The Year Round: Weather helps along freshly-drilled oilseed

Rain in small quantities has not affected either drilling winter wheat nor lifting potatoes.

On this level, stone-free warpland bordering the Lower Ouse we found that wheat drilled in the first week in October 2009 yielded best. Humber was the wheat variety, drilled at 12 stones per acre but we find it difficult to explain its lead over other fields that we class as more fertile. We admire neighbours who managed to start drilling on September 15-16, long before us, but they do not have sugar beet lifting to contend with.

Oilseed rape drilling began here before the Bank Holiday weekend and the showery weather helped it to become well-established, with few attacks from slugs.

Wood pigeons have been a bigger menace and I heard on a TV programme that these pests are worse where they can find bare patches on which to alight.

The first liftings of sugar beet yielded a pleasing 17.5-18 per cent sugar. It was very clean, and vindicated our decision to persevere with the crop.

Poultry on the barn system seem happier and healthier than those on free range. After 20 years in free range units both grass and buildings become so disease-infected that the sheds have to be burnt and the site changed.

The barn system allows proper disinfection right down to the concrete floors. This is essential to maintain egg output, although returns are less per dozen eggs than in free range, where the trap doors are opened daily.

Poultry farmers moved birds into batteries to give them a clean environment but the anti-battery people do not appreciate this.

All our swallows have gone after a sparrow hawk perched on a building overlooking the farmyard, from which every other wild bird disappeared. The silence was uncanny.