Harvest is over here in the east, and as expected, it has been dry and hot ever since! Too dry for the rape, and the potato land is too hard to lift without damage. We won’t be drilling any wheat until it rains, which I hope it does soon or we will have to consider [...]
Author Archives: tfaadministrator
“Stress and Loss”, a report on the impact of bovine TB on farming families by Farm Crisis Network
August 6, 2009 – 12:23 pm
The Farm Crisis Network have just published “Stress and Loss”, a report on the impact of bovine TB on farming families.
Volunteers for the farming charity interviewed 68 farmers in three hotspot areas, West Wales, the South West and Worcestershire and revealed a tale of financial loss, worry, psychological distress, physical illness and family problems repeated [...]
Enough rain, we need some sunshine!
July 30, 2009 – 8:35 am
In my last blog I was saying how dry we were. Well it can stop raining now! Down on the fen we had 82mm fall over the weekend and only 24mm at Ermine Lodge. So good in one respect as no more irrigation, bad in another as all the low places in the heavy silt [...]
VIP visits at the TFA stand
July 21, 2009 – 8:42 am
Last week I was in at the Great Yorkshire Show in Yorkshire. The week before I was at the last Royal Show, which was quiet and wet! I had plenty to do on Tuesday (07 July), the first day of the Royal, and was expecting to hear the announcement on set aside mitigation from Hilary [...]
Back to reality after a busy Cereals
June 15, 2009 – 7:52 am
Well, Cereals is over for another year. It was an even bigger show, and I saw less this year than last as we were busy meeting you all on the stand. It may have been wet, but the rain was welcome unless you had hay on the ground. Whilst there I was filmed by both [...]
Busman’s holiday in Cornwall
June 5, 2009 – 10:30 am
The announcement of Dairy Farmers of Britain (DFB) going into receivership was hardly the best start to the Royal Cornwall Show. We are meeting the Receivers on Monday along with the Chairman of the DFB Board so watch out for a briefing on Tuesday.
Royal Cornwall is still a proper show and we saw many members [...]
The show season has started
May 28, 2009 – 7:45 am
The show season is finally upon us. So is summer, with a blisteringly hot bank holiday weekend, with some heavy rain. 15 mm has just disappeared, so applying liquid N was sticky to say the least, but as soon as the rain stopped so did I, and it dried up so soon you could hardly [...]
Thank goodness it’s raining!
May 15, 2009 – 10:14 am
As I drafted this blog last night I started by saying we could do with some rain. Happily as I typed it this morning we have had 3mm and it is still raining. No need to organize a BBQ to get what we are having now! Every thing on the farm is well established (including the weeds!) [...]
April has been a busy month
April 29, 2009 – 7:58 am
April has marked a distinct lack of blog due to lots of work. I have been stuck on a tractor or sprayer and plagued with IT problems.
On the farm, seed potatoes arrived and we are still planting. We should finish planting them this week, weather permitting, but we really need some rain. Top dressing, drilling [...]
Second Forum for the Future of Agriculture
March 23, 2009 – 3:48 pm
Last Wednesday I was in Brussels at the Second Forum for the Future of Agriculture (FFA) as a guest of Syngenta, who was one of the principle sponsors. The theme was “Financing and governing food and environmental security - the new challenge.”
It was a long and interesting day, with many eminent speakers. Experts included Paul Krugman [...]
