Laurel Farm
D & SL
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“ Proud to Supply Charlie Hill at Laurel Farm ” Tel : 01482 898 462 » Email : sheila @ dsltt . co . uk air into the soil . We have about 90 acres that isn ’ t drilled and we ’ ll look at perhaps putting in spring wheat , barley or beans in March .’
The Environment Agency is currently engaged in taking more land in the area for flooding and as such it has taken 147 acres from Charlie but has given him the same back in return next to his farm .
Having had a good harvest in 2015 Charlie reports a poorer 2016 harvest with oilseed rape performing particularly badly with over 100 acres having only come in at half a tonne to the acre on the flooded land . Wheat and spring barley did well .
‘ Fran and David share much of the workload these days . They work very hard on both the farm business and the contracting . We also have a great full-time employee who is threatening to retire when he reaches 65 years old next November . We
hope he comes back to help out at harvest if he does decide to retire as he has contributed so much to our farm .’
‘ We also now have our own Househam 30-metre selfpropelled sprayer which adds to our agricultural contracting offering as both Fran and David are fully qualified . We ’ ve also bought a mole drainer to get water off the land and on its way back into the river again .’
Blackgrass is a serious problem and Charlie talks of how they are addressing it through crop rotation .
‘ We used to be two wheats , barley and oilseed rape . We ’ re now one wheat , barley , oilseed rape or two wheats and oilseed rape . To break it up we ’ re going for spring cropping that gives us an extra kill . We ’ re now growing spring barley and spring beans , which we haven ’ t grown for many years . We ’ re quite happy with them and the role they are
Proud to be associated with Charlie Hill and team of Laurel Farm and wish them continued success
52 Dec / Jan 2017 www . farmers-mart . co . uk