June in Westhorpe

 The two Buzzard chicks were ringed on the 3^rd. There was Common Blue, Tortoiseshell, Large and Small White and Meadow Brown butterflies on the Pollen & Nectar Mix on the 5^th. Also on the 5^th Derek from the RSPB recorded 3 Crossbill at Great Ashfield whilst looking for Turtle Doves. Barn Owls were spotted going in and out of a Barn Owl box at Great Ashfield on the 6^th and a Red Kite and 2 Buzzards were seen on the 7^th and 17^th and on both those days Turtle Doves were singing at the Hall, The Lodge and near the Church in Westhorpe and at Kiln Farm, Great Ashfield.. I saw my first Red Legged Partridge Chicks on the 10^th drying off on the back drive and on the 12^th a family of recently fledged Coal Tits were on the feeders outside our office. A Spotted Flycatcher was on a telephone wire in the farmyard on the 16^th and a hedgehog ran across the road in front of my truck at Great Ashfield. Swallows, Swifts have been hunting over the wheat field for the whole month.

I have been out checking the Barn Owl Boxes throughout June and have found Barn Owls breeding at both our farms and on farms at Great Ashfield, Rickinghall, Gislingham, Hitcham and on Thelnetham and Redgrave and Lopham Fens. Barn Owls have been seen regularly hunting in and around Westhorpe during June.

At Westhorpe there has also been Kestrels, Stock Doves and Jackdaws in Barn Owl boxes and we found a Little Owl’s nest in a log pile at Kiln Farm. Many of the summer migrants are still singing, Whitethoat, Lesser Whitethroat, Blackcap and Chiff-chaff have al been heard throughout the month and we were able to ring fledgling Goldfinches, Robins, Dunnocks, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Whitethroats and Greater Spotted Woodpeckers indicating the breeding season is going very well. During the month the Pollen and Nectar mixes have changed colour a number of times depending on with flowers are in bloom. The mix is designed to be in flower thorough the whole summer and every time I have visited them it has been alive with Bumblebees, Butterflies, Moths, Spiders and many other insects.

The ponds have had Dragonflies and Damselflies on the regularly, most frequent are Common Blue Damselflies, Common Darters and Broad Bodied Chasers. Walking around the Oil Seed Rape field there are hundreds of spiders webs woven into the plants and as many birds especially Whitethroats, Dunnocks and Blackbirds darting in and out of the field looking for food.

Another busy month for wildlife on the farm and not nearly enough time spent outside watching it all! PJB

Much happening in June?

  

This is probably the hardest month for me to report all of the wildlife activity since we have been writing a blog as Brian and I seem to have spent very little time here. This is a summary of what we have been doing in June. The month started with the Suffolk Show (1^st & 2nd) and the Barker family were out in force with bowler hats stewarding different areas of the show and more importantly, a lot of socialising. I was able to do my next BBC Radio Suffolk Wild on Wednesdays slot live from the Radio Suffolk stand at the Suffolk Show with Lesley Dolphin and although I was drowned out by the Apache helicopter at one point it was nice to be on a stage in front of a crowd rather than in a studio. The day after the show, local tree surgeon and fearless climber Matt Allen was on hand to check the Buzzard nest in woodland in Westhorpe and lowered 2 Buzzard chicks down which Chris McIntyre and I were able to ring. This is the 2^nd time in 3 years Buzzards have bred on this area of the farm and we are very pleased to have them. (http://lodgefarmwesthorpe.blogspot.com/2011/06/baby-buzzards.html) The following week Brian and I were invited to judge the East of England Agricultural Society’s Supreme Conservation Champion Competition which involved visiting farms in Bedford, Croxton, The Trumpington Estate and West Wratting Estate and gave us a fascinating insight into the way other farmers approach on farm conservation, their wildlife and habitat management. We were very pleased to be able to name Dan Bull at the Croxton Park Estate as the winner as he is delivering true conservation benefits whilst running a profitable, commercial farm. We then went straight off to Suffolk Farmhouse Cheeses (www.suffolkcheese.co.uk) to help Jason and Katherine Salisbury with their Open Farm Sunday. Their farm attracted over 1000 people during the day and it was nice for us to be able to meet many people to talk about modern farming and take home some of their Guernsey milk and delicious Suffolk cheese, especially the brie! The next week we took a day trip to Cereals, an agricultural show in Lincolnshire. This is a proper industry working show and gave us a great opportunity to catch up with many different people throughout the farming and conservation world and investigate advances in crop varieties, new machinery and spray chemicals and fertilizers.

On Saturday 18^th I visited Nicholas Watts at Vine House Farm at Deeping St Nicholas in Lincolnshire. Nicholas was one of the judges when we one Countryside Farmers of the Year last Year having won the award himself in 2009. I was wandering around his farm shop when I bumped into Peter Allen, a farmer from Cumbria  Peter visited our farm on the same day as Nicholas in his capacity as a sponsor of the FW awards as a Natural England board member and it was good to catch up with him as well.

It was great to see another farm that is really delivering visible conservation benefits with very simple principles and techniques. It was amazing to see over 100 Tree Sparrows is one area of reed surrounded by thick hedges and baby tree sparrows in the nest boxes he has erected. It was also amazing to see a tower Nicholas had built with 4 nesting chambers and each chamber had a different species actually nesting in it. There were Barn Owls, Kestrels, Jackdaws and Stock Doves all co-habiting without any effect on the other. 

Brian asking testing questions!

On the 20^th and 21^st Brian and I were off again, this time judging the Farmers Weekly awards with Melinda Appleby, Isabel Davis from the Farmers weekly and Mike Phillips from NWF Agriculture. Having whittled the entrants down from 14 to 3 we visited Chris Dowse in Stainton Le Vale (Lincolnshire), Fay Smith in Great Easton (Leicestershire), and Charlie Bransden in Laleham, (Middlesex). Details of these finalists are on – (www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2011/06/14/127260/Farmers-Weekly-Awards-finalists-named.htm)

The results are not announced until the awards night on Thursday 6^th October, so until then that is all I am saying.

On 25^th our friends Jim Allen and Steph Brooks were married at Great Ashfield Church and had their wedding reception in the barn at Westhorpe. The day was fantastic, one of the best weddings I have been to and the whole farm looked amazing. The transformation of a grain barn to a wedding venue was a minor miracle and testament to the hard work by many people but especially Steph’s father Kevin who spent months preparing the flowers and friends Zoe, Zia, Lucy, Hannah, Ellie and Caroline who decorated the inside of the marquee. The month finished with visiting the Norfolk Show on the 29^th and we started pre-season football training on the 30th. On top of all that we have had 7 groups visiting the farm on different evenings to see the farm and our conservation work.
We are hoping for a quieter July as harvest is approaching and the real work starts!

Twitter!!

Yes we have joined our farmland birds who are 'tweeting' happily in our hedges. You may have noticed the new box on the left of our Blog with a direct link to our new Twitter Page. We hope to use our tweets as a small snippit of daily life on the farm, especially during harvest when time to write longer posts may be limited. Well we hope time is limited because the sun will hopefully be shining hot and work will be in top gear! BWB

Blog readers, anyone for a farm tour?

It has been a busy spring with the farm hosting a number of farm walks for local clubs and societies. We had hoped to organise an open farm walk for all our local residents as we had done the year before but due to the early harvest looming this has not been possible.

However, our last farm walk for the summer is booked for the Monday 11^th of July at Lodge Farm, Lark Valley Association are coming for a guided tour of the farm to look at our approach to modern farming and integration of wildlife conservation following a talk I did for them back in November. We have just touched base with them and asked if we could invite a few people who have enquired about a farm walk this year. So as a bit of a thank you from us for reading our blog we would like to invite you on the farm walk. There are only a limited number of spaces available for this tour in conjunction with the Lark Valley Association, but if you would like to know more and book a spot on the trailer then please can you email us at events@ejbarker.co.uk and we can give you the full details.

As I said, there will be a limit on space so please contact us soon if not you will have to wait till next year!! Hopefully we will see you on the trailer next week. BWB

Chinese Lanterns should be £61.50 each!!

We see them in the dark night sky,

 A small orange speck as they fly,

They disappears with ore and grace,

Until they extinguish out of sight,

With no care from who held the lighter,

So what happened to them once the fuel runs dry?

They slowly descend as the hot air dies,

Some fall fast,

Others slow,

They come to ground,

On tree tops n crops,

When they land their intensely hot,

And if they touch our cinder crops,

The farmer fears a burning fire,

So please consider our fabulous farmland,

Before you light a floating fire!



Chinese lanterns are in the press a lot at the moment for one think or another. Fires have been started, many fingers pointed and wagged at the few who don’t understand the dangers they bring. They are very unique and do create a stunning scene but I don’t understand how they can be sold so cheap and how they can be allowed to be released at the driest time of year.

So many take pride in the appearance of Suffolk and our countryside this has been shown by the good work of the ‘Don’t be a Tosser’ campaign run by BBC Radio Suffolk and other organisations, making everyone aware of the importance to put litter in the bins provided and act responsibly. If you are caught fly tipping you can be taken to court and fined heavily, if you are seen littering you receive a £60 on the spot fine! So why aren’t we pushing for the sale of these Chinese lanterns for £61.50 which includes the on the spot littering fine. They would soon become out of fashion if that was the case!

We have found the remains of lanterns in our fields, in our grass, trees and hedges. Normally if you find one, there will be 5 or 6 close by. These wire and plastic circles with their burnt fuel cell and balloon top can cause danger to crops, animals and humans. They are simple in design but also simple in the speed they can fail! The fuel cells can fall or balloon puncture which causes the hot fuel cell to fall onto anything bellow. The end resting place can be anywhere combustible or not, the problems occur during dry periods when they can fall on thatched houses, cinder dry crops, straw stacks, heather moors etc. they also cause potential problems in animal feed such as silage as they get cut up and mixed in with silage. Then the small wire or plastic bits are fed by accident to the livestock that swallow them and then cause the animal discomfort and to possibly die slowly.

So please if you are planning on releasing one, two or a hundred just bare a thought of where they might end up and what damage a very simple unnecessary spectacle could cause. BWB (My proof reader has been away on holiday so i'm sorry for the grammer and spelling!)   

The Combine is warming up ready for action!!

The Combine is warming up ready for action!!

The harvest is looming fast on the horizon; you may have noticed some activity on the farms around you as farmers are out with their sprayers and swathers. The Oil seed rape has set seed and the seeds are coming into early full maturity, to speed the ripening process and help with harvest timings the rape plant needs to be killed so the sun can dry it quicker.  

This can be done either by spraying it off with Roundup or by swathing a process of cutting the plant without thrashing the seed off it. Roundup is our preferred method as it will kill the plant and all the weeds (if any!!); we know when to spray by inspecting the crop. Once the seeds in the pods halfway up the plant are turning colour from green to brown to black we will be going in with the sprayer. The sprayer will have a mix of Glyphosate (Roundup) the broad spectrum herbicide to kill the plants, a water conditioner to help the plant to absorb the herbicide and a product called PodStick. PodStick is basically organic glue that coats the pods to keep them in tack as the plant dries out. It is a sort of safety product for us as farmers, Oil seed rape is very delicate once it is close to combining and the smallest of vibration from wind, rain or HALE will cause the seed to shed and fall on to the ground. As the plant dies and dries the pods become brittle as it shrinks and cracks, the PodStick just prevents this from happening and pod skin becomes more leathery than brittle. When you have put all your years’ effort into producing a high quality crop then you don’t want pound coins falling to the floor before the combine. Hale can be a huge problem and can strip crops off all their seed if a particularly harsh storm goes through the farm some people in know storm areas actually insure there high value crops against hale damage, an expensive process but in some case very necessary.

The Roundup will be applied and will need to be left for 14 days minimum before harvest. The moisture of the crops needs to be down below 10% at harvest to help with safe storage and easy combining. The straw will be chopped and incorporated back into the soil and soon after harvest our new cultivator will be sent in to mix the chopped straw and break up the soil to create a stale seed bed which will mean that any shed rape seed will germinate along with weeds like Black grass that then can be controlled before we drill the winter wheat in September.

The Grass seed crops are turning quickly with the 30+ degree heat; the weekend looks to be set fair so the grass may be ready for combining beginning of next week! This will be done with our specialist combine header, our Shelbourne Reynolds Stripper header is basically a giant hover attachment for our combine. Instead of cutting the plants close to the ground the stripper header has fingers that rotate quickly and literally pulls or strips the seed off the top of the plant and the air vacuum created by the rotation sucks the seed into the combine. When we combined our grass direct with our older previous two combines the knife struggled to cut the damp grass and then the combine struggled even more to thrash all the grass stalks going through it. With the new combine changing two to one we had to go down the Shelbourne Reynolds Stripper header route and we have not looked back. With the same area as what took us eight days difficult combining with two machines cutting direct into the crop only took us three and a half days with one machine and the new header. This saved us time, fuel and wearing parts as the combine insides are working at 15% capacity due to most of the stalks being left attached in the field. This also help with the hay crop that we take after the combine as due to the wet harvest in the last two years all the hay would have been lost in the field if we had not had the new header. The new header leaves it standing in the field and is more weather tolerant so we can pick our break in the weather to mow, tedder, rake and bale the stalks to make good hay with more control.

Harvest is a stressful but satisfying time of year, the hours are long normally 7am till sometimes 2am in the morning depending on the weather pressure. We do and try and consider all our neighbours and local residents by not combining close to houses late at night and picking days when the wind blows away from houses and full washing lines! But please also consider your local farmer, we are flying about as our years work comes to fruition. Please be patient and careful on the little country lanes as we will be in return. Tractors can be pulling heavy full trailers that need to be kept on the road and need to be kept moving as the combine in the field covers the ground so quickly, so please if you meet a tractor or see one coming in the distance please find a safe passing place and pull over so that we can squeeze past, don’t force us on to the verge as that is when accidents occur as verges give way or we hit a drainage gully which throws us off balance. If you are stuck behind a tractor remember if you can’t see our mirrors then we can’t see you! We will not hold you up for long and will always thank you for your cooperation with a smile and friendly wave.

We are stocking up on coffee and Red Bull, in desperate times in the early hours we may have to resort to making coffee with Red Bull, but fingers crossed all goes well this harvest and all with be safely gathered in. If you’re out walking or driving give us a wave, stop and have a chat if we don’t look too stressed just to make sure we are not asleep at the wheel!! BWB

Turtle Dove Research Project

The first thing that anyone visiting the farm sees at the moment as they drive down the farm drive is a large area of Mayweed. This is in fact deliberate and part of an RSPB study into the effectiveness of an autumn sown Wild Bird Seed Mix. This mix has been specially designed by Kings and contains arable weeds which lose out to dense crops and effective herbicides in arable crops.



Turtle Dove in Westhorpe



The mix contains Common Fumitory, Black Meddick, Common Mouse Ear, Common Vetch and Red and White Clover and is designed to provide small-seed eaters such as Turtle Doves a food source as soon as they arrive from wintering in Africa. The dry conditions in the spring have meant that the plants have suffered and struggled to establish well. The mayweed seems to be well suited to the dry conditions and it is interesting to note the difference between the 6 plots totalling 2 hectares. The more shaded areas which are slightly wetter have a better covering of Fumitory and Common Vetch and the dryer areas more mayweed. There is very little of the other plants especially clover. Incidentally clover seems to be doing well in the grass margins and areas of Pollen and Nectar Mix where there is more of a grass covering. Walking in the mixes today the Common Vetch, Fumitory and Mayweed are alive with Bumblebees, Honey bees, Hoverflies, Ladybirds and many other Butterflies, Insects and Spiders. 

The RSPB study can be found on http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.aspx?id=tcm%3A9-256893 but it involves watching, monitoring, ringing, radio tagging, nest finding and alot of listening for the unmistakable purring sound that is the Turtle Dove song. We are delighted to assist with a research project of this type as we feel that in is important to put all of the benefits of the work that we are doing to good use. By having tall hedges and areas of tall scrub we are providing the ideal nesting habitat for Turtle Doves and in recent years they have not let us down. Last year we were able to each and ring 5 adult birds at sites in Westhorpe and Gislingham which is not bad considering there was only 28 ringed in the UK in 2010.

These plots will be down for two years and hopefully will give us and the RSPB a greater understanding of the feeding and breeding habits of these birds which have declined by over 90% since 1970.