From LEAF Farmer Duncan Farrington
August Newsletter
As you read this harvest will be underway,
and in full swing of long sunny days, dust and hard work. But as I write we are not quite there yet. The recent wet weather has put the crops back a bit, although the combine always seems to start around 27th July. Or to put it correctly, farmers start harvest as soon as they see their neighbour’s combine go down the road, crops ready or not! We are still flat out at Bottom Farm. It has not been helped by our main (and only) employee on the farm asking if he could go travelling around Morocco for August, September and October. This was a bit of a shock, especially as it was only three weeks before harvest, and he had already booked his tickets. There was not much we could do, apart from a frantic search for a suitable replacement who could start immediately. After looking on the internet at a Pole; a Frenchman, a South African woman who gave her full life history; an Irishman; and someone from Suffolk who had never travelled this far west. Eventually I found Lewis from Bedfordshire who started with a week to spare, and will hopefully prove to be an adept operator of modern farming machinery as the weeks progress. It is not only farm employees I have been looking for, with the continued growth of the Farrington Oils business. In the short time I have been producing rapeseed oil, August was generally a quieter month as people go on holiday, and so do not buy so much food in the shops. Not so this year with the launch of our dressings, which have proved a huge success. We have been bottling frantically, seven days a week, just about keeping up with demand. Therefore I have taken on an extra pair of hands, as I really do need to get back on a tractor and help bring the crops in. A good problem to have, although sleep would be appreciated at some stage. Hopefully we are now all set up and ready to start combining the crops. The good ones, and the not so good ones. Many hours will be spent in tractors and combine harvesters around the country, with farmers going up and down their fields, trying to make sense of why one particular field yields different to another one adjacent to it. We will be trying to think of what we did different, and plan how next year we will get everything just right, and it will be a perfect year. But in reality, this is never going to happen, as the biggest decider of how our crops grow, is down to the vagaries of the weather, rather than the skills or otherwise of the farmer. May be it is this challenge that we all secretly enjoy, as life without it would be too simple, and dull. This was very much bought to life in a new series presented by TV pig farmer, Jimmy Doherty, exploring how modern agriculture brings food to our plates. He found that even in the biggest, most efficient agricultural businesses they are part of an ecosystem, and rely on nature, just like the allotment grower. The tools may be bigger, but the results are the same.
