FARM UPDATE #10 #WardysWeeklyWaffle

we're now spreading the sewage sludge from seventh trent to get a contractor in to to do it and just to remind everyone of the benefits of this product it used to be dumped in the in the sea so that was obviously to everybody's mind and environmental catastrophe and now it's put on land we have got phosphate nitrogen and little amount of potash in it um sulfur and a whole load of trace elements now it saves us approximately 300 tons of fertilizer a year in bags and we reduce the amount of nitrogen we put on through the spray we're on liquid nitrogen to allow for the sludge we put on we don't use any phosphate it all comes from the sludge and uh obviously sulphur as well so it has huge environmental benefits uh to to the country but also to farmland and producing crops it's just a great win-win for recycling a product so when you start to look at the product and some people say it smells yes it does but we have regulations to follow we have to incorporate this within the soil within 24 hours of it being spread but also i think we need to remember but when anybody goes to the toilet you flush that toilet that is not the end of the problem that is only the start of something and it goes to the water companies it's recycled it comes onto the land it produces food people eat food they recycle that and it's back again so it's a question of keep recycling it and it's a great win for everybody right i'm in the cab of one of the tractors pulling the spreaders and this is the computer that operates it uh you can just see at the top there we've got 27.27 tons in the in the spreader at the back and then what's on this screen the rest of it then you have your application rates 24 ton hector yeah and the amount of hackers we have done so far for yourself that's on the house yeah and this is how many time we have spread from yesterday till today is that just you yeah that's just myself the other spreader slightly smaller so she would have maybe half of that as well so maybe about 900 right yeah and it'll be your pto speed yeah and then your application speed up your application there your hectares bring it back down to 24 and then tractor speed and that's basically it turn on your hydraulics and off you go and off you go once the big lever and that's the spreader on the back there so great thank you [Applause] you can see it throwing the sludge out in the field it's all ground speed related so the faster the tractors it goes it will throw it out the back faster to keep the application right the same that's your application real percentage yeah that's how much is actually going out the back what we desire yeah and then that's how quick your floor is forty percent speed rate the quicker you go the quicker the flower will go no i got you so if i give her two e touches there you'll see the floor coming up but yeah she drops the application right yeah yeah i'll say that now you just sort of give her 40 percent which is how yeah yeah fascinating and that's the display of the tractor on the fent 933 so we're about 7 30 monday evening the light is already starting to go it's quite alarming really i suppose middle of september and it's half dark at this time of day already this is the field next week we're going to start drilling winter wheat in first and over this hedge beach hedge planted about a year ago my front lawn is about in need of a trim so i'm going to get it done hopefully before the dude comes down it is quite quite long so tom's cutting the sheet so it fits in the hole [Music] so this is the sheet that's just been cut we've got the bin full of wheat on purpose to change the sheet that one's got wheat in as well but even so we've got ladders outside on the roof and then we need to push this up and put the bolts in that line here is because it's an older sheet we've had it a couple of years and it's just got some mutton dust on it and the weather will soon clean that so it will look like that one and it looks under there that's how they look on these old concrete purlins so our harvest executive max hasn't done any shed repairs before so it's interesting exercise showing them how old buildings were constructed and how they are repaired using these hook bolts so something else he's picked up while he's been working with us is that right max good so we thought the job had finished but what's happened here max well they've just gone and left this one who's that uh tom and ruben i don't know can't get the stuff next job is to change the bulb on the front of the house and that's gone now thank you tom hold that hopefully this one works [Music] [Music] cover that sensor that's not enough i have to wait till tonight the view up here reuben just testing the wind we've got some glyphosate to put on that field there but i'd rather not it drift onto the grass and frankie's assisting bingo we have light so that's it that's the bulb changed and there's no wonder it wasn't working when you look at this you can see it all distorted and black inside there so hopefully now tonight it will be sorted we're just loading some bales up that we had uh bailed about probably two months ago now from one of our winter bird food and wildflower areas these are the bales and uh the reason we baled it was because the plot here had got quite a lot of rubbish in it and a lot of grasses and it's actually the grasses were overtaking um the flowers and and so the only way to deal with these plots is you cut it and remove it by baling it otherwise the grass is proliferating the fertilizer from the grass when it rots down actually encourages the grass to grow and it smothers out the the flowers so this is the area there's point four of a hectare here and this was put in only last year so it's only a year old but it's with all this these wildlife areas and these stewardship areas they do need managing you don't just put them in the ground and forget about them and this is where i think sometimes defra and some of these people don't realize that the cost of these schemes it's not it's not all um if you like income you do have to manage them you cannot forget about them and so when you start to look at what's involved in this um sometimes some of these schemes aren't as profitable as what some people think we're now concentrating on the bean stubbles and we've just had some sewage sludge spread on this on this field and another bean stub will come in winter wheat and um we're just having to incorporate the sludge you can just see there some of the sludge the black particles we have to incorporate it within 24 hours of spreading it so we're just running through with the simba express behind me but it's also to chop up some of the rubbish because you can just see in a place or two we've also got some weeds that there that will just block our drill up a little bit that's actually not a very bad patch but there are some worse patches dotted around the field so we are just going through with um this express to do uh two or three jobs in one and then uh leave it in a good condition and we'll get it drilled next week [Music] we do every other breed and miss apart across the field all the way across this is the beauty of gps it's just easier at the end you don't turn quite a stunt and uh we go all the way across the field by missing a breed as we call it the width of the machine and then turn around at that side of the field and come back and fill in and that's what we're doing now we're just filling this part in another good thing with growing beans or a break crop or any legume really whether it's veggies clover peas is that they fix nitrogen and leave nitrogen behind for the following crop to utilize now what fixing nitrogen means is that the beans grow in conjunction with soil bacteria and the bacteria pull gaseous nitrogen into the air and then it releases it to the crop to grow and then when that crop grows it leaves some of that nitrogen behind in the roots and so of course the great thing is that we then reduce the following nitrogen requirement of that of the following crop but we also reduce the nitrogen to allow for the sewage sludge that we've applied here because that will leave approximately 25 kilograms a hectare so the way we work this out is that in january we will actually take some soil nitrogens sorry some soil test and determine what nitrogen is in that soil we'll send it away to be analyzed and obviously that is after the bulk of the winter's been so it depends on how much rain we've had as to how much nitrogen has been washed through the soil profile and and with the current high nitrogen prices it's a great way of making the following crop more cost efficient to grow by utilizing the nitrogen that the crop has left behind and also the nitrogen that the sewage sludge is releasing so that's where we are now so it's come down a lot to where it was just a week ago crop one the uh flap under the bins hasn't been opened so there's no air being under the bins everything's been going into shed three so that's now come down to 18.4 so i'll switch the fans off now um until the nights come down to sort of below 10 degrees because at those temperatures where we are here uh it will keep there fine for a few weeks but we just need colder nights so it's not bad considering we were 34 and 32 degrees only only a week ago september the 14th and now we're down to 17.6 and 18.4 so that's good it's 6 15 wednesday morning and incredible outside still quite dark for the time of morning shows the winter's on the way anyway i'm in the fan house and in front of the automatic controller at the farm that i'm tenant of uh just checking the store temperatures um and if you remember last week uh that's where we were we started off at 32 and 34 about a week ago so i'll just turn the camera around now and we'll see where they are i'm just cutting some hedges at the minute and uh i know a lot of people say it's the wrong time of year to be cutting hedges we need to leave berries for the birds and but i actually think we're better off cutting the hedges every year because if you do them very lightly every year and just trim it you still leave lots of berries for the birds you still leave lots of berries for the birds and if you don't trim your hedges every year and you leave it say three years which some people do and some of these environmental schemes say to do then you've got branches as thick as your arm and you absolutely annihilate them when you've uh when you've done it you you split all the stems and it just looks horrendous it's the worst thing out i think so i'm just going to have a quick look here at the hedge and the berries i've left here with just by doing these hedges every year so i think this is a prime example and proves my point when you see the amount of berries that are still left here this side of this hedge is cut look at all the berries in there just full and so i don't agree with the with hedge trimming every three years and i don't agree with people who say by doing it every year you take the berries off because you don't just look at the amount of errors there and on this hedge there so that's the side now done and that this hedge now won't get touched till next year but if you only lightly trim it every year you get berries like this growing within the hedge inside where you trim and so for me this is much the better option by trimming lightly every year and just actually taking the the twigs off taking off one year's growth just look at that all the way down there much better you might wonder what's max doing in the hedge bottom but we've got these elder bushes here there's one here there's another one there there's another one across the road somewhere up there um we're pulling them out because they just go berserk they do to let them grow and get too big so we've got a chain around the route around there max has just put that on and we put that on the manitou here and we'll just pull and hopefully it will pull it out by the roots because they take over the hedge if if you leave them all right max off we go with the money all right max let's have a go perfect look at that just the job there we go now this hedge here around this field all around here was planted probably 15 years ago maybe 20 years ago fantastic hedge but having these suckers in it like these these are all self-set absolutely ruins the hedge a little bit of a gap there now but that'll that'll soon grow out this next year so it's much better to pull them out and get them out the way so we've uh one more to do there and one more across there somewhere i can't quite see for the sun that's it across there currently on a breakfast group visit to dodgington hall they're rewilding the whole farm isabel hamson just in a bit record how many you can say what's 1900 yeah 1900 acres yeah 600 wood and you're going into wild everything's rewilding and you're looking at having some wild ponies yes we're going to start with suckler cows they're going to live out all year round and that'll help drive creation yeah and then yeah in time we'll introduce some native ponies they browse in a different way and eat different things yeah and and also some pigs because they have a quite a disruptive effect on the ground yeah loosening and then you just explain about this collar that this fenceless system you're going to be trying fantastic we've been trying a thing called a new design called no fence collars the cattle wear a collar and you can i can digitally on my phone create pastures and put back fences in so that you can actually discreetly move the cattle around and they know they hear a sound and they know not to get close to the sound and so you can actually use that to contain cattle because we'll take a lot of the internal fences out yeah and you can see what when you look at the whole landscape right here in the mount of woodland and what did you say there was here as well 600 acres of woodland has left 600 acres of woodland ancient semi-natural woodland some of them are triple their size but actually the ones that aren't we're going to experiment with putting the cattle into the woodlands and let them browse collect their own food over the winter get shelter and you're working with mind and other mental health what we really want to try and do is to get access to the general public to different um some of the zones really protect the wildlife if you want to help people come out understand how the countryside is harmed about biodiversity there are lots of jobs in the future that are going to be associated with ecology carbon the climate change and biodiversity crisis so if we can play a part in helping people access those jobs absolutely fantastic if anybody's interested look at on social media and uh the internet it's doddington hall and it's called what is it called the wilder doddington this is a field that was last cropped two years ago and then leaving it now as the rest of the estate is and eventually it will become the same as the field we've just seen with the cattle and the pond in it when you look the amount of thistles and rubbish that's in here at the moment and they did get permission from natural england to top this to try and control the thistles because it was a bed of thistles there's a lot of thistles in here now but eventually the tussocky and the natural grasses will flourish and they'll out complete the weeds and it will turn into a nice field for livestock to graze so it'd be great to come back here in two or three years time and just see how that's coming on we have agree here today cleaning and treating our seed wheat that we're going to drill this autumn so we haven't got enough done today for all the wheat so they're going to come back in probably about two weeks time and do some more so we'll have a look around the plants and see what they're doing so the wheat is coming out of our trailer into this auger and up into the back of the plant up through there through some rotating screens and i'll see if i can open it so the waste weight is coming out of that there's a bit more and this is all screenings what we don't want so those screenings are going out into that trailer there and we'll tip that on the heat and then that will be mixed in with other weeds that we sell this is the good wheat that is then going to be treated and put into the bag and then eventually we'll plant in the ground so it comes through all this system there is the treatment in that barrel and then it's going through up the auger and into the bank and this is a half ton bag all treated we have got ton bags as well but we've used all those this morning and we'll just open this top up and look and that is the treated seed doesn't really handle it too much without gloves on that's the treated seed all ready to plant in the ground and then in the shed we're keeping them in the shed here ready for when we use them and we've got two varieties that we've done today with two different seed treatments on the yellow bags there our skyscraper which is a soft uh wheat so that could be used for feed or biscuits and then this the half ton bags here are um the shabras which is just an ordinary hard feed wheat and those uh the shab rust does really well on our soil type we've had a little bit of a mishap here and our harvest executive max has just caught the bag with the little toyota forklift so we've got to re-bag it down a bit max why won't that's it now forward so we've got the that'll do now up so we've just got a bit of a hole in here so we're gonna have to just re-bag this bag and put it in another bag not too much the seemed far worse don't worry max we seem far worse this is the last field we're cultivating for next year's sugar beet crop we don't use a plough we stopped plowing here on this farm in 2002 and we use this simba solo we bought it in 2004 so it's quite old but it still does a cracking job on this soil type quite a nice soil here for sugar beets it's ideal and we've had the sewage sludge spread see all the black on the soil surface and we've had some phosphate sorry some potash and salt spread and that's it for the fertilizer for the beet crop so here this machine it's got discs at the front that incorporated the soil in the straw and the sewage sludge and mixing it you can see in there we've then got some lakes and there's six loosening legs on this machine they're working about eight to ten inches deep with wings on then here we have a press consolidating the ground and leaving it firm for the next set of discs there and that's doing more chopping and mixing and that's doing a really good job there you can see and then at the following on at the last we have this unipress five and a half meter uni press with the tines at the front and really we could have the tines out in this field it's lovely soil here and uh and then the last row of dd rings at the back just to finally firm it and leave it in a state for the winter and it and it i suppose you could say it weatherproofs it as well and uh the next time in here we'll probably spray it with glyphosate so there'll be some black grass and grass weeds growth and uh we'll spray it before christmas and then the next machine in here will be probably the symbol to press in the spring and we have a vardastat tempo direct drill we'll uh we'll drill the sugar beet but this is the the machine we now use poor sugar beet instead of plowing to prepare the landfill for the winter and uh it's great really because it leaves it so level um and it leaves the soil surface in a really good condition i'll just get out the way and then you can see the tines and that's the sort of finish it leaves everything's mixed up weatherproofed a few clouds about some worms there as well look nice worm there straw chopped and incorporated so it's it's really good machine for for this uh for the leaving land ready for the spring you can see here the sewage sludge so phosphate nitrogen sulfur whole load of chase elements here in the sewage lodge so that's it this is the last field we've got to do any preparation for next year's spring crops and we're going to start planting winter wheat on monday i'm at our local flowering match and show near southall near newark it's on a different farm every year and it's just great to come and see machines such as this steam engine behind me running and there's all sorts of little plows and horses as well but it's on very light land but obviously it needs to be for this time of year in case you get a lot of rain but it's great to see that these engines and how the work used to be done on the farm all those years ago before tractors were invented it's just fantastic to see lots of trade stands lots of people here as well also lots of non-farmers and non-agricultural people which is fantastic to show the industry this is the job fowler engine here's the cloud coming down the field see the roll the wire now the glider there is moving it's keeping all the wires quite a bit fascinating now he's staring out to line himself up for the next breed down the field then this will move forward in a minute there we go indicating to the man at the other end he's ready so now that one will start to pull just shows the speed these steam engines pull that plow to the soil of course you have to have one up in the air for when it goes in the other direction because the plow bodies that move the soil face the other way the new fashion way or new way rather what you call a reversible plow but that is like two plows joined together and that's why they have to lift one end up when it goes one way and drop the other end down when it goes the other way hey isn't that cheating raking the straw up so you haven't got to bury it i thought that was the idea of these match plows it could bury anything there's heaps of straw all over another one there but these little tractors [Applause] and the expertise in setting the plows up is just fantastic a bit of a newer style massey compared to some of the old ones that's here such as over there doing a nice job but when you look at this soil here not there lots of gravel in it lovely light soil except i should imagine it dries out in the dry time not the best for going good crops in a drought now in the area where all the little match plows are the little grey fergies david brown's all the older tractors little international as well so fantastic when you look uh look here what's here today just great to see really enjoy it good day owlette [Applause] another little fergie interesting little crawler just missed this it looks like he's finished his plot i wonder whether that's run on paraffin quite small this one tears yeah i thought it might are you finished for the day yeah and we have over here [Music] brilliant it just needs a power parrot down there just to level that off and finish it [Applause] interesting how you've got steering by levers all those years ago gone to steering wheels and now the latest fence combines you can specify levers to steer instead of a steering wheel funny how things go full circle that's it that's out the ground probably about like the plow my father bought he was telling me years ago when he was a young lad his dad sent him to an auction to pick up a plow that he'd bought and he said he trailed it behind the car for three miles on the road and never got it jacked out the ground for the whole way at home cooking just like this one brilliant story my father's not here anymore he died six months ago but all those years ago was fantastic so we're now in another field that is the fergie class apparently the massey ferguson class we've got lots of there's three little grey fergies over there another two or three so we'll have a quick look in here and just see what we can uh find sieve and speak to somebody somebody doing a bit of cheating down there oh think kicking a bit of rubbish in the burying it brilliant so what's your name pete cotton from the home castle i'm from belgium belts all right in lincolnshire so not far away so what's the idea of this class then here it's for offer it's ferguson yeah and the plows with no modifications it's fog standard plowing i will say you can you it's a strict criteria then you can't modify it you can't have quick energy top links you can never adjust at adjustable top point yeah that's all brilliant yeah and you're on about the soil here it's not easy to set your plow up well it doesn't melt because of that patches and storms and yeah it rattles on top of the storms you get a soft spot and it will dive yeah yeah they'd rip the tram lines and when you got to them the flower went straight out of sight yeah yeah yeah i know yeah it's not the same you're not consistent so that's why it's a job to set it up and go from one end to the other way doing a lot of wine okay and how many of these competitions do you do a year four oh yeah yeah so it might be a bit different conditions it might be better well i just want to read here tonight we've got 38 millimeters you did well we only got two yeah yeah yeah brilliant oh thank you yeah how old's the tractor and how many horsepower is it 28 horsepower brilliant yeah oh tf20 right so i know obviously a paraffin early on weren't they yeah oh i'll say another song here i'll go and have a look up here then brilliant yeah fascinating great thanks good there you are great fergie fans eat your heart out there's 14 in this field here apparently looks like they've all finished flowering plops are all done so i've got harry henderson here who was with ahd beastly oh yeah and he's one of the judges although you judge one of the judges one of the judges for this this is the fergie class is that right it is yeah so just explain the barrier if you would about the different uh things you look for that will get you the brownie points okay um well first of all i think the biggest thing is the burial of trash um and it's getting the weed seeds all buried down and any trash is gone so you can see that this is this is not the best uh on this on this field yeah um there's no holes because sunlight shining into holes in the plowing where you've got your furrow stood on eggs can germinate weed seeds again so it's about weed control it's about compacted or nice nicely consolidated furrows so you should be able to go in with the least amount of effort and with arrows essentially in in times gone by and just get a crop established with us with a seed drop so it's as much as you can get it to a commercial seed bed ready for drilling straight on then then that's what wins the the prizes the the straightness is aesthetics essentially yeah and some of these guys done really well the straightness is relatively easy to get come by but and then it's evenness of plowing so there's no ridging the finish is as shallow as possible but still achieving a burial of trash uh and then the the ridge the start in the middle as even as possible but everything gets plowed so you plow outwards looking at this here a lot of the plots have struggled at this end we've got this little wave in just just down here yeah and the next one have is it the ground all the way through here it is is it hard it's well no it's the opposite the the what's happened the farmer has um restructured the tram lines and that's done such a good job that when these plows hit it they've lost their could control the plow yeah so it's all gone a bit funny through this this is through the tram lines that have been restructured before the the before the climate started yeah absolutely yeah right thank of people here you for a small show plowing much the local hounds so we'll tell you a bit about it so playing the hounds as we say it's paul larry huntsman since 2008 and jane wright who's been the whippering for over 30 years the whiffering or the whip make sure the hounds keep up with the huntsman this is the origin of the parliamentary team whip the chief the office of the chief whip currently also being occupied by our local mp mr mark spencer for sherwood is where the word whip comes from these hands can be trained for 200 years in the foxhound three days that's the kennel originates so it's actually very very interesting to read in recent years hounds from the grove and river have won many championships as all major shows including harrigan and peterborough [Music] both the grove and rutherford hunt are all many many years so if you want to send your children into the main arena they can come on in now bring me the hounds running this year [Music] has gone by for the local hunt to engage with the local community events like this this is the grover nottinghamshire hunt there's a big queue for tractor and trailer rides [Music] so that's it for another southpaw playering match fantastic day really enjoyed it thanks to the committee the organizers the host farmer frank reynolds and his farm manager lawrence i know only too well the efforts that go into hosting events like this and the amount of preparation needed from hosting the sales events in the past so thank you to all involved look forward to it next year it's also the end of this week's weekly update on youtube so thank you for all the new subscribers hope you enjoyed this week's offerings uh there has been so much on at this playering event this week or today rather i'll actually have to put some into next week's videos because it's just going to be so long this week so catch up with you next week

Channel: Andrew Ward Farmer #WardysWeeklyWaffle

Views: 11,849

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: i-BuKndyRrs

Length: 44min 13sec (2653 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 25 2021