like so many others, and I fear that if it thaws we will lose it. We have been […]
All cereals are hopefully gathered in. What an August! More rain than the rest of the year and an increase in wheat price of 50%. I like many others started my sales at £100. Luckily as a seed grower I have some to sell at the higher price. One of the compensations of being a […]
I have been a bit lax of late in keeping up my blog. Apologies. A great deal has happened since my last entry. Most important of which was that myself George and Stephen met the new team at Defra. It was reassuring that they were all up to speed and we got straight on with […]
I thought it might be useful to record my experiences now that we have EID for sheep. I have always tagged lambs at birth for various reasons. I have always used small Ketchum curlocks with flock number and within flock ID on each tag. You could count the lost tags on one hand. Once done […]
Spring has finally sprung (we hope). Lambing has finished, ewes and lambs turned out – no grass but a bite is appearing (just). My final TFA AGM has happened, and the fine weather has allowed sugar beet to be drilled, top dressing applied and wheat rolled and treated against bulb fly where necessary. I had […]
It’s the end of January already! The LAMMA show is over. The TFA were in a new venue (hall 8), the show is now 20% bigger and with good weather, many people spent the time outside studying the shiny paintwork. We did have a good show, but numbers on the stand were down. Nevertheless, it […]
