Its been a while and we have made some decisions , we as you know will plant Spring red wgeat ACBarrie, which i am told is a short season growing crop 90-100 days.We will try to keep it weed free(ish) clean(ish) and above all upright , apprently its tall and likes to fall over.
Our biggest choice though is to persevere with undersowing clover , so we plan to undersow at the same time as drilling red clover.With the plan to leave this to grow and then direct drill into it next year with a 3rd spring wheat .
I have been asked what i am trying to achieve with this project and sometimes it escapes me , but as general rule it goes something like this.
In 2007 we ordered a massive ammount of chemical early to catch the right prices and it duly arrived by the palletful .Unloading one of these pallets i got thinking and i came to the concluson that modern arable agriculture although profitable is not farming. It is in effect chemical application with cost plus as a benefit , we have lost some of or are in danger of losing some of our skills as farmers .i spoke to my father and he agreed but added in the caveat that this utopia i was dreaming about was bloody hard work and prone to massive weed problems .He remembers poor crops,total failures,weed infestation , couch grass ,inter row hoeing, singling sugar beet need i go on ?
So was there an alternative way just as profitable, with less cost , but less risk, thats what we are trying to do.
My first recourse was to the internet and organic farming , blimey its a longer list of what you should and should not do than ever i thought and i came to the conclusion that it was just a way of marketing food (better quality or not) and i left it at that.
A year later i heard about black grass resistance to Atlantis ,new strains of yellow rust, NVZ for specific water catchment areas specifically resevoirs, and for the first time i can remember , no prospect of new chemistry to get us out of the hole, well just one GM but we are still waiting for that one and as yet i havent seen big yields from GM just reduced use of certain pesticides.
So i revisted the internet and came across what is technically termed Biological farming, its a mixture of everything because there are no rules , this in turn led me to Australia thats another story and made a decision to do something different .
Thats what we are doing , something different no rules, probably no idea. just seeing if we can do something different , sometimes with less (chemicals) sometimes with more (nutrients) .
Thats where we are today , the oats should have gone on earlier but they didnt , so are not so big as i would like , but the soil structure is wonderfully friable , ive been digging holes with Neil and Roger, which is great fun.
That has come back the ideas, people asking me questions, ( why dont you put a bit of cheeky bravo on).
So as i started we are technically winging it , but its very interesting/
