Member Insights: Sparham Hall Farm, Lyng

The ‘straw’ harvest is over for another year – not much straw, though. The winter barleys held up pretty well considering the severe heat and long drought; but the spring barley here was truly awful and I’m done with it for good. The maize will soon start to be harvested if heatwave number 4 goes on for much longer.

Post harvest thoughts are about what to grow if we keep these weather patterns. Currently the risk versus reward for cereals looks completely skewed. The best returns here this year will be the 6-meter margins, legume fallows, soil protection blocks and any other CS or SFI options. Why risk growing a crop on marginal land when commodity prices are so low?

Cover crops are mostly in and will be needed for outwintering our suckler herd. The forage rye is still to be drilled when the seed finally arrives. The silage stocks are the lowest ever and I don’t think we will be littering much straw. Derogation has been sent to the RPA to use NUM3 as emergency cattle food. But the cattle are worth a bit – “up horn down corn”.

The new orchard (planted this year) looks good. We have lost only about 3 trees out of the 100 planted but we have watered 16 times (and counting). Some have already fruited and the fruit has been removed; the trees are too young to support the crop.

The mature apple and plum trees are laden with fruit, and the hedges are also brimming with hawthorn berries and sloes – but everything looks at least a month ahead of normal. Maybe we should look at more perennial crops, that once established, keep producing something. (Olives, Walnuts, Hazel, Vines – who knows?)

It has been a great year for many Butterflies and moths after the horrors of last year. With clouds of Whites, and a good numbers of Peacocks, Commas, Red Admirals and Common Blues. But they are going through their life-cycles earlier than usual this year and Peacocks are already hibernating. The spectacular Wasp Spider is quite widespread now – try spec-savers if you haven’t seen one!