From LEAF Farmer Duncan Farrington
May Newsletter
April has been a busy month
with field work, building work and a bit of recycling going on. Father and Martin have been out giving the crops some fertiliser, and we have planted the last of our spring crops, this being spring rapeseed after the rabbits decimated what was originally planted in the autumn.
The crops this year are looking variable, with the wheat looking very healthy; the spring beans which are just popping their heads out of the soil and so far look fine. However our rapeseed varies from good to disastrous. When planted last autumn, a six week spell of dry weather, combined with the largest number of rabbits since the war all enjoying a diet of young rape plants, now means we have large areas where the crop is very thing, or non-existent. Normally by April with warmer weather crops would grow quickly filling in gaps and compensating in thinner areas. However this April has been so cold, it is still looking embarrassing to say the least.
It is easy for us to blame the weather or the pests, but gardeners know all healthy crops start off with a good seedbed to sow the seeds into, and this is something we have not managed with the rape over the last couple of years. Therefore we are looking at making or altering a piece of equipment to improve this for next year.
Many farmers have been able to turn their hand to making equipment. This is something we enjoy putting our minds to over quieter periods. In the past my grandfather ‘invented’ several machines including a mechanical bale picking machine which he exported as far as Australia; and was proud to patent a system that is now used on combine harvesters around the world, even if his idea started out on a plough. Later father and he would make anything from tractors to wind turbines, water wheels, and even a helicopter. On the last item apparently my grandmother put here foot down on the maiden flight and it was carried out un-manned, tethered to a barn. I’ve never seen any photos of this, but we still have the rotor blade in an old barn. How they found time to farm is a mystery. Today life is far more mundane, we have been making improvements to the grain store over the last month, and once finished this project we will turn our attention to those poor bits of rapeseed.
A result of building projects a collection of scrap metal gathers over time. Every now and again we collect all the unwanted remnants of iron and take to the local scrap metal merchant, to be melted down into the next generation of car or fridge freezer. Normally we will come away with a few pound notes for our effort. However over the last couple of years with China’s demand for all raw materials, scrap metal along with everything else has risen greatly in value. This has the added benefit of removing burnt out cars that were littering the countryside a couple years ago, left by unscrupulous people not wanting to pay to dispose of them. Now these vehicles have a value for their metal, the problem has largely disappeared, showing that recycling can benefit us all.
