Bure Valley Farm

The snows in Osada have been replicated in the Bure Valley. For most of mid-winter I have been unable to do any work – not that I had much I could do anyway. I was glad I’d got the preparation of field 1 completed in December. I was also glad that I signed up for the Government Subsidy as that gives some income every week. Additionally, I am getting a little money back from the national grid since installing my solar panel. In the last post I talked about the prices for Wheat and a projected higher price in January – That didn’t materialise and I had to settle for a price that was just €1 above the original forecast. At least I didn’t have to go too far – Here I am turning out of the yard for the short local trip to the granary at the end of the lane…

Selling the Wheat was the last activity for the tractors in January. I had a healthy €170k in the bank towards the end of the month. In the last post I spoke about ways of possibly expanding and I revisited those thoughts in the last week of January. The options were to: Buy back field 14, now crop free and ploughed. Buy field 7 and get set up for haymaking. Or buy one of the spare uncultivated pieces of land. I decided to take the last option as this would still leave a healthy bank balance. I took the Land Rover out for a drive to check out plot 69 – this is a triangular piece of land beside the B1149. It has been farmed in the past as evidenced by the entrance from the road but it is now overgrown and will need to be ploughed. In size, it’s roughly equivalent to my field 41. Reputedly, the underlying soil is good. At just over €62k I decided to buy it.

And that’s the situation at the end of January…

…I have a new field that has no number and I can’t work it because of the snow laying on the ground😅

The snow miraculously cleared over the weekend and I was able to plough my new field during the first week of February…

…Turning in many years of weed growth. Once I could see the soil…

…I could get the soil-tester and take samples – As expected, it is a mix of loam and sandy loam which should give a good yield. Firstly, it needs lime…

…A task for the Fendt and the Bruns Spreader during the second week of February…

With Spring and the planting season nearly upon us I realised that we now have two fields to plant – this new acquisition and the large field 1. A check on the seeder and we probably don’t have enough seed in stock…

…I really don’t know how far 1600ltrs will go! Time to make a final purchase – a flatbed trailer and some bags of seed. Only one problem – The snow has been falling heavily again and it’s really too deep to think about driving out of the yard…

…I put the Fendt back in the shed to wait out the storm. The snow would eventually clear at the end of February and I took a late evening drive over to the dealer to collect the new trailer and 4000ltrs of seed…

…I parked that up in the barn – no point in unloading…

With the moon rising over a very wet farmyard, I can start thinking about March and when to sow. I think we are expecting a wet month. I will probably try to take some work for other farmers while I employ a farmhand to sow field 1 – I’m thinking Barley for that field. Not sure what to put in our new numberless field…

The next farming post will come from Osada and we’ll be into the spring sowing schedule there – see you soon😎👍