Arable

Cornhill Farm is now 190 acres; of which 130 acres are arable (under cultivation), 35 acres as pasture for the free range egg enterprise, and the rest are for the farm building site, permanent pasture, and conservation areas.

Our cropping is geared to produce food for our own hens, first and second wheats, oats and beans. We also rent land for cereal production, and rent some of our own land out for other crops (potatoes and cabbage) so the soil has a good rotation. First wheats are our main crop, as 50% of the hens ration is made up of wheat. We usually minimum till the soil (not invert it with a plough), so that the aerobic bacteria in the soil, which are in the top 150mm, can stay there. (When the soil is inverted, these bacteria get buried deep in the soil and can take 2 or 3 years to get back to the populations required to do the good things they do in the top layers of the soil). The wheat crop is the first to be drilled in the autumn, and we begin to drill as soon after the 10th September as is physically possible. The seed rates at this time of the year can be cut right back because there are still good growing conditions for the seeds to get away; and we have drilled as low as 17kgs/acre, though we generally start now at about 20kgs of seed per acre. After the wheat crop is drilled, we start drilling the winter barley then the winter oats, and then last of all, the second wheats (wheat crop after a wheat crop).

In the spring we put the spring beans into ploughed ground as soon as weather conditions permit and the soil is dry enough to work. After that we drill spring oats as and when land becomes available after the winter cabbage crop is cleared.

Fields are farmed on a rotation, where the crops grown change each year over a 3 or 4 year cycle. As we are cereal growers, we rent some of our land to other people for either a potato or cabbage crop. The soil needs a change, and the crop residues from different crops all help to feed the microbes in the soil and keep the soils fertility high. Soils

Combining of our cereals starts in mid July with the harvest of our winter barley. There is then a gap before the first fields of wheat are ready, the first field usually being harvested around 4th August. This is the busiest time of the year for us, as well as combining, the grain has to be hauled back to the farm, then its put through a dryer to get excess moisture out of the grain to below 14% so that it will keep in store to feed our hens until the August the following year. On days it is not suitable weather to combine, we will be busy either on repairs, catching up with the drying and starting to prepare the fields for drilling next years crop.