Crops look good

Wedgetail wheat has been grazed once and is ready for the twin lambing ewes to lamb in.

Early sown canola is looking good and is due for a selective herbicide and the first nitrogen application.

This is the Preston wheat. It was sown on the 2 May onto sub soil moisture. Preston is a new wheat from the CSIRO's high rainfall wheat breeding program, it's not the best looking wheat (pale green) but it seems to yield well.

Jen seeded this Canola on the 25th march while I was in Brazil on my global focus program. It was meant to be grazed three weeks ago as part of a grain and graze project, but due to animal ethics saying there isn't enough food on offer they wouldn't put the sheep on. As you can see from the picture the canola is flowering and there is more than enough feed. They still wouldn't put the sheep on this week so we've called the trial off and put some sheep in today. we will run the experiment ourselves.

Going home

I'm at the airport waiting for the flight home. As I reflect on the past two weeks and all the places and things I've seen, it's the people I've met and the friends I've made that will stand out as the highlight of the trip. From the generosity of people welcoming you into their homes and sharing part of their life, to the farmer who is obviously very busy, dropping everything to show you round and then not letting you leave without first feeding you and asking you the stay the night. I'm looking forward to getting home to see the girls and check on the crops and sheep. I hope that I can soon repay the generosity that was shown to me when when all the people I've met come knocking at my door.

Steve Armstrong

I had a really interesting visit today with Steve Armstrong from Hastings. Steves a tenant farmer who in 1990 got a two generation tenancy, meaning that he can farm the land until he dies and so can any of his children. Steve lives in a home built in the 16th century. Steve is a excellent example of a farmer using all he has available to extract the most out of the land. He has sheep, cattle and arable and plants 10% of the arable land to wildflowers to attract the birds, for this he gets a payment as well as digging a ditch in the paddocks for water to pond so that wading birds can breed, and yes he gets paid. But the one thing I didn't understand until Steve explained it was that once pasture has been down for 5 years you cant return in to arable farming and that a lot of farmers a afraid that if they re pasture even for two years the government will change their mind. My last visit in the UK before I return home and the best so far.

Pro Cam Field Day

Both Dave and myself are currently staying with Jo Patterson, a UK Nuffield Scholar we met in Washington. Jo works as an agronomist for Pro Cam. Today Jo took us to her field day which was great. The site had Canola, winter and spring wheat and winter and spring barley. We also saw the breeding lines of KWS, all 30,000 of them over a 60 ha site.

Visited PX farms yesterday to see James Peck a UK Nuffield Scholar and young farmer of the year. James crops 4000 ac's in Cambridge as a contract farmer, which is a bit like share farming but where the land owner pays all the variable cost but then pay a machinery fee to the contract farmer.
Black grass is becoming a problem (see pic) a bit like rye grass in Australia so he was very interested in chaff carts, bailing behind the header and the seed distributor, he's also looking to introduce livestock back into the system to help with the control. He was also ploughing some pasture in preparation for a crop next march. The only thing I could see was the destruction of the soil profile. The costs associated with all the ploughing and working back is a big part of the cost structure over here, so I think if they could move to a simpler system as we have in Australia there margins would start to look allot better.

Day 1 again

I joined the Australian GFP on there first day in Ireland as they visited the livestock sale yards, feed mill, Keenan factory, machinery dealership and then Killkenny Castle before the hot air balloon ride over Killkenny. I forgot how hard the touring is as a group, so I wish the group all the best for the rest of the tour.

Kev and Bill

Ive just spent 3 days with fellow 2010 Nuffield scholar Kevin Nolan at his farm in Carlow Ireland. Had a great time and did lots of touring around. Kev runs a great operation with average yields of 12.8 T/ha in his cereals.

We also visited Bill, another scholar who showed us around his dairy. not only does he run a great pasture based dairy operation he also breeds greyhounds. There's 25 acres of pens where the dogs exercise before being sent to be trained.

Naylor's Flowers

One of the things I never get used to is the age of agriculture in the UK. I visited Matt Naylor today a Nuffield scholar who grows flowers and potatoes on this farm in Linconshire. The flower business was great but the thing that caught my attention was the fact that the area was reclaimed from the sea by the Romans maybe 2000 years ago. We cleared our farm in the 1970’s.

5 in 2

Visited 5 farms in 2 hours this morning. The visits included sheep, cattle, canola, barley, flowers, machinery. It's like speed dating but with farmers taking about kit.

Cereals

Attended Cereals in the UK. Great event with Live demos of both spray and tillage equipment, growing wheat and Canola crops for inspection and all the support products. There was no homewares or family section so it was all just business. I got some great ideas and ordered a few new products that I will be happy to show later in the year. Not only did the stands provide breakfast but they also provided lunch with a beer. Great stuff, something our Australian shows should think about.

Bread

I found this today. I never new we had bakers in the family.

London

Arrived in London to blue Sky's and sun. Spent the morning walking around before crashing that afternoon as the jet lag set in. Went to the last Powderfinger concert in the UK in Brixton. It was great. I think 80% of the crowd where Aussies.

Covent Flower Market

5 Am start today with a visit to the Covent Flower Market. The flowers come in either by train or plane from the Aalsmeere flower auctions in Holland. I asked where the Bottlebrush came from and the stall vendor thought they came from Africa via Holland.

A great selection of flowers and all in such perfect condition. I wonder how our everlasting whole go here.

Seeding

Seeding has been going well since I got home. Not that it wasn't before, see pic below, but we stated seeding into sub soil moisture and we've ended up with some rain (7mm) and the dust stopped.

For some of my overseas friends the difference between seeding and not can be a s little as 3-5mm of rain. The crop of wheat below was sown on 16mm of rain we received on the 25 March. It's had one grazing by sheep and than 25mm has fallen since. All of the crops are up with most of the cereals at the 2-3 leaf stage and the canola at 2 leaf.

So I'm heading overseas today going back to the UK for two weeks. I will be going to Cereals one of the UK largest arable field days then to Ireland and Netherlands to look at the flower industry. Ill keep you posted.