Irrigation more like irritation!

Last month we wrote about the prolonged drought and that we were trying to get our ancient irrigation system going again. Our irrigation system was developed through the 1960's and 70's to provide the necessary water for a range of vegetable crops that used to be grown on the farm. Prior to the irrigation system all plants used to be hand watered by a team of workers led by Ivy (Who recently retired after 50 years loyal service).  They would fill up a tank on a tractor and trailer by hand from the river, this water was then put into watering cans and each plant was watered up and down the field.  Not too bad you might think until one stops to realise that their were 1 million plants!! How times have changed.

We stopped growing vegetables over 10 years ago and although we had kept our irrigation license, we had not used many of the underground pipes for some time. Getting it all going was a nightmare but once we had started we were not going to stop!! At the time of writing we have been irrigating 24/7 for about 3 weeks. It  takes approx 23 hours to cover 4hectares (10 acres).  We started by watering the wheat on the lightest land, as this was starting to die, and we are now watering the maize that we grow for feeding to a local dairy herd.

To be able to irrigate you need to have a license to abstract water and these licenses are not only difficult to obtain, but also very strictly regulated in terms of the amount of water you can use each day and in total.  Fortunately on the 6th June we had nearly 25mm of rain which is more than we have had in total since Feb!!! This will help but more is needed and we will continue to irrigate where we can.   Although Farming has changed beyond recognition over the last century one thing that will never change will be how the weather affects us.

As well as the crops we grow to harvest like Wheat, Oilseed Rape and Maize, we rely on grass to feed our animals.  At present we have over 200 cattle and 200 sheep all of which graze the grass fields at this time of year. The lack of rain has also affected the grass growth and in some fields we are having to give supplementary feed to keep the animals growing.

We made our first hay of the season last week and managed to get it all baled and under cover just before the rain came. The yields were about half normal due to the drought but hopefully if we get some more rain we will be able to cut again.

In the Farm Village the maze maize is growing now, having benefitted from both irrigation water and the rain, and the potatoes for our new Potato Shindig are just peeping through.

We took the decision to sell off some of our sheep due to the lack of rain and so 162 ewe lambs with 216 lambs headed off to Wales where they have plenty of grass as it always rains in Wales!!

Now that all the cattle and sheep are outside we are catching up with cleaning out of the sheds where they spent the winter This muck is heaped on the side of the fields and will be spread back onto the land and ploughed in to fertilise next years crops and so the cycle continues.

One of the effects of the drought is that Wheat prices have risen significantly This in turn has an effect on livestock farmers, in particular Pig/Poultry and dairy farmers where bought in  feed costs have a big effect on overall profitability.   There is a lot of talk in the press about food inflation and food prices are rising, but on the other side of the coin every pig sold in the UK is losing the farmer over £12 (15%) and every litre of milk produced is being produced at below the cost of production. This has resulted in a steady exit from the industry by Pig and Dairy farmers and this exit is speeding up as a result of high feed costs and prices that have not kept up with these increased costs.

Nature has a way of balancing itself out so lets hope we do not get rain throughout the summer holidays!!