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Over the weekend, paddocks we had taken out because of surplus grass were made into hay and we are now more or less in control of the grass area. But all grass utilisation talk is irrelevant with the horrifying drop in the price of beef – particularly bulls.
Normally, early to mid-July marks the peak of the bull price, with a strong Continental holiday-driven demand, but this year is the exception. We are still trying to figure out how to react to the price fall – especially with Brexit looking increasingly ominous.
Meanwhile, we are now gearing up for the harvest. The seed wheat has been hand rogued – this year we’ve never had such good control of wild oats, but anywhere there was less than complete inversion at ploughing, there are ugly patches of wild brome. It’s unusual for the brome to be out from the ditches, but its presence, even in isolated patches, demonstrates how important good ploughing is. It is striking how late the winter wheat plants are staying green this year. We are expecting that we will begin the winter barley next week. We have one small field of six-row barley which I thought would be the earliest, but even that has some way to go. We are also lining up to desiccate the oilseed rape. I have failed in my efforts to find a high-clearance tractor with a sprayer at 18m – the standard now seems to have moved up to 24m, so I have become resigned to using our own equipment and causing damage to the rows between the tramlines. Normally, I put a pod sealant in with the desiccant, though when I attended the excellent Goldcrop open day during the third week in June, one of the speakers referred to the new varieties of oilseed rape that are shed-resistant and don’t need a pod sealant. I must admit that I am still tempted to incorporate it, as I still have memories of even moderate winds causing severe shatter in a desiccated crop, but I will follow the trial results closely.
We have already caused some traffic damage to the beans. Never have I seen such a dense, tall crop – the opposite to last year. Even the few acres that I was considering replanting have thickened up with a reasonable looking crop and good pod development.
The next six weeks promise to be busy on all fronts.
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