Farming News – April 2023

The dry February has become a wet March. I like to sow spring barley during the first two weeks of March but rain and snow prevented this. I now hope for better weather at Easter; Holy Week tends to bring dry weather and I regularly spend Easter weekend sowing crops. Once the spring barley has been sown then fodder beet and grass will be the next crops to plant.

I also plan to plant an area of wildflower seeds as an experiment to see if they encourage more wildlife. If successful, I hope to make hay from the resulting crop which I will spread for the sheep to eat next winter. I’m thinking that the seeds from the wildflowers will spread across the farm, either in the hay bales or inside the sheep, and will self-germinate for future years around the grass fields.

Growing food has become uneconomic in the last year, so I will halve the area of potatoes grown this year, and will decide next year if I plant any at all in the future.