2021 – Cold & cloudy, but could have been worse!
We started the year wet and got 115mm of rain in January – fields, dykes and reservoirs were all full.
A dry but late Spring allowed cultivations to go well, and the new potato fertiliser technique was successful.
15 ground frosts in April gave delayed emergence (3 weeks peas & mustard, 7 weeks potatoes).
We started a new 5 year Countryside Stewardship agreement taking 10% land out of production and put in wild flower margins, corners & edges to help wildlife and increase efficiency, but allowing bikes and hare coursers in.
The weather did warm up a bit, crops started to grow, and the bees were able to do their job pollinating the Mustard crop.
Great pigeon control lead to some excellent comparative pea yields (108%), gaining our highest rank in HMC group.
Sunlight had been down in every month up to July (blue line), and irrigation barely used….effects on yields?….yes. We luckily decided to buy the majority of our fertiliser early for 2022, as prices then soared x3 to £700/t in Nov.
A frustrating stop-start wheat harvest with no sun and damp grain. It was reported as “the wettest dry harvest!”. We started 11th Aug and finished 7th Sept, often only getting 4hrs/d! Yield was below average at 10.6t/ha.
Mustard harvest was also late to ripen due to the dull summer, but yields were nearly back to ‘normal’ at 1.6t/ha.
Potato harvest went very well, with only 23 days of lifting. Yields were disappointing at 42t/ha but quality was good. Demo’s from Grimme Varitron 270 and Dewulf RCA3060 were impressive but machines cost over £550,000 each!
Wheat drilling went nicely into excellent seedbeds, and emerged in 10-12 days, even in November after beet!
Sugarbeet yields are back to normal, 90-100t/ha, but British Sugar’s price is not good enough so area is reduced.
Wind production was in line with 5yr average while solar was -12%……but all helping our carbon footprint.