April 26, 2022

Last week of July and the month of August – the busiest time on my farm. I have to complete preparation of field 17 and then sow the Canola in the first week of August. In field 14, I have to harvest the Sorghum, then do soil samples. After that I will need to prepare that field for a Barley crop which I intend to sow in the 2nd week of September. With so much to do on my own farm, I won’t be showing any work I do for neighbours in this post.

Last time you saw me cultivating Field 17 after liming. Cultivating has stirred up the weeds as suggested in the Precision Farming mantra – see the box by the mudguard…

…So I had to buy a Weeder. I went with the cheapest one from Einbock which cost me €9500. It’s a simple tool…

…but it does the job and the Precision Farming score agrees – field score up to 60! The problem is that I’m hemorrhaging money and I know that I will need another piece of equipment once I harvest field 14. I’m going to need a Mulcher! So I spent the rest of the week doing some work for other farmers to boost my funds a bit. Then I went to the bank manager to get a €10k increase in the loan – actually putting it back up to the €200k I started the farm with!

The first week of August and I can harvest my Sorghum…

…It’s a lovely sight to see as we pour it into the trailer…

The yield pattern for the field is interesting (remember that this field was prepared under the old method) and hints at what lies beneath…

I guessed that the southern half of the field is a continuation of the loam from field 17 and the northern half is silty-clay – Time to take some samples…

After wading around the Sorghum stalks, here’s our results…

…Pretty much as expected 😉

In field 17, sowing the Canola stirred up the weeds again, so I had to run the Einbock over the field once more🙄 Then I was off to get the Mulcher so that I could chop down the Sorghum stalks in field 14 ready for liming and cultivating…