Archived News

9th September 2014

With this glorious sunshine it’s difficult to remember that two weeks ago there was enough rain to prevent us drilling the final 200 acres of oilseed rape.

On the fields we did manage to sow, the flea beetles are eating their way through the emerging plants before the seedlings become established.

The holes in the leaves are just beginning to show.

As we feared, without the seed dressing that protects this early stage of growth the flea beetle is taking hold and we’ve had had to resort to spraying insecticide in order to try to protect the crop from being written off.

The seed dressing was designed to protect the very early stage of plant growth, quite simply so that it could grow past 3-4 leaves and get established, it is not necessary to protect against flea beetle after that and therefore the dressing was enough to ensure this protection.  We understand from agronomists that the mature plant and flowers next April would not be holding any harmful chemicals for insects 8 months later.

Ed has been cultivating soil at Normandy and Shalford and now David is sowing Havana feed wheat.

Gradually over the past four weeks we have taken in 100 Friesian x calves from dairy farms and will continue over the coming months until we have 400-500.

Last week we had a couple of days off and missed the first calving from a group of five home bred heifers. It’s a very smart bull calf out of Carsluith Ethelred and Wotton Jenny, I have yet to name the calf but am thinking we may keep him entire and possibly register him as our first home bred bull.

Seventeen cows were pregnancy tested today and all are in calf which is fantastic news; they are all Belted Galloway cattle except for Flo, a Belgian Blue cow who is eight years old and has been running with the herd for six years ( it’s a long story!).  We think Flo is quite amazing as she fits in happily with the Belties and lives outside all year round despite not having their double thick coat.