Page 33 - Demo

Farm Manager, Paul Sigley, talks about the pits and pitfalls of Stern Farm.bought fertiliser too early, paying more than if we had waited until the spring. Sadly, this year’s financial returns are nothing to shout about although we have stayed in profit and should live to fight another day (or harvest)!Farming has always had to endure the good and the bad times. An old saying is ‘Down the corn, up the horn’, which is a reference to the mixed farms of old which could sustain low prices in one sector if prices were good in another (poor corn prices offset by good prices for livestock). This would have been relevant to the farm in the 1950’s when it was much more diverse with milking cows, poultry, pigs and sheep and would be what Mr AGF Machin saw when he visited Lord Wandsworth College to write an article for The Hampshire Farmer.Mr Machin spends the first half of the article describing how he marvelled at farm buildings saying they are as ‘well constructed as the pyramids of Egypt’, with ‘roofs containing enough tiles to cover a village and leave sufficient over to tile an ordinary set of farm buildings’.What intrigued me the most was his description of fattening pits for cattle. The system involved pits in the buildings where the young cattle were placed and fed. As their bedding and manure increased the animals would eventually rise up to floor level when they could be walked out fat and ready for sale. I have never heard of such a system and would love to know if any of the older Sternians can remember these pits at the farm. I certainly wouldn’t envy those that had to dig out the manure once the cattle were gone.PAUL SIGLEYFarm ManagerThey say that no two years are ever the same in farming and what a difference we have seen between the harvests of 2022 and 2023.2022 was very much a vintage year. The autumn of 2021 was kind and crops established well followed by a good growing season the following spring. Harvest was all over in the blink of an eye taking just over four weeks to harvest all the crops and was completed on 11th August, the earliest that I have finished a harvest. The only downside was that the quality of the wheat was frustratingly just below full specification for milling. Yields were good and record-breaking prices (sadly, due to the Ukrainian War) coupled with our buying fertiliser before prices rocketed to over £1000 per tonne (again due to the conflict) meant that we also saw the best financial return that the Farm has achieved for the College for decades.Last harvest (2023) has been the complete polar opposite to 2022. It started off well in the autumn of 2022, especially as it was our first year with the new direct drill which sows the seeds directly into undisturbed soil without the need for ploughing or cultivations. Crops established well and looked promising going into the spring, but the weather became unfavourable with either too much rain, delaying spring field work by a month, or not enough rain and baking temperatures resulting in poor grain fill and low specific weights. Harvest started a week later than average and became a stop-start affair with no more than three days continuous combining at any time. Most of the crops needed drying to remove excess moisture and although the wheat yield was acceptable, the rest of the crops were disappointing especially the linseed which we have now decided to stop growing. Grain prices have tumbled to around half what they were twelve months ago and we AN UPDATE FROM Stern FarmThe farm buildings as Mr Machin would have seen them31