Archived News

24th September 2016

Contractors are on the farm at the moment forage harvesting over 600 acres of maize from about 12 different locations.  The crop isn't grown all in one place due to the rotational nature of farm cropping. 

The forager works its way around each field continuously cutting the maize whilst tractors and trailers drive alongside and are filled via an unloading pipe.  The forage harvester cuts, chops and harvests the entire maize plant.

The contractors have a window of good weather to complete our harvest as efficiently as possible before moving on to other farms.  A team of five trailers corn cart from the nearest fields and ten trailers work from the further locations in order to keep the harvest going.

Laurence will walk through the crop and assess when it's fit for harvest, with the dry matter needing to be 28%-35% and hopefully with fine weather during the harvest period.

The forage harvester has a corn cracker which breaks all the maize grains and the entire plant is chopped into pieces about 12-18mm long.

The silage clamp needs to be filled quickly with the maize, which is pushed into place by a loading shovel and continuously consolidated as the machine moves back and forth, flattening as it goes and excluding air.

The clamp is then completely covered and sealed to enable swift, anaerobic (without oxygen) fermentation of the crop. 

Since the end of the cereal harvest in August, fields have been moled where needed, cultivated and limed and the hedges have been trimmed prior to drilling the fields with the next crop.

Some of the Belted Galloways have had their calves weaned this week. We also have one Belgium Blue x cow named Flo, who is now ten years old and always produces a solid Belted Galloway x calf each year.

Whilst the cattle were in the crush we trimmed any ears that were too hairy to read the ear tags and trimmed the longer tails of the dams so they don't get quite so mucky during winter.

The cows and calves are housed in separate barns during weaning to ensure they are secure and safe and unable to escape as they might from a field, if they tried to get back together.

The smaller calves will remain at foot with their dams for a few more months and they have been turned out into the Clockhouse field which has a good bite of grass to produce milk for the suckling cattle.

The bulls are currently in bull pen's in the farm yard and will be having a post season fertility test next week and once the weaning process is complete we will be able to put the bulls back out with some of the cows which are already in-calf. 

I am pleased to have received our Manor Farm, Belted Galloway Beef bags ready for the forthcoming beef sales in October and November.  We had some art work and paintings commissioned by Mike Jory from sketches he produced of our herd and it is those we have used on the refrigerated van, publicity work and now the jute bags.

It's great to meet many people from the local area and further afield who visit the area in which we work each day. 

Today was a case in point when I was out checking the Belted Galloways on the North Downs and at three of the fields got talking with three separate ladies, all out enjoying the countryside in different ways, whether it be for the abundance of nature (one was quick to spot a Clouded Yellow butterfly), using mapping skills or the joy of scenery and photography. 

I think it's marvellous that the paths of four women can cross within as many hours, all from differing areas or backgrounds but engaged in some really interesting conversations,  and that if only briefly, it was good to talk about the landscape, conservation grazing, carbon emissions, food waste and even the Milky Way!

Back