Hello from Fife

[balbirniefarm]

I am a partner in a mixed business in Fife. We have 800Ha of cereals 50Ha of rented out vegetables and 200+ suckler cows. We also have winter grazing for sheep. In the past there was a dairy here too.

Our experience of direct drilling is minimal: we had a trial field in October 2013 and have managed to extend the trial with a Claydon in October 2014. Sadly, we couldn't get hold of a JD750a to compare this year. Our farm manager has good experience of DD from his time in Suffolk before he came here but it's new to everyone else and there are few people in our region who have tried either. At the moment we plough almost everything and the biggest step we've made recently was reducing the size of the drilling tractor and drill and increasing the tyre size.

Personally, I have only recently come back home having had a career as an accountant (don't hold that against me) so I am not a trained farmer and am approaching current farming issues with a fresh set of eyes. I tried (unsuccessfully this time) for a Nuffield to study regenerative agriculture so I'm trying to learn as much as I can, meet as many people as I can and try again. Anything I can glean from these forums, twitter, books, photos, discussions is going to stand us in good stead.

 

[dazza b]

@Clive

 

[dazza b]

Oh and welcome

 

[Great In Grass]

Yes welcome I'm sure you will find the forum a mine of information and your questions eagerly answered, we have a number of members from the Kindom of Fife one in particular @grumpy who recently has been taking some interest in mob grazing.

 

[Colin]

Welcome along,
I do a bit of dd with a claydon, works well in the right situation, if I didn't have root crops I would be tempted to go 100%, especially on the light soils I have. My opinion is that it is the route we need to go but how do we integrate it with the rest of the rotation? What is the best form of drill? Use of cover crops etc etc? I have been messing about with it for 6 years now with some success and some failures, mainly heavy land is where the claydon falls down and I've not even bothered trying it after strawed carrots!

 

[Colin]

Yes welcome I'm sure you will find the forum a mine of information and your questions eagerly answered, we have a number of members from the Kindom of Fife one in particular @grumpy who recently has been taking some interest in mob grazing.

He knows everything about everything, or at least he thinks he does! If in doubt he trots out some facts about WW2.

 

[grumpy]

Yes welcome I'm sure you will find the forum a mine of information and your questions eagerly answered, we have a number of members from the Kindom of Fife one in particular @grumpy who recently has been taking some interest in mob grazing.

must be a Balfour

 

[York]

I am a partner in a mixed business in Fife. We have 800Ha of cereals 50Ha of rented out vegetables and 200+ suckler cows. We also have winter grazing for sheep. In the past there was a dairy here too.

Our experience of direct drilling is minimal: we had a trial field in October 2013 and have managed to extend the trial with a Claydon in October 2014. Sadly, we couldn't get hold of a JD750a to compare this year. Our farm manager has good experience of DD from his time in Suffolk before he came here but it's new to everyone else and there are few people in our region who have tried either. At the moment we plough almost everything and the biggest step we've made recently was reducing the size of the drilling tractor and drill and increasing the tyre size.

Personally, I have only recently come back home having had a career as an accountant (don't hold that against me) so I am not a trained farmer and am approaching current farming issues with a fresh set of eyes. I tried (unsuccessfully this time) for a Nuffield to study regenerative agriculture so I'm trying to learn as much as I can, meet as many people as I can and try again. Anything I can glean from these forums, twitter, books, photos, discussions is going to stand us in good stead.

Great.
Welcome.
The good is you don't need to invest time & efford in cleaning out your barn between your ears of pree set thinking and knowledge based on "We always did it this way"
York-Th.

 

[Colin]

Or as they say in Scotland "it's aye been!"

 

[grumpy]

Or as they say in Scotland "it's aye been!"

or if it aint broke dont fix it,i remember in the early 80s folks telling me min till had consigned the ploo to the history books only to find after a few years they had to go and buy their ploos back.what i cant understand is the ethos of the dd guys that they must defend dd at every turn if it is that great every farmer would be using it?

 

[bobk]

Welcome @balbirniefarm , loads of info on here good and bad.. but generally you will gain from the experience .