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Hi MyFarmers – have I got some news for you today!
You won’t recognise this field I’m stood in. That’s because you’ve not been here
before. The news I’ve got is that we’ve got a new farm. One of our tenants has decided
to retire so for the last six months the National Trust’s legal department has been negotiating
and everything’s been sorted out. It’s now all finalised and signed and we are farming
a bigger area. You’ve got an extra 250 acres. Now this farm is a conventional farm, so you’re
now conventional farmers as well as organic farmers and that adds in a new dimension and
it’s an awful lot to learn.
The tenant who was here has farmed here all his life. His father farmed before him so
there was a lovely continuity there. It’s an arable farm, nothing else grown just wheat
and other arable crops and this year we got it – I didn’t know until the last minute
what was happening so we came in, in August – middle of August and started ploughing
and we’ve put the whole farm down to winter wheat. This field behind me on the left is
Solstice and the field on the right over there is a field of Gallant – different varieties.
We’ve also grown another variety called Hereward so there are three different varieties
on this farm.
The way forward we will be coming to you with lots of decisions, lots of interesting decisions.
The first one will be announced fairly soon and I suppose, I’ve been working this farm
for the last 6-8 weeks and I’ve sort of been conscious that you might be wondering
where I am. Everyone says we’re out in the fields cultivating but you know we’ve struggled
to cultivate our own organic farm because of the dry soils. We were able to cultivate
up here. This was sown about four weeks ago and from the close-ups you’ll get in a minute
you’ll see the wheat’s coming through quite nicely. It’s also nice and clean.
The soil is in good condition, it’s a heavy clay soil, like our own, but being a wholly
arable farm the straw was never taken away so the organic matter in the soil is good.
The condition of the soil is good, so we’ve taken on a farm which we would say is “in
good heart” and it’s quite a pleasure to work with. It’s enabled us to get these
crops in, in what has been a difficult year
So MyFarmers, an extra 250 acres – you’ve now got 1,000 acres of arable farm to manage.
700 acres - 750 acres of organic and 250 acres of conventional. Good luck.