The Cows Tale - October update.

So October started of where September left off, flat out. Maize was all finished and now attentions turned to the Final Cut of grass. Roughly 200acres done, here on the farm, we cut, Tedder and rake all our own grass, leaving the contractor with foraging, trailers and loading shovel. It was cut number 7 for the year, it’s a multi cut system so cutting happens every 4 weeks, but it still yielded around 4.5 ton/acre. It wasn’t as dry as we’d like but there just wasn’t enough sun over the two days to achieve the 30% plus dry matters.

Next on the list to knock off was getting all the maize stubbles trimmed, cultivated and planted with the next crops. There was 40 acres of poly crop grass seeds to plant. Followed by roughy 100 acres of Italian ryegrass which went in at just under 10kg/acre, it will be used as a winter cover crop and silage in the spring before being ploughed and planted with maize again. Then the last to be planted was the winter wheat, roughly 160 acres in this year. Mainly the variety Graham with a few acres of two new varieties to try. Again all the ground was cultivated using a Sumo trio, but with an added front topper to reduce the trash of the stubble.

It works really well and output is roughly 60 acres/day. Could be more but there’s always the cows to feed before starting the field work. Planting the crops this autumn was a pleasure when the new drill arrived. There was grant money available for this particular type of drill so it made sense to purchase a new one. Although I had a quick learning curve as it arrived in the afternoon and we were planting that evening.

It’s a kverneland TS 4.8 so works well with 24 metre tramlines. I’ll let you into a secret. It all came up and general no misses.

So what else has been happening on the farm in October. We had judges from the Gold Cup visit because we made it into the last 5 in the country. I definitely don’t imagine for one second the farm will have any chance of winning one of the top prizes in dairying but we’ve put our heads out there and had a go at something.

October finished off on a bit of a wet note. But no matter how much dry weather you have, you always want another couple of days just to get fully caught up.

I’ll leave you with this, which I was told by an old fella. The difference between a good farmer and a bad farmer is roughly a fortnight. Until next time, stay safe.