Bog Myrtle & Peat

One of the things I enjoy about agriculture is the sheer slowness of it all. Decisions are made months ahead of time, and the business is steered over many weeks like an oil tanker. I can draw up strategies which dictate my activities for the whole year, and then these grand schemes can be broken down into smaller chunks which are tackled according to vagaries of weather, machinery and chance.

These grand, ponderous plans do not preclude innovation. It will take almost three years for my calves to come to market, but that doesn’t mean they have a predestined “end” – I’m starting to see that good farmers work on a grand cycle, but they are also open to change and opportunity. My job is to get the (as yet unborn) calves ready for the abattoir, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep my eyes open for sales opportunities along the way; selling heifer calves at six months as breeding animals or at eighteen as stores. This large-scale opportunistic chess match is a key appeal of the entire business, and this strategy lies over the most immediate layer of the job – the humdrum pleasure day-to-day of production.

It’s easy to see the sense in forward planning and slightly harder to bring those plans into being.

I have spent a good deal of time working to prepare ground for turnips. The chosen field was ploughed a month ago, and the soil is breaking down beautifully into a fine, workable tilth. The next step would be to harrow the field, add the lime and then plough it again with a “ridger” (or a drill plough) so that the flat soil is mounded up in a series of corduroy-like ridges. The seed could then be planted into these and the turnips would grow along the tops.

But now I find that there are complications. The old grass has been turned upside down and the turf is rapidly turning yellow, but it would easily be stirred back into life by a little sunshine. The plough-work looks good, but it is pretty uneven and the soil depth varies enormously. If I try and run the ridger over this ground, I am almost certain to pull up great clods of recently buried grass which will mess up the crop and turn the rows into chaos. Growing more confident with technical terms, I’m assured that it is possible to drill into a ploughed grass ley, but it’s a job for experts and I am suddenly bashful.

The obvious alternative is to broadcast turnips and grow them on the flat ground, ruling out any need for the ridger. This would be fine, but I am particularly keen on using the ridger and doing it the old fashioned way. I could broadcast rape or kale and then stripgraze cattle on it, but this is not ideal without much space and could soon get very messy in a wet winter.

I was agonising over this decision at the weekend, gloomily pondering my descent from “Plan A” to “Plan ?” At this dark moment, I happened to meet a neighbouring farmer who might have offered a solution. He reckoned that the old three-year rotation of cereal/turnips/grass would suit me perfectly, with the added bonus that this could naturally increase the fertility of the ground and improve the soil nutrients.

According to his plan, I should sow an oat crop on the fresh plough and mix in lupins, peas or some legume to improve the Nitrogen content. This would also give the field a year for the old grass to rot away underground so that the soil could be properly ridged and put into turnips next year without the risk of a clod-filled nightmare. It could then be  put back into grass on the third year, by which time the ground would be ready to provide a decent crop. This rotation would have multiple benefits for wildlife, and I am balancing my excitement with bafflement – rotations stretch my extremely rudimentary understanding of arable farming.

Perhaps all this is nonsense and I should stick to my original plan. Perhaps the point is that you can have too much choice, and life was simpler when I was certain. Either way, we are fast approaching “d-day” and I will have to make up my mind and live with the consequences.