A treat of a hobby.

Young Hobby in Westhorpe in 2011 taken by Mike Rae (www.mikerae.com)

The opportunities for watching wildlife at this time of year can be somewhat limited from the tractor cab. As the combine works it's way up and down the fields I am always pleased to see how many different species are taking cover in the oil seed rape and wheat crops and it reminds us that we still needs to leave cover once the fields are completely clear of crops to give them somewhere to hide from predators. The numbers of young pheasants and partridges we have seen this year have been especially pleasing given the difficulties they had with the wet weather earlier in the summer.

The highlight of the harvest so far though has come in front of the mower rather than the combine. Nick was mowing the grass seed stubble to remove the long dead grass and as he was driving up and down the field he was disturbing the skylarks taking refuge in the long(ish) grass. A hobby had realised this and was sitting on the ground waiting for Nick to drive past before making its move after the skylarks. The skylarks knowing the hobby was gunning for them were waiting until the tractor was almost upon them before they flew as short a distance as possible before dropping back in the grass. Because of how close the skylarks were to the tractor, trying to evade the Hobby, Nick and I (who by now had rushed up to see the show) were treated to the spectacle of the agile Hobby flying around the tractor cab in an attempt to catch the skylarks. At times the Hobby was no more than 5 metres from the cab and provided a tremendous display. This went on for over half an hour before the Hobby gave up and left to hunt somewhere else empty talloned It will not be long until the Hobbys are making their way back to Sub Saharan Africa so it was a real treat to witness one at such close quarters. PB

Barn Owl Success in Westhorpe

In May I wrote about the increased Barn Owl activity around one of our Barn Owl boxes ( Click Here to View) and here is the update...



Barn Owl hunting in Westhorpe - Mike Rae (www.mikerae.com)

Barn Owl breeding has been more a tale of heartache than success in recent years with only one chick fledging from a brood of 3 that hatched last year from 5 eggs. The two chicks that died were both good sizes and the only explanation I can think of for it is that one of the adults vanished and the two chicks starved to death. The most common cause of death for Barn Owls is being hit on the road and the female (I know this as I had the opportunity to ring her in the winter) was left to do all of the hunting on her own. The single chick did fledge which was our first successful breeding since I have been on the farm. Also at our Great Ashfield farm a pair of Barn Owls abandoned a single egg in 2011.

I was quietly optimistic when I saw two birds together on film around the box, one with a ring on which I am hoping is last winter's female and a new male which is unringed.  On 17th April I checked the box for the first time and there was a Barn Owl sitting on 5 eggs that I could see. I was very careful not to scare the Owl out of the box and made sure that she was not disturbed off the eggs. By blocking the entrance hole and using the inspection hatch and a torch I was able to have a good look in the box and then quietly left the area. I should add that Barn Owls are a schedule 1 species, I am an accredited agent of a schedule 1 license holder and it is a criminal offence to disturb a schedule 1 species without a license.

Knowing that the incubation period of Barn Owls is 32 days and they are 53 days from hatching to fledging I had a nervous wait for seven weeks not knowing whether there would be healthy chicks or cold eggs in the box. I was able to see Barn Owls hunting on our grassland and over our neighbours paddocks most evenings so I was fairly optimistic that the news would be good.

I revisited the box on the 9th June to find...

 

..three good sized, healthy chicks were huddled up in the corner of the box. On the 11h June I ringed the 3 chicks so they are now individuals. I was also able to determine their ages by measuring the 7th primary feather, which is a technique devised by Colin Shawyer and was demonstrated on Springwatch this year. The chicks were as follows - Chick 1 -Ring number -  GC92390, 7th primary feather - 42mm = 36 days old, Chick 2 - GC92391, P7=70mm = 42 days old and Chick 3, P7= 85mm = 45 days old. At the time I was ringing the chicks, the adults were both waiting to bring food into the box so we got them back in as soon as possible and got out of the way so they could be fed whilst the weather was good. I had my worries about the chicks not getting enough food as we had a great deal of heavy rain through June and July as Barn Owls will not hunt in the rain.

At this time I put up the remote camera and left it looking at the box to see if I could capture any good footage of the young owls and they got older, braver and eventually fledging.

After 3 weeks the batteries had run out out on the camera but I had over 300 15 second videos and this is my favourite one showing exactly how a short-tailed vole is eaten by an owlet.

 

 

One of the adults bringing food back to the young.

 



Since the videos were made I have watched the young owls flying around, gradually getting further away from the box but reassuringly the adults always seem to be on hand with food and teaching them how to hunt. Now that four out of five of the birds are ringed we will know if any are found at a later date and be able to trace them back to Westhorpe. PB

The Dust Monster

Wheat harvest has started and we are covering about 25ha a day. The combine is working hard due to the oil conditions being soft as well as the straw being a little green. This is due to the wet weather in the build up to harvest. We are also chopping all the straw to incorporate it back into the soil to aid its structure and improve organic matter levels which causes more fuel to be burnt. We are filling up with about 800L of fuel a day @ 70p/L so the fuel bill will be massive, however in a hour we can combine 35-40t of Wheat so in a ten hour day we will bring back to the shed about 400t of Wheat which is worth about £70,000. So the most important thing while the Wheat is dry is to keep the combine moving and in top working order. It gets a full grease, oil and check each morning by Nick and then he makes sure all yesterdays dust is removed as this can cause a fire if it builds up on the engine. Long day, long hours but a good time of year. Hope to see you all out and about over the weekend while the sunshine continues! BWB

More than One Kind of Mole

We all hate moles in our nicely manicured lawn, lifting great mounds of earth up into mole hills and digging tunnels along the surface so they can move about under the cover of soil and darkness. They can be a pain but down on the farm, we have a very large and loud ‘mole’ that is currently ripping through the grass crop land that will shortly be cultivated and put into winter wheat.

It’s a mole drainer out doing its job. So what is a mole drainer? This is a special piece of equipment that is used on heavy land farms to help drainage. You have to have a certain type of soil to use it correctly and you also need the right soil conditions to benefit from it.  It is the deepest-working, pulled cultivator found on the farm and it takes the most amount of power to pull it. Remember the general rule: the deeper you move the soil, the more horsepower is required; well, this is a prime example.

It looks small but it does stick it's heels in to make it hard to pull

The implement is relatively small and is dwarfed by the large ‘New’ Caterpillar tractor boasting 320hp but the mole’s unique design and depth it makes it the hardest implement to pull in our clay soils. The machine has wheels to turn and move it on the road but in the working position, the wheels are not in contact with the ground so the whole machine slides on the surface. Mounted on the back is a blade which is a long, thick, very strong piece of metal that is held low, below the frame. At the end of the blade, you have a bullet which pulls a ceramic expander. Those are the correct terms but I describe them as a leg and foot pulling a ball and chain!

The idea is to create a mole: a round tunnel formed in the clay subsoil just above the field drains. The field drains are permanently placed pipes and gravel that remove water from the field, working with the slope. The temporary mole is formed just above these, so not to break or damage the pipes and they are formed at ninety degrees to them. Therefore, over all our fields we have a lattice work of pipes to allow the water free movement out of the topsoil, making our fields easier to work and better for the plants to grow in. 

The leg sets the depth and then the foot starts to move the tightly compacted clay ready for the clay to be pushed back by the hard ceramic expander that creates a smeared clay channel. This smeared clay channel then hopefully dries out to create a natural clay pipe. This is repeated every four metres over the whole field and they normally last about 6-7 years before they collapse or fill with sediment, so it is a on-going rotation around the fields with clay soils. The conditions are very favourable this year to make the moles as the wet spring (and summer) means the clay is very receptive to being formed into the mole, as deep down it is very moist. It also means that the blade does not wear away very quickly as the top soil is not baked solid. The pressure on the foot, expander and blade is huge. The friction is massive and you can see flakes of metal peeling off them and they become very hot. The ceramic expander can get so hot that if you hold it with your bare hand your skin will burn!

The foot and expander hang under the frame.

The new tractor has had its first run out and the noise it makes sends goose bumps up my neck, that really deep throaty roar of the exhaust belting out power! We are looking forward to working it hard this autumn but first we need to clear the harvest, which is proving challenging with these showers and thunderstorms. I hope I am not making a mountain out of a mole hill! But if the sun does not come out soon we will be in a right muddle with crops being spoilt and ruined wheat sitting ripe on ear!

Sun would be most welcome to help with harvest and bake the newly formed moles deep in my clay! BWB

Make hay while the sun shines!

A full week of work in the herbage grass fields for everyone on the farm has just finished. The hot sunshine made it a very busy week with harvesting, hay making and a wildlife surprise!

The special fingers on our Stripper Header

We started harvesting the grass seed using our combine with its specialist header called a 'stripper' header. This is designed not to cut the plant stalks but to use specially designed fingers to lift the stalks and strip the seed off each stem as the header passes over it. It has revolutionised the grass seed harvest that used to be a struggle cutting the crops directly with a conventional header table. Now, with the new header, what took us 8 days with two smaller combines, takes just over 3 days with one! The seed is then taken quickly to the farm where it is put on a special floor that blows lots of air through it to reduce the temperature of it and dry out the remaining moisture. We level it out so that the crop dries evenly and we are not left with any wet spots or hot spots. The crop yielded really well but considering the wet spring it was a perfect year to grow grass as your lawn cutting regime will testify!

The side mounted mower

Once the combine gets started the hay making process begins. The grass stalks are mown with a disc mower; this is 2.8m wide and is mounted to one side of the tractor so you don't run the grass flat on the floor as you do it, making it difficult to cut low down. This is then spread out over the field by another machine called a 'tedder'. It has rotating sections which pick up the cut grass and throw it about. It is 7.7m wide, so we can cover a large area quickly. This teddering is done 2-3 times over a period of two or three days, allowing the heat of the sunshine and wind to dry all the moisture out of the hay. 

The Rake

Once the hay crop on the ground is dry, the decision to row it up and bale it is made. This involves another machine called a 'rake', which scrapes the hay up into a row by using a number of tined arms that pull the hay to one side against a partition. Once in rows it is ready to be baled. The baler picks up the row and compacts it inside a chamber within the machine that packs it tightly before two strands of string are looped around the whole cuboid and tied up by a mechanical knotter. 

The baler and sledge

The bales are then pushed out by the next bale being made and they fall out of the back onto a mechanical sledge pulled behind the baler, this arranges the bales into eights by a continuously moving belt floor that drags them quickly off the baler down different passages. This triggers levers to open other passages for the next bale. It lines them up in two rows of four and then the last lever triggered by the eighth bale releases the back gate and the eight bales drop out on to the floor. We put them into eights as they are much easier to handle in vast numbers. The two loaders on the farm have an attachment that picks up the eights by a set of claws that grab the bales and so we can pick up and load trailers with these eights or make stacks in the field. Most of the hay bales are sold to local horse owners and pet owners that feed it to their animals throughout the year. As the old saying goes, 'Make hay while the sun shines', as this is so important and the sun makes the whole process much easier and the quality of the final product really good for safe storage in lots of different stable blocks. If it is too damp the hay can start to warm and cook itself. This can ruin the quality and in really bad cases can actually catch fire if left undiscovered!  

All the different activities took place on the farm over the past week then, on Friday, the sun never came out and so hay making was stopped. This gave me a chance to go and check the other variety of grass we have left to combine. The grass is not ready to harvest but it is proving a great hunting ground for this Short Eared Owl that I finally caught up to with my camera! BWB

The Perils of a WET Harvest!

Well, it is the second half of July, normally a time of sun, heat hazes, cricket and the anticipation of the dust monster rolling out into the crops to start harvest; however, this year, it is more like rain, central heating on, ducks - and the anticipation of a mud monster once we get in the fields!

Harvest is such a great time of year, reaping the fruit of a full year’s work but the weather plays such an important part in a happy and smooth harvest. The sun is the key. Without this, the crops stand or lay wet in the fields, making it almost impossible for the combine to do its job of separating the seed from the stalk. We have to harvest the crops when they are dry, so that they store safely in the sheds on the farm. If they come in wet, then we have to spend money on drying them by burning diesel or LPG gas in giant hot air burners that heat up the grains on special floors. This is an extra expense that farmers don’t want - and our carbon footprint does not need! The sun is the best dryer; it is free and does it far quicker than we ever could, with the help of the gentle summer breezes.  If the crop is not dry then we have problems like mould and pest infestations as the heaps of grain warm up and the mountains of corn can be deemed totally useless for their intended market.

So, apart from wet grain and the headaches of keeping it in best conditions in store, what are the other perils of a wet harvest?

I have mentioned the problem of the grain sample quality going into the combine, being wet, but there are other problems associated with crops staying wet in the field before the combine gets to them. Mould on the ear and a build up of micro toxins in the grains are very real and unavoidable problems. This means that any grain destined for a feed market, both animal and human, will need to be tested for the levels of these micro toxins caused by mould growth. We cannot stop this toxin build-up; only the sun can.

Once the grain is dry enough to combine, we start having problems with this operation. The top of the plant and the grain dries quicker, so the stalk is damper as the moisture moves up out of the top soil. The combine driver has to keep checking all the settings of the combine, making sure good grain is not wasted and thrown out of the back, either still on the stalk or off the back of the sieves within the combine.  We also have to consider the straw left by the combine. If it is a wet year, most farmers will just chop the straw coming out of the combine, so instead of leaving it in a raised row to be baled for use in the livestock sector, it is smashed up and spread over the field like a carpet. This is then known as ‘trash’ on the field and that brings another problem in wet years as one of our main pests, the slug, loves to live in this wet mulch of ‘trash’, causing problems in establishment of next year’s crop later on in the autumn. Slugs have a population boom in these favourable conditions for their life cycle. The ’trash,’ if wet, also makes any early cultivation very hard, as it does not flow through the machinery very well and does not mix into the soil properly. This then alters our soil management for the preceding crop, making it more time consuming to prepare stale seed beds which is our main weapon against grass weeds.

Disposal of the stalks and stubble can be difficult

Soil management is not just ‘trash-’, pest- and weed- control. Wet soil is much more prone to structural damage. Rutting and compaction will be a serious problem this year, due to the wet soil on the surface. A combine tank holds 10t of grain, which, added to the 25t weight of the machine, means we have somewhere around 35t of weight driving over every field at a spacing of 9m! Our combine has huge tyres on it to try and spread the weight out over the surface, to reduce the chance of compaction, but it can be unavoidable. This is why some combines are now built with rubber caterpillar belts to create an even bigger footprint to spread out the weight.  The tractors and trailers will cause similar problems, pushing the soil down under their weight, especially when full of grain. This leaves deep structural problems under the surface, which, if it is not rectified by deep cultivation, will mean that the roots of the next year’s crop won’t break through this compacted layer of soil. The roots will then grow sideways and not down, making for weaker plants, as they fight for root moisture, nutrients and space throughout next year. This means expense to the farmer because, as a general rule of thumb, the deeper the cultivation the more horsepower required and the more money it costs to do it.

Some times waterlogged soil can give way totally! 

Mud on roads could also be an extra problem this harvest. Dragging mud onto the road is a danger to us and you the general public, so we have to prevent mud build-up off the fields. All our tractors will have a spade on them to scrape the worst of it off the road but still please be careful when driving during harvest, if the soil is wet. Please keep an eye out for mud and slow moving vehicles, we don’t do it on purpose and are only trying to do our job, so a bit of patience would be much appreciated.

Our own patience is another thing we have to consider. Hanging on to let the sun work is better sometimes than racing in and cutting too early, but this means that when it is fit to combine it will be ‘all hands to the pump’. Long hours on the seat can mean tired minds and body. Stress of harvest is guaranteed in the best of years but even more in wet ones.  Weather watching and forecast predicting becomes a full time science and this also makes farmers first class moaners when the weather doesn’t do what it was predicted to do.

Farmers are renowned for moaning about the weather and the price of the crops; however, this is one thing that a wet harvest does help with! On the back of wet weather here, droughts in Australia, floods in Russia, frosts in Canada earlier this year and now the USA being hit with climate problems too, it has driven prices up and commodity investors see a possible short fall in supply. Our final load of wheat left from last year was sold at an all-time farm record of £208/t. David has only seen wheat prices hit over £200, 5 times in his life - all in the past 7 years. World food demand is huge as our world population spirals out of control. Unfortunately, this will be passed to the consumers as higher food prices and we will be hit by crop input rises, as manufacturers jump on the back of these prices.

Sadly, soon your breakfast cereal will be too expensive to buy - but your milk will be cheaper than what it costs to produce, as the supermarkets have hit the UK dairy industry with another 2p/pint cut, but that is another story that will - and has - pushed my grumpy stress levels through the roof!

Fingers crossed for the Gulf Stream to move north and fill our skies with high pressure and sunshine to make it a slightly easier harvest. It is going to be difficult but we can only do what we can, when the conditions are right. Make sure you give us a wave or a toot while we are in the fields to make certain we are awake!      BWB

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