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My relaxation journey started way back in April of this year when @LuxuryHideaways was the custodian of the Farmers of the UK twitter account. Caroline and her husband Ross gave us a week long insight into their business and the farm they run in Angus just north of Dundee, the city of discovery. Towards the end of the week they ran a competition, simply re-tweet their tweet and a winner would be drawn at random at the end of the week. In for a penny... 

Well to date the mixture of sun and rain we have had has been great for the Miscanthus and it is all looking very well, in fact it stands out as a sea of vibrant green amongst the golden corn fields. The areas that we were not able to cut due to the ground being too wet to hold the cutters are now continuing to grow at the same rate as the rest of the field, with the new cane growing up through last year’s crop. This leads me on to this month’s... 

Every year seems to be different when it comes to the challenges that face our cereal crops. 2012 was a difficult year disease wise, notably for Yellow Rust, Septoria & Fusarium Ear Blight. A wheat crop showing Fusarium graminearum 2013 threw up different problems, not so much with disease but a shortened grain filling period and high temperatures. For crops to reach their full potential they need as much disease free leaf area to capture the... 

Unfortunately the news out of Ukraine isn’t getting much better. Heavy fighting continues in the East with government jets shooting rebel targets and the inevitable civilian casualties and retaliation such as this weekends shooting down of a military transport plane killing all 49 on board. Despite many politicians avoiding the term it is for all intents and purposes a war which is steadily piling up body bags with military personnel and civilians... 

What it is, where it came from and why we love you to be part of the conversation this year at the Worlds Largest Cheese Show in Nantwich So honored to be asked to write this blog and sometimes I wish had kept a written record of the trails, tribulations and tears that have be shed in shear frustration and laughter of trying to getting the idea of farmers on film understood! It was back in late 2009 when I found out that the London Olympic Games was... 

I’ve just recently returned from a family holiday to Mallorca, whilst out there I thought it would be interesting to take photos from various aspects of farming including the main products – olives, almonds, potatoes, oranges and lemons.  All these photo’s have been taken with the camera on my phone.               There are no natural rivers on the island only those from the mountains caused by rainfall. Coconuts aren’t... 

My last two blogs have covered the most critical time of year for us – our miscanthus harvest, so now I probably need to explain why we started the move into growing miscanthus ten years ago. Up until 1985 my grandfather and father had farmed a 430 acre mixed beef / sheep and arable farm in Warwickshire. Our rotation here had been a traditional wheat / barley / oats / beans and OSR in varying proportions, on a heavy clay soil.   After... 

Its hard to believe its 2 months since I did my last blog the time has just flown by and in another 2 months it will be full steam ahead with harvest! Its been a very busy 2 months! The Bateman has been busy flying up and down doing fert which am now pleased to say is now finished for the 2014 season, the n-sensor performed very well as always does with no problems as well. Then t0 and t1 was to do, this was straightforward in doing for a change it... 

For my first actual review for this site I’m going to review…a book. One on sheep funnily enough. “Counting Sheep” by Philip Waller is an excellent read for anybody remotely interested in the sheep of Great Britain and their history. Waller is a retired barrister who took to the law after a stint of farming Herdwicks in the Lake District. He deconstructs many of the myths around British sheep and their origins in the forensic... 

I first became aware of twitter in January 2009 when a plane crashed into the Hudson River in New York and a picture showing the stricken plane was taken that went global very quickly. I first entered the world of Twitter in 2010 four years after its launch with a personal account to get used to using it ahead of a proposed launch of my then employer with their account, so I would be able to dual “tweet” when the time arose. I still have that... 

I had hoped that by the time I had come to write my second blog that I would be reporting that our Miscanthus harvest would all be tucked up safely in the sheds, job jobbed for another 12 months. But of course this is agriculture and rarely do things go that smoothly. All that can be cut is cut, there are still some patches on the peat grown that are too wet for the cutters to venture into. These areas will be left uncut, the rhizome will put up new... 

While a full on war hasn’t quite broken out the situation in eastern Ukraine continues to teeter on the brink of something tense but no one seems quite sure what. Various official buildings and offices are being taken over by pro-Russian, pro-separatist groups who rally around a single issue agenda of self-rule and have a general distrust of the interim Government in Kiev. Shots have been fired with several deaths reported, journalists have been... 

Spring has sort of sprung, and as we only have oil seed rape in the spring portfolio it’s a bit of a damp squib … It has long been clear SOSR plantings will be well down on last year, and actually, well down on a ‘normal’ (whatever that is) spring season – there’s still a month to go though so we’ll see. At least the sun is shining and it looks like a good (long) weekend ahead. The threat of a bank holiday usually stirs up a few ‘must... 

As we move from the wet winter months into spring, signified by losing an hour, we are in the middle of harvest yes that’s right, harvest.  While most of you will be pre-occupied with the delights of new births and the planting of seeds of all shapes and sizes and tending to the autumn sown crops, we are looking to get our crop safely gathered in. Harvest for us is 400 acres of biomass in the form of Miscanthus Giganticus, where the oldest fields... 

As a continuation from my last blog called “Beet, Sugar, Frosted Flakes”, this blog covers the potato in its many forms and where they come from and along the same theme of educating the younger generation. It’s not about knowing your King Edwards from your Maris Pipers or your Desires from your Marfonas, or even the difference between red and white potatoes, but knowing how it gets to your table. Potatoes,tates,tatties,spuds whatever you call... 

“Who am I and what am I about?” –  I am by no means an expert in the fields of discussion but I have experienced a number of aspects to allow me to have an opinion on things. So, what are my agricultural connections? My late father once he left the RAF after his 15 years of service worked as a lorry driver transporting poultry from farms to the processing plant owned by Butterball in Lincoln. Often working nights, as a child I used to go... 

A lot has happened since I last sent a blog in to Farmers Review and some of it actually about farming but first I’ll start with the geo-political stuff. Over the course of a couple of weeks Ukraine went from having a functioning if not deeply corrupt administration to the government ordering the devastating use of live ammunition in Kiev to the President fleeing the country and a new interim government issuing a warrant for his arrest. Russia thought... 

We are told by the farming press that we are lagging behind the antipodes in sheep breeding because they are using science and technology to drive towards profit, unhampered by the sentiment or tradition often associated with agriculture here. Who could have failed to wonder when watching the scene setting episode of this year’s “Lambing Live” if the progressive elements hell bent on copying them have a point. Swaledales and Scottish... 

A New Zealand style sheep system. Is this as new and as revolutionary as the farming press and converts are telling us? Outdoor lambing and grass based systems are nothing new. Reading the farming press there are no shortage of converts, but are systems like this the future for the British sheep sector, or are they just the current trend in the agricultural fashion show. A wide spread conversion looks unlikely, with tradition being a major influence... 

If I’d known how much effort it requires to keep the @TheFarmersOfTheUK account going for a week I’m not sure I’d have volunteered to do the job whilst lambing……. Startling revelation? I don’t think so, more a reflection of the fact I threw myself at the job completely whilst trying to do the day job (and night job) to the best of my ability. Despite the fact someone kindly said it looked planned, I’ll be honest and say on Monday morning... 

Please find below a blog, it’s not really from me but it contains my comments and I think it’s worthwhile posting on Farmers Review. This blog is written by Deborah Blackmore from Blake Lapthorn law firm. For those who read my blogs and articles, they will know that I am a personal injury lawyer with an avid [personal] interest in farming.  So it comes as no surprise that farming accidents affect me deeply. Many of those I follow on... 

As food is one of life’s necessities you would think that it is important to know at least a little of where it comes from? Not so in the younger generation and the youth of today, to the extent that the majority of them don’t know where items such as milk actually comes from and would probably answer with “the supermarket” if they could be bothered to raise more than a grunt to a common sense question.   As a child of the 80’s we didn’t... 

Well it feels like it was only last week since I did my first blog and haven’t had any one telling me to shut up so here’s my second one. February started off fairly quiet getting odd jobs done and getting things ready for the busy times, also had a n-sensor refresher course at askham bryan college. It was very interesting and good to be reminded of how the n-sensor operates and also any updates that have been made and also future developments... 

Saturday morning dawned and by 7am I was getting on the road to the first farm to collect the fodder. By 10:30 I had collected the load from the last of the farms, just north of Banbury, had a group photo of myself, Georgina, and the final donating Farmer taken by the local paper, and began the run to Somerset. All loaded and ready to go I stopped twice in the first few miles to check the ratchet straps as the heavy silage on the top of the load... 

You can’t have escaped the news of the devastating floods that are continuing to affect Somerset residents and farmers. The news clips struggle to convey the magnitude of the problem, but when, as a farmer, I saw farms completely underwater, farmhouse and all, it became painfully clear that they face a problem that eclipses anything we’ve seen locally in my lifetime, if ever. Soon after the floods had begun to have a serious effect, my... 

I am sitting in my office glued to the images and tweets trying to decide at what point I should load the family up in to the car and head for the Polish border. The revolution in Ukraine has been going on since November but events escalated this morning with up to 30 confirmed deaths and that number creeping upwards.  Protestors and police are being shot at and people are being killed. Earlier this week various government offices and police stations... 

“A long and poorly created metaphor for you - I was not the geeky kid in school; I was the loud one, a bit too clever for my own good. The phrase ’Could do better,’ sums up my early academic career more eloquently than ‘a bit shit at spelling,’ which is closer to the truth. I have a friend who by his own admission was the quiet geeky kid. He had very specific interests and paid little attention to anything which didn’t fall into his black... 

The flooding currently affecting the United Kingdom has, in parts, changed the landscape of our island forever.  Some areas, notably the Somerset Levels should in time return to a state of normality depending on the efficiency of the Environment Agency’s sixty five pumps removing over a million tonnes of flood water.  Whether normality will be maintained in the future is another question. The photos used have been provided by Ally Hunter Blair... 

Farmers markets are big business. Most of us, even you city dwellers, live only a few miles away from rows of stalls groaning under the weight of amazing produce.  From farmers directly selling their own meat, to bakers, cheesemongers, fresh fruit and vegetables – these celebrations of great British food and drink are symphonies of perfection so divine Gustav Holst would be proud. For years scientists have spent billions of pounds to build... 

The Royal Agricultural Society of England was set up to improve agriculture, holding it’s first show in Oxford in 1837. County shows had started a century before for the same purpose. However according to a History Today article, by the 1850s: “Show appearance bore little relation to practical utility, stock were often hopelessly over-fed. Pigs could not stand. Rams ‘like the Romans of old, preferred taking their meal in a reclining... 

Well this is a first for me doing a blog so lets see how it goes! I’ll begin by introducing myself to you all. I am married and have a daughter who is 2 shortly so am kept on my toes regularly, I am a farm worker on an estate in the east riding of Yorkshire and have been here for 16 years come march, am quite happy in my job and find it very satisfying watching and working with nature. Have seen the estate change big time in the time I have... 

“So, smarty pants, what if we don’t want to record?” Can you really walk through a tent or shed full of rams and pick the ideal one? Let’s say you want to take a few lambs to the mart, so good tops and skin mean more to you than figures. Or, you take a few lambs to the abattoir, so it’s spec that you want. You have Heinz 57 varieties of ewes and distrust boffins. Every tup sold is a product of it’s genetics and... 

In a spring where you would be better off planting rice than any other crop, it will be with some trepidation that some farms will be waiting for the waters to subside and the fields to dry out to see what state their grassland is in. Some fields maybe that badly damaged that a total reseed will be necessary but hopefully many of them would be in a reasonable enough state to recover from the floods but could maybe benefit from a bit of a refresh.... 

So it’s come around again…. I have put off writing a blog until I received a gentle nudge reminding me that it was time again to attempt to remember what I’ve been doing since my last post. Luckily this has mostly involved completing the spray store in time for the open day with Agrii, Natural England and DEFRA. So as you can imagine everything had to be right… and in line with current legislation. As I have mentioned before, the majority... 

I am in a long term relationship and it’s not my wife….. I know that’s a startling revelation for the Farmers review Website, and trust me I had reservations about this topic. But to reassure you my wife was aware of this relationship long before we got married, and has resigned herself to playing second fiddle to my ‘other woman’. My life and business is ruled by this volatile temptress, holidays have been cancelled on her whim, and... 

Goodbye 2013, hello 2014! And hands up all those who made New Year’s resolutions? What is it this year? To quit smoking, join a gym, give up chocolate (don’t be stupid!) or stop swearing? I for one don’t have a habit of making resolutions as I rarely keep them, but this year I have decided to make just one. To have more patience. Now stop choking on your coffee and sniggering, husband! I know this may seem funny to you as I am a... 

Today, 7th January, is Christmas Day in Ukraine, Happy Christmas Ukraine. According to tradition, this evening people will tuck in to a 12 course vegetarian supper started as the first stars appear in the sky. Carol singers, Christmas trees and decorations, street entertainers, mulled wine and sausages all make the town centre a very festive and fun place to be at the moment the only thing missing is snow. We have no snow!  It is like spring at the... 

I always feel rather dispirited whilst at the meat counter of a shop listening to a parent scrabbling around for an answer to their child’s question of where the meat came from. The natural assumption at this point is the child is aged ten and parent circa forty. Not always the case, on more than one occasion the child has been circa forty. Can you blame the consumer for being uneducated as to where on an animal their meat comes from, how it’s... 

My first blog, my name is James & we have a mostly tenanted farm. The farm is spread over three steading. The cattle numbers range from 180-200 on and off, all depending upon the on the time of year. The farms are on (mostly) free draining land on the Northern end of the Eden valley. For my first blog I thought I’d write something about home mixing & what I find works well for me. With over 100 acres or so of barley (roughly 90 spring /... 

Grass is pretty capable stuff.  Many UK farmers rely on its ability to produce fodder for livestock year on year, and it does it almost regardless of the conditions it is exposed to. But this resilience has a downside – we don’t always realise that our grass is starting to struggle because, with the addition of a little “sugar”, it keeps on growing and giving. In this edition of our blog, I’m going to look at one of... 

North East Norfolk is famed for its huge skies, sandy beaches and quiet country roads. It’s an area dominated by the broads and farming. I am lucky enough to farm here, on easy working sandy soils. Friends with heavier land curse at our one pass seedbeds and simple root crop establishment. Unfortunately, this agricultural panacea comes unravelled when the weather does not play along. Last year, a dull cloudy summer gave us poor cereal yields and... 

Loads of people will tell you farming’s a lonely job, whether you’re the boss or purely an employee. In some respects that is true but if you are technologically minded, even only slightly, you’re never alone! Bleary eyed and functioning on automatic pilot you don’t feel your best at 2am while doing a check on the ewes during lambing. So it doesn’t improve your mood to find a dead lamb in a skin and its live twin looking... 

When I started to write this blog for the second time I nearly changed topic completely. A word of advice always save the document before you start in case windows decides to update and the first 250 words, 5 minutes of effort and 5 days of fretting disappear. A beginners error I know, but in my defence I am a complete beginner at this blog business. So back on topic…..how to start a blog. I considered the classic ‘here I am, this is what I do’... 

So the time has come again to sit down and write the monthly (give or take) blog. And like some of my fellow bloggers my mind has gone blank. You wouldn’t think it was overly difficult to remember what you have done in the last few weeks, but it turns out that it is. However I think I have remembered enough to bore you all sufficiently to put you to sleep of an evening. The good news is that we have finished up all our winter drilling with some... 

I’m sat in front of the keyboard to write my first blog and my mind is suddenly blank (cue a chorus of “no change there then”…), so maybe if I introduce myself, give you a bit of background and go from there? My name is Chris, I’m 35, married and live on the family farm in central Warwickshire. The farm is mixed, 100 acres of grass and 30 of arable. The grass is used for small bale hay production (for the horse market),... 

Agriculture must tread carefully in its bid to attract new entrants to ensure it does not undervalue and trivialise the incredible amount of hard work and education required to be success in the industry. Agriculture is such a catch all term for a huge range of very specialist professions, yet from the outside the perception is the drip fed image of the village idiot on a tractor or the floppy haired Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his cable knit. As... 

A cold and wet start to October brought wheat planting to a dead stop and nothing moved for the first ten days of the month. The news reports went in to doom mongering mode with stories of a catastrophic harvest, food shortages and empty shelves, the minister of agriculture called farmers to arms with rallying calls that all tractors, planters and peasants should be pressed in to action in scenes reminiscent of the soviet days. Then the weather changed. ... 

Now the field work is pretty much up together I have time to think a bit more about our new dairy development. Planning permission was finally granted a few weeks ago. The old parlour is a herringbone that has been there for about 40 years and we are working with loose housing and a slurry lagoon that needs replacing. As the farm is right in the middle of the village there is no space to expand on the current dairy site and problems with SCC counts... 

So firstly I should probably apologise that it has been so long since my last post. It is said that the two most stressful things that you can do in life are to have a baby and move house. Rachel and I decided it would be a good idea to enter into both of these in the same two month period. Needless to say that we have managed to keep ourselves busy with all this going on. If that wasn’t enough to keep me busy, starting a new job in a new county... 

Now some time to catch up a bit on all the things that have been put off over the summer. It has been a busy six months, particularly on the fruit and veg side of the business, which is really my main enterprise. Pumpkins and squashes are our last crops of the season before we close down the Pick Your Own at the end of October. They have been selling fast over the last few weeks and the main problem with them has really been theft as they are easy... 

All in all things have gone fairly smoothly over the last few weeks. We finished the wheat harvest successfully in the dry period around the end of August. Worries about completing the OSR planting behind winter wheat were allayed when we got that all finished in the first 10 days of September with the one pass Bio drill. All 179ha is up and looking fantastic. We had to wait another three weeks for the spring rape to ripen but we then managed to pick... 

This autumn is certainly a huge relief after the difficulties of last year. We have started drilling 2nd wheats, which is pretty much as it should be. As we were hoping, conditions have allowed us to plough a bit more than usual this year, particularly where we have not had brome or black grass, but also just to keep some cultivations going and turn the ground. We have also been able to delay drilling in some places to allow 2nd and sometimes even... 

A family farm of over 1,300 ha. with a variety of enterprises plus 360 ha. which we contract farm means that there is a lot going on and, as manager for the whole farm on behalf of the family, I aim to keep the farming operations relatively simple. On the arable side we work on a 3 year rotation of Wheat, Barley, Oilseed Rape with approximately 400 ha. of each. This is managed with the help of a Foreman, a tractor driver and a couple of part timers.... 

Hello everyone, the time of the month has come round to sit down on a wet evening and write another blog for you on here. You will have to forgive me for this blog being heavily about myself and my family as that has taken up my main focus in the past little while since writing last. For those of you who may not have heard on the various social media platforms that Rachel and I are part of, we have had our first child, a baby girl, Bonnie Williams... 

It was good to see Ukraine in the news for all the right reasons this week as they hosted England for the world cup qualifier in Kiev. I was lucky enough to acquire some tickets and enjoyed a fantastic game that was only marred by some mediocre football. The season has changed with the end of the long hot summer marked by cooler “coat and jumper” autumn temperatures.  Time to dig out the fleece. Wheat harvest is complete with official figures... 

With a little over 300 Ha. across several locations in Hampshire and Dorset my business is now largely focused on fruit and vegetables for ‘pick your own’ sites and sales through Farmers Markets. I also have farm diversifications such as various forms of accommodation (shepherd’s huts, yurts, wigwams and cabins), events (weddings, circus, shows). Here is my website www.dantanners.co.uk .  However, I still grow around 200 Ha. of cereals  and... 

I farm in a Joint Venture operation with two neighbours in Oxfordshire and we combine over 2,000 ha. crops with two Claas 770 combines. We also have rotational silage maize and grass and farm over an area stretching over 20 miles from one end to the other. Soils are generally fairly light running from gravel through chalk to heavier clay cap plus around 160 ha. of free-draining ‘fen land’. We have been extremely fortunate in having a good year... 

Oram and Sons is a family farming business on the north side of the Pewsey Vale in Wiltshire. Six partners in the business include three generations, though my Grandfather is less involved these days than he used to be. The daily running of the farm is down to my father, Philip, my uncle, Richard, cousins Nick and James and myself. In total we farm almost 1,000 Ha., including around 200 Ha. share-farmed plus bits and pieces of rented land. We have... 

Harvest 2013 is now well and truly underway with many winter barley crops now harvested and progress has been made with some spring barley and winter wheat. Winter OSR has been the most variable with some farms finished, some not started and some have the 2013 and the 2014 crops both in the ground! I have also have seen some crops of borage in Essex which have been swathed and harvested. Hyvido winter barley has provided some outstanding yields this... 

I farm at Abingdon in Oxfordshire on about 2,500 acres with 1,000 milking goats and we also fatten beef cattle. We have around 2,000 acres of arable plus grass and maize, on a range of soil types. Production is predominantly Winter Wheat (1,200 acres normally) though this year we only managed to get in around 200 acres, on the light land, so have mainly Spring crops this time. In fact we drilled an additional 150 acres of Winter Wheat at the end of... 

The month of July has been at times very busy and at others relatively relaxed for the time of year. With ear wash being applied early in the month, and Nu-fol being applied middle of the month to the milling wheat, with some desiccation of O.S.R. as well. First after the ear wash came the Nu-Fol. Due to the high daytime temperatures it was necessary to apply this late evening and overnight, but with only just over 100 Hectares to cover it was all...