Its been a busy time for me over the last couple of months. The best news is that Sharon is sporting a bit of a bump these days which is great! We went for the 12 week scan last week which was a bit of an experience. I have never seen so many pregnant women in one room before. I could see all of the men there in support were as scared as I was, not because of becoming a father, although that is an exciting prospect. It was more that none of us wanted to cause an upset! I could imagine one of us men saying the wrong thing and the whole pack of pregnant ladies turning on us and chasing us off round the hospital. I reckon it would be like walking through a pen of sleeping crocodiles, one foot out of place and they'd all wake up and start snapping at you! Luckily we all got through unharmed but it was a close one - the hospital was short staffed, and the queues were backing up.

On the farm the blue bells have arrived telling us that spring has finally sprang. I finished the last of the drilling on Saturday. All we can do now is hope they grow into some prosperous crops. I have planted the largest area of spring crops ever this year. Not because of the wet autumn - we could have drilled more then, it was a choice we had made before last harvest. At the annual meeting between me and my agronomists we decided to drop winter oats out of the rotation. It was too dirty a crop to grow in our minimal tillage system because we found it hard to keep the grass weeds at bay thus undoing all the hard work from the previous years cleaning the fields up. We weren't sure what to replace the winter oats with so we tried a few different options. We tried winter linseed on one field which drilled and established well, but has suffered since with frost lift and spray scorch I think that we'll try it again next year and try to avoid these two factors to get a fairer picture. We were going to grow some spring linseed as well but I was worried that a lot of people would choose that route after the wet autumn so I looked around to something else. I found a good contract to grow spring oats as a seed for other growers to plant next year. It meant that I had to have some really clean soils so I took advantage of the premium to plough two fields which I have a bad brome grass weed problem in. The theory being that I will bury the weed seeds on the surface and turn up ground that hasn't seen the light of day for 7 years this should mean that any seeds which were there have now died through lack of sunlight. I am also trying one field of millet which is grown for the bird seed market. The good thing about this is that it will give me a good opportunity to put stuff back into the land as the drilling date is 1st of may. This year I spread compost on the field encouraged the volunteers to grow, then grazed it with sheep before injecting some sludge. This was done for free using a subsoiler so hopefully I have done a lot of good to the soil. the crop should be pretty cheap to grow because I can't do anything to it with regards to weed control, and there aren't any major pests. The nitrogen has been delivered from the compost, sheep, and sludge along with the potash and phosphate, and a host of trace elements. It just needs to prove itself at harvest by not being to late to cut dry. I'll keep you posted!

Along with the blue bells the grass has now started to grow this is my first spring with a lawn of my own to mow I have to say it goes a little easier with my ride on fergy mower to do the job! 

It is now 5 in the morning I couldn't sleep so I thought I'd update the blog, But I'm going to give that sleeping another go now. I'll be back soon! 

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On Saturday the 16th of May there will be a sponsored walk which will start at the vine pub in Hannington at 12:30. Last year the walkers managed to raise £800.00 which was a good effort.

Further information can be found on www.rspca-basingstokeandandover.org.uk or by reading this document http://www.rspca-basingstokeandandover.org.uk/Sponsored%20Walk%202009%20Information.doc To book as place please ring Jean on 01256 782407

Happy walking

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We are looking for a new member of staff to join our arable team. The job title is Managers assistant and that is a perfect description of the job.

I am looking for a person to assist me on the farm. It is a job that would be really varied, and would suit someone aspiring to get into farm management. There would be plenty of opportunities to charge about the place on various pieces of machinery; a good bit of the job would require this, mainly learning from Dave the main man when it come to all things tractor and the two of you would then work together to get the jobs done. As well as that the right person would spend time with Dad learning about the principles of grain storage using both on-floor and internal bin systems. They would ultimately be responsible for all the grain storage on the estate. While this is a dusty and sometime thankless task it is a major role that comes with farm management generally because nobody wants the job so it ends up with the manager! Also  the nature of the work is so bitty with lorries turning up at irregular times and messing up any structure to a day, it needs some one that can work out what to do for themselves with the couple of hours between lorries instead of being told.

I'm hoping that the right person will be able to take on some of the running of the farm software packages, predominately stock keeping with Gatekeeper, but also the precision farming software. I will train them how to use the mapping software to create prescription maps for fertiliser applications, and planting density. There will be plenty of opportunities to train on the job, and accommodation will be supplied.

If this sounds like a position for you then send me an email with a CV to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it I'd prefer this format as it shows me that you know how to use a computer, but I'll except letters too.  

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Hi I'm back! Been a bit busy over the last month so I must apologize for not keeping up to date as well as I could have done. The biggest new thing that has happened since the last Blog was our day out with the golden eagles. A couple of weekends ago we had 5 massive golden eagle flying on the estate. We opened the day up to members of the public, and offered them a fantastic memorable experience. It proved such a success that we are going to do more days next season starting in October.

We have also had the chance to get back onto the ground with the machinery which made a happy change. We have cultivated the ground that we are going to plant this spring so it is now ready to plant. We are mostly growing spring barley which goes to become malt for the brewing industry. We are also trying two other crops: Spring oats typically grown for the porridge industry, but I'm growing the crop as a seed crop so that other people can use the grain I harvest to grow oats for porridge. I'm also growing a field of millet which goes to the bird seed industry and will get used on the bird feeders which are sold at garden centers.

At home Sharon and I have become a bit old all of a sudden! Yesterday we left home went down to kingsclere, our local village, and paid a trip to the bottle bank. Then moved on to the village butchers, had a bit of a chat and brought some breakfast for today. Then next door to the village shop to get some herbs and spices and vegetables for dinner. I don't know why but it felt proper old going to the shops together like this, but the next bit really did it. We trundled off to the garden center to spend some vouchers we'd been given and brought 8 fruit tree's and some butterfly tree's (budlia's) which we spent the afternoon planting before I did a little bit of time digging the vegetable patch. Then last night we set about making some venison stew, which included us making proper stock, from a deer I shot on Friday night. Sharon said yesterday afternoon after we'd had a cup of tea and some cake on the decking "If you'd told me just over a year ago that I'd be married and planting trees in our garden I'd never have believed you". What can I say I'll be moaning about those young people next! 

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I hope that everyone has had a good Christmas and is looking forward to the roller coaster of 2009 Its already starting to feel exciting. I came back to the office today after a few days off and I'm trying to workout where we are heading for in 2009 I have to admit its quite a hard one to call. Some of our crops look good, most of them are average and we have some well below that. The wheat price is showing signs of picking up but it needs to go higher.

2008 was a really busy year for me both personally and at work. Today is 6 months from my wedding day. but this time last year I wasn't even engaged. In fact I was in New Zealand visiting the Johnson family's this time last year enjoying the sunshine. On the farm we cropped and harvested the biggest area we have ever harvested and consequently dealt with the most wet grain that we have ever dealt with.

This year I'm hoping to develop more business for the estate however I can. I don't plan on being scared by this big recession job. I hope that it will bring in more opportunities; with companies looking for alternative's for their events on the corporate side, People looking to move location as a result of restructuring on the property side. and a weaker pound giving our products more value on the agriculture side. I was listening on the radio today to a lady talking about how to cope with today's financial environment and she said "look for the gap between the trees" she went on to explain that if you where in a car coming of the road heading towards a load of big trees the best place to look is the gap between them so long as the gap is big enough for you and your car it doesn't matter how big and scary the trees are.

That's it from me now I hope that I'll be updating this blog page more this year as well as keeping the photo of the day up to date, I told myself i should.

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I am now spending more of my time in the office catching up on paperwork, and trying to figure out a way forward. We still have crops to plant in the spring but we have options about which crops we grow. Today I have spent my time revisiting the Budget for next year which has proved to be a frightening experience it is amazing how a few pennies here and a spot of yield there can make a massive difference to the bottom line. Our biggest worry is fertiliser where we have seen the price double in one growing season while the suppliers of the product have reduced to 1 main player with a couple of other companies trying to get a look in.

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