Groundswell 2018

[SimonD]

There’s some interesting U.S farmers on Twitter, Rick Bieber @RickBeiber81 who make good guest speakers and are leading the intercropping piece. Keynote speakers provide their specialist in-depth knowledge and having the likes Jake Freestone et al provides the application and in-use knowledge which is a good balance.

 

[hendrebc]

Just remembered about this. No till potatoes. How are they planning on lifting them?

@Kiwi Pete @CornishTone we might get an answer here that doesnt involve crayons

 

[ShooTa]

@hendrebc with a fork is all.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Single rotor rake? then feed the swath through a potato harvester?
It will need to break down a bit for the straw to not end up riding the belts.

The local guy has much wider openings in the belts to get more straw to drop out, and a BIG fan on the gooseneck to blow the spuds clean as they drop in the trailer.

 

[wurzell1976]

A truly magnificent show @martian

Good to catch up with @phil @Andy Howard @Hard Graft @SimonD

I would have liked to catch up with you,but data protection prevented it,maybe next year.

 

[Brisel]

Might have to persuade the team to make some TFF hats for next year

 

[wurzell1976]

Might have to persuade the team to make some TFF hats for next year

I find it quite amusing ,that Groundswell and folks like us don"t get much of a mention in the popular farming press .We must pose a threat to post war conventional thinking .

 

[wurzell1976]

Might have to persuade the team to make some TFF hats for next year

We need a TFF tent ,cider and girls with wobbly bits ,i am sure we would all get to meet.

 

[wurzell1976]

Registration is open for this years show... View attachment 662548
We were planting half an acre of no-till spuds on the site, whilst George Simon was getting on planting cover crops for the drills to work in and I suddenly remembered that we hadn't announced this on the Forum. So get on and book yourselves some tickets...it's bigger and better than ever. Lots of speakers for those thinking of doing a bit of no-till and wanting advice and also for those who want to take things to the next level. More details later...


View attachment 662544

Fantastic show thank you ,and also for accommodating my mobile domestic arrangements. .I noticed very few "young farmers" ,and i thought they want to be the future.However there were no quad tracks and the like,they would be so disappointed that nearly any tractor can be used with no-till.

 

[Brisel]

Even a Trantor

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

nearly any tractor can be used with no-till.

There's hope for me then

 

[Samcowman]

Fantastic show thank you ,and also for accommodating my mobile domestic arrangements. .I noticed very few "young farmers" ,and i thought they want to be the future.However there were no quad tracks and the like,they would be so disappointed that nearly any tractor can be used with no-till.

There was a few of us younger farmers. But I agree there should be more.
Is there any way I can get hold of the arable benchmarking figures because I missed that session and think they would come in useful in discussions here.

 

[Brisel]

There was a rough summary or Gary’s figures in last weeks Farmers Weekly but they raised more questions than answers. There’s a thread about them in this forum.

 

[Samcowman]

There was a rough summary or Gary’s figures in last weeks Farmers Weekly but they raised more questions than answers. There’s a thread about them in this forum.

Thanks I saw that just wondering if there was a better breakdown because I’m not sure the no till having half as much labour cost again is comparing similar farms.
I know there are some people that will take what is in there as gospel and won’t be interested because of those figures

 

[martian]

Alex has now uploaded most of the talks from the two main barns onto the Groundswell youtube channel. We've just been upgraded from glacial slow broadband to quite fast (Openreach helpfully shut the road to the grainstore for a couple of weeks whilst they did it...when you see how fast they work, you're not surprised by the broadband's relaxed speed), so it's now only taking an hour or two to upload each video rather than all day and night.
Here's a 3 minute highlights film from the show which should lead to some great talks. Enjoy!

 

[ShooTa]

thank you and the team for uploading them - It has been great to re-watch and catch the ones i missed.

 

[martian]

Just walking about on the drill demo area today...it's very interesting how each plot has grown on. Some of the drills, to be fair, weren't set up properly to drop the seed, but there is quite a variation in how the oats have fared. If anyone wants a wander, get in touch.

This is what one of them looks like. There's a few weeds in the bottom, but looking well with no inputs at all.

We've uploaded a few more videos, like one of Joel Williams's talks (the sound was a bit rubbish on the other one). TV's a bit rubbish at this time of year, why not binge Groundswell YouTube instead?

 

[Samcowman]

Go on we need some pictures of the other plots as well

 

[clbarclay]

Go on we need some pictures of the other plots as well

Followed by a game of guess the drill.

 

[clbarclay]

Did all the plots cover crop get sparyed off afterwards? I recall there were a few rollers and a front cultivator on some of the demo plots.