The Farm
Grazing Cattle
How we do it
The cows graze grass out in the fields from spring till autumn. The fields are split into small paddocks so the cows only spend a few days in each one before moving onto a new paddock and allowing the grass to re-grow in the ones they have left. They return after about 21 days.
When the ground becomes too wet in the autumn the cows are housed in well-ventilated sheds. There is an old Shropshire saying ‘cows eat with one mouth and four feet’ When the ground is wet and soft the cows’ hooves sink in, pushing the grass into the soil. As a cow takes a mouthful of grass she moves forward and her four feet squash four areas of grass making them in-edible.
When they are housed they eat grass and arable silages. That is surplus spring grass that has been chopped up and put between concrete walls and rolled to remove as much air as possible and then sealed under plastic sheets. In anaerobic conditions certain bacteria produce lactic acid which pickles the grass and preserves it for winter feed. The same is done to arable crops while the grains are still soft and green later in the year.
The cows are also fed a mixture of crushed homegrown cereals and bought in protein.
Like all mammals, cows need a good balanced diet.
What we grow and produce
Selling milk, produced by the cows, to ARLA is the mainstay of the business. We also sell one-month-old beef calves to local farmers or keep them until they are about 7 months old and then sell them. It all depends on the value of calves at the time of selling.
In the past we have sold some surplus wheat, but all of it is now used to feed the livestock.
All this is done using Integrate Farm Management principles and we are kept on track by using LEAF’s Sustainable Farm Review. We are farm assured by the Red Tractor scheme and the ARLA CARE scheme in which we have to graze the cows on grass for a minimum 120 days a year.
We also produce electricity from 20Kw of solar voltaic panels on the cow housing roof. Some is used on the farm the rest goes into the National Grid.
There is also a 60kw log boiler that produces hot water to wash the milking equipment and to heat several buildings. The timber for this comes from the farm woodlands.
Barly
Barn Owl
Nonfood production
We also produce or manage wildlife habitats on the farm.
There are 6-metre margins around many of the fields, some south-facing ones are floristically diverse. Wild bird crops that produce over winter feed of seeds for native and over-wintering birds and small mammals.
Fenced-off pools and ditches. Hedges that are cut only every third year, which leaves the fruits and berries to feed birds and mammals over winter. The woods are managed to provide open areas and different age structures. Nectar and pollen-rich areas for insects.
This does not provide any income directly but Natural England, a government agency have an agri-environmental scheme that fund some of these activities. So it is not all altruistic.
Trials and errors in farming
Environment
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Gallery
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Current Projects
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Each year we try something different. Usually in a small way to see if it works at Great Wollaston. Sometimes it is promising and is taken further, other times it is quietly forgotten, never to be spoken of again until now.
Peas and Barley
This was one of the earliest experiments on the farm.
After leaving a cereal stubble over the winter months so native birds could feed on the split grain and weed seed; the ground was ploughed in the spring and peas and spring barley planted. These seeds have to be put over 25mm into the seedbed so there is good seed to soil contact and moisture as the seeds are relatively large. Then grass and clover seeds are spread on the surface and rolled in. These are small seeds and do not have much starch stores in them so must produce a green leaf quickly to start to photosynthesise and producing sugar.
The peas and barley act as a nurse crop for the grass and clover and produce a micro-climate. When the barley seeds are green and filled the crop is cut and made into arable silage leaving a field of grass and clover.
So one cultivation has produced two crops. We still do this.
Lupins
In the search for home grown protein we tried Lupins a few years ago. The crop grew well and flowered over a period of time. As harvest approached we found that the early flowers had produced seeds that were ripe but the later seeds were very green. It was decides to spray the crop with glyphosate to kill the plants and even up the ripening. After two weeks, which is the interval that must be left between spraying the crop and harvesting, we combined the lupins. The stems were still fleshing so we got lupins seeds mixed with wet pulp. It took a lot of energy to dry it. They fed well but to get the best from them as a source of protein for cattle they needed to be cooked. So I decided against them.
Until a few years later when we thought we were older and wiser and grew another field of lupins. It was a damp spring and the slugs went mad for the young lupins and they vanished. We had to plant a different crop there.
Winter Wheat and clover
We established a field of white clover under a crop of spring barley and peas. We grazed cattle on it over the summer and then in autumn sprayed the field with glyphosate which killed all plants except the clover. We then got a contractor to direct drill winter wheat into the ground. Direct drilling is where a special machine cuts slots in uncultivated ground with discs and puts seeds into the slots then rolls the ground to close the slots. The wheat and clover grow together, the clover supplying nitrates to the wheat from nitrogen fixing bacteria in root nodes. The clover also covers the ground supressing some weed growth. It also stops rain splashing soil onto the lower wheat leaves which can carry harmful fungi.
The wheat and clover are then cut and made into arable silage while the wheat seeds are green and soft usually in July. The field is then grazed until the autumn when the process is repeated. After three years spring meadow grass had built up and over whelmed the wheat and clover. Since spring meadow grass germinates in early spring and goes to seed before July it was not controlled. The system produced some very good cheap forage and the next step is to sow spring wheat after spraying with glyphosate to control the spring meadow grass but we have had problems with sowing seeds into minimally cultivated ground in spring.
Minimum tillage for spring crops
Having tried min-till for autumn sown crops and seeing that it worked well, we decided to try it in the spring.
So after an over-wintered stubble we cultivated the top 50mm of soil and planted the spring barley seeds. The soil was cold and wet and the cultivation had turned the soil into sticky mud. The barley seeds rotted in the soil and only a few emerged but the weeds did not have the same problem so we ended up with a field with more weeds than barley.
Ploughing would have broken up the soil and allowed it to drain; this is where ploughing is better than min-till.
We still plough to grow spring crops.
Fruit trees
Most farms have orchards but we have tried taking fruit trees on the farm.
It started in 2018 with planting some traditional fruit trees around the edge of some field and using simple plastic mesh tree guards. The deer shredded these and eat the trees. The next year we used steel mesh and fence posts the guard the replacement trees and these have worked.
In 2022/3 winter we used Shropshire council trees in fields project to plant 25 mixed fruit trees up the middle of 2 fields guarded by steel mesh circles. 2 tree died in June due to the hot dry weather and one tree has been damaged and died when cattle destroyed the guard but the rest are doing well.
The idea is that Hereford has been to fruit growing area around here, but with climate change, that area may move north and so we wish to see which type of fruit trees does best on our farm.
Also cows produce methane so numbers may have to be cut so different produce may be needed to maintain inome.
CROP ROTATION
3 year red clover/ grass ley or on some fields herbal leys or 5-year white clover/ grass ley. These build soil fertility and organic matter as well as being good for the cattle with a mix of sugars, proteins and minerals. The legumes turn atmospheric nitrogen into nitrates to feed themselves and surrounding plants. On a rotation of fields in temporary crops; one of two is ploughed( May) after 1st cut silage. Either a catch crop sown; peas/spring barley for cutting as arable silage or kale to graze min-till, Cultivating the top few centimetres for winter wheat in the autumn. The following summer after harvest min-till winter barley. eadnutrients and give a constant growing crop to protect the soil.
In the spring that is grazed off by cattle and the field(s) ploughed and sown barley and peas and undersown with a grass/clover or herbal mix cut as silage in July and then returned to the grass rotation.
The logic behind this rotation is to build up nutrients in the soil and then harvest them in the arable crops, especially phosphates and nitrates so they do not leach into surrounding water courses. It is also useful to control weeds such as docks which are difficult to spray in herbal leys. This gives a local mosaic of crops which helps many of the wildlife by providing different habitats. The grass margins are not touched when they surround arable crops so grow dense and thatched with dead grasses which support voles, shrews and mice which in turn support predators such as the successful population of barn owls.