North End Farm

A VARIETY OF WHOLE FARM CONTRACTS

‘ Our whole farm contracting sees us with a variety of whole farm contracts and some where we sow the crop , the farmer himself looks after it and then we go and harvest . It varies to whatever is needed and some just have us for baling , sowing or spraying . We try to fit in with what the customer wants . We have two combines that are a Claas Lexion 570 and a Deutz Fahr 4090 that we bought from new . Our sugar beet harvester is a Holmer Terra Dos . We have a number of machines and like to keep up to date but I don ’ t think we will be buying a lot of new machines this year , we will be paying for the ones we already have , sitting tight and mending what needs mending .’

Richard ’ s land like many other farms varies massively from field to field and sometimes differs substantially within the same field .

‘ We do have serious variations from blue clay to sandy loam and gravelly loam . One field is called the gravel hole , which is the one that will stand any amount of rain as it is very free draining .’

This is certainly not the case throughout the farm and Richard has continued from where his father left off .

GOOD DRAINAGE IS CRUCIAL ‘ Dad was always trying to improve the drainage and just before he passed away he put in a second hand draining machine . We now use a tractor-mounted trencher with laser levelling and try to pick out 10 acres of heavy land a year that we concentrate on and can see that our work is paying off . It really does make a tremendous difference to

the crops purely by looking at your drainage and I would recommend it to anyone .’

Richard tends to grow more of his wheat on the heavy land and hasn ’ t grown much oilseed rape since the neonicotinoids ban . The sugar beet is grown on the lighter land .

‘ Rotation on the heavy land sees me sometimes trying three wheats and a winter barley or now beans . On the

lighter land I tend to grow sugar beet , wheat , spring barley and winter barley . I usually put the winter barley before the sugar beet so that I can put in stubble turnips that are then eaten off by the sheep that come in from a local farmer .

‘ Our winter wheat runs to just over 200 acres this time with the varieties Lili and Knightsbridge . Lili is a