Last year, after the worst harvest we had ever experienced, we decided to use the "High Input" system of cereal growing in the hopes that the resulting yields would more than pay for the increased costs,  I wrote    "Our targets should be the following average yields: Winter Barley 40cwt, Spring Barley 38cwt and Winter Wheat 60cwt.  With reasonable weather conditions we should be able to attain these levels even on our light land."  Except for Spring Barley, which looks like averaging 36-37cwt, we have comfortably exceeded these targets after a harvest which has been nothing short of miraculous.  Lots of rain throughout the year may have made combining difficult but it gave us the sort of yields in every crop which occur once in a life time.  Corn, lucerne, herbage seed, mustard, rape - everything except sugar beet - have comfortably beaten the old records.

For the first time in thirty years some land adjoining the farm came up for sale and we were lucky enough to buy the 127 acres on Thriplow Heath which had been farmed by Paul Harding.  This will not be a continuing trend because of the enormous amount of money involved, but we shall be able to farm this new land without any a dditional machinery.

CEREALS (1400 acres)

The weather certainly played the most important role in this harvest, but it is impossible to discover to what extent the "High Input" system was responsible for these yields.  However, there can be little doubt that combination drilling, applications of fungicides before any disease was seen, considerably more nitrogen than has been used in the past and a very early application of aphicide must have been instrumental in the good results.  ; We were pleased with our new Berthoud sprayer which worked well with its 3000 litre tank and 27 metre booms enabling it to spray 30 acres in a single filling.  A combination of this machine and tramlines meant that we did not have to call on an aircraft throughout the season and we wore able to cover 7500 acres.  Two chemicals were particularly helpful.  We were lucky to be able to scrounge enough Bayleton to cover all our cereals (and the winter barley twice) and Oxytril CM has made weed control in undersown crops a lot better and simpler.

SUGAR BEET

After three disastrous years sugar beet was on probation.  Certainly the yield has been better this year even if the overall results will be worse than we had hoped at one time.  At the time of writing when there is still another 30 acres in the ground it does not look as if the overall average will reach 12 tons.  Results from Duxford and Foxton show conclusively that even in a good year beet does not like chalk.  We shall probably stop growing beet on this sort of land in future.  One hopeful feature of the season was the appearance of Goltix which, in spite of its high price, has worked exceptionally well as a weedkiller and, unlike the other products, did not check the beet's growth early in the spring.

CROP DRIER (400 acres lucerne)

Total production this year amounted to 750 tons which was disappointing in view of the fact that there was no shortage of lucerne. The wet season meant that the throughput was down and the number of breakdowns was up. The protein content was also lower than usual, The new Manns Gillibert 512 forage box did extremely well and the Class Jaguar 60SF speeded up harvesting. It does, however, need to be strengthened in order to withstand the rough conditions and long hours.

Herbage Seed (60 acres)

A split application of nitrogen amounting to 120 units per acre together with plenty of rain resulted in a yield which is double our previous r ecord for S24 perennial ryegrass. 11cwts per acre after cleaning and drying has shown an excellent financial return. After much thought we decided to use the new Fisonís herbicide Nortron (costing some £20 per acre) last autumn to clear up the problem of cereal volunteers. It worked magnificently and made harvesting a lot easier.

Mustard (80 acres)

Again the yields set new records for this farm, averaging 15cwt per acre cleaned and dry. In spite of the fact that the price was well do wn on last year's high level, the overall profitability of the crop was satisfactory.

Other Break Crops (30 acres)

In an attempt to find new break crops which could be grown on chalk we tried tares, maple peas and oilseed rape (the first two grown for seed). The rape managed 22cwt/acre, the tares around 20cwt and the peas approximately 15cwt. With the EEC subsidy on tares and peas grown for seed we shall make a small profit on these. However, the difficulty of combining the tares and the p roblems of finding markets for seed peas and tares means that we shall be concentrating on rape next year, growing some 90 acres.

DAIRY (120 head)

After seventy years as a pedigree Jersey Herd we have finally decided to give up milk production and concentrate instead on beef. This has been a sad and difficult decision but in the past few years the pressure has been building up. Staffing difficulties, a poor future for Gold Top milk and the fact that costs have been rising faster than income have all combined to make the decision inevitable. It is doubly tragic that this has happened at a time when the herd is beginning to show distinct signs of improvement thanks to the breeding policy of the past few years.

BEEF (150 head)

The Beef Unit will be expanded with an eventual aim of having some 120 single suckled cows and a total of around 400 head of cattle on the farm. A decision whether to buy store cattle in the autumn will depend on various factors but we shall certainly mak e use of our lucerne, beet tops and straw to produce the manure which our light land needs so much. The Beef Unit will be a one-man operation making use of the big bales and mechanised feeding in the yards.

MACHINERY

We have been able to continue our policy of replacing machinery and buying larger equipment. The tide of foreign machinery continues to run strongly but it was nice to buy a British lorry when the time came this autumn to re place the 9 year old Bedford. The Leyland Octopus wh ich took its place is the largest rigid lorry allowed on the road and can carry 20 tons of sugar beet, enabling us to cart in two loads what had previously taken three.

We took a long hard look at a giant 250 hp Case tractor and finally decided against it.  Maybe events in the future will change our mind because with our flat land and 50 acre fields this farm should be well-suited to a tractor of this size,  Certainly the idea of a single tractor ploughing 40 acres a day or discing 50 acres twice is very attractive during the peak autumn period. Nevertheless we opted for the flexibility of another 120hp four wheel drive tractor instead.  As usual, a Ford was not available and so we purchased another Deutz 10006A. The following machinery was bought this year: 1 Leyland Octopus lorry, 1 Deutz 10006A, 1 Deutz 8006, 2 Dowdeswell DP6 ploughs, 1 Ransomes TSR 109 plough, 1 8 furrow Lemken shallow plough, 2 19' Cousins cultivators, 1 6 metre Nordsten drill, 1 12 row Stanhay Beet dri ll, 2 12 ton Brimont trailers, 1 7 ton Brimont mucks reader, 1 28' Parmiter lift harrow, 1 Claas Dominant baler, 1 Claas hay tedder, 1 Krone mower-conditioner, 2 Dodge Simca vans, 1 Range Rover.

THE FUTURE

The High Input system of cereals will continue.  We shall make more use of the autumn weedkillers like Tribunil and Prebane to remove weed competition at an early stage and will certainly persevere with the philosophy of disease prevention rather than dealing with the problem after it has appeared.  The trend away from spring barley will continue even though this will mean that the autumn peak period will be still more frantic and the beginning of harvest will also be very congested.  A brief look at the figures this year shows that winter barley outyielded spring barley by more than half a ton per acre.  This is something which we cannot afford to overlook.  The trend can only be reversed if our customers, the Merchants, are able to give us much larger seed premiums for spring corn to make up for this yield difference.  It is hard to see how they can possibly afford to do this. We shall be growing several new varieties next year including two wheats from NSDO which are supposed to combine high breadmaking quality with the sort of yields given by Huntsman.  These two (Iona and Sentry) are being grown for the first time, as is Mardler, a wheat which may well outyield Hobbit.  Igri, a new high-yielding winter barley and Jupiter, a spring bar ley, complete the list of new varieties for next harvest. We plan to build yet another grainstore which will hold 1000 tons of wheat and will be able to handle and dry small seeds like mustard, rape and herbage seed which have hitherto given us many problems.  Our total storage capacity for cereals will be around 3500 tons next year which should be enough for many years to come.
 

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