As we have passed the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, we can now see the days slowly grow in length, minute by minute, day by day. On the farm the longer days are a sign that spring, the busiest time of year, is on its way, the increase in daylight also gives more time for getting stuff done.
Farmers don’t really get much of a break but for many January does provide a bit of respite and a chance to step back, look at what needs doing and start on a few jobs, these are some of the things that might be going on right now down on the farm.
Shepherding
If you’re in sheep country at this time of year you’re pretty much guaranteed to see or hear somebody racing about the fields on a quad feeding the sheep. Quite often the farmer will be taking bags of sheep nuts or sugar beet to his flocks, then you can hear the frantic ‘baas’ of the hungry sheep as they gallop across the fields to get their dinner, if its been frosty or snowing and the ground is hard he might be putting down some hay as well.
If it’s really hard weather, or forecast to be, then you might hear a different, more anxious, tone to the ‘baas’ and the farmer calling and whistling to his dog, this will be him taking them to lower, more sheltered pastures, or, if he’s got the room, putting the flock in a barn or shelter. On some farms, such as those which specialise in producing lamb for the traditional Easter market, these barns may already be in use as they will have started lambing indoors by now.
Lambing season takes a bit of preparation, the pens must be cleaned and ready, food must be ordered, fences must be secure, so a sheep farmer will be thinking about this and phoning around for a few quotes, he will be trying to book a scanner in as well.
Slurry spreading
Hard, frosty ground is good for spreading slurry, or animal waste, too, which can lend the countryside air a certain pungent quality! Hard ground is useful as it avoids getting bogged down and ruining the fields with ruts, these fields will often be the ones from which silage or hay will be cut later in the year.
One consideration the farmer must make when deciding which fields to spread on is if there will be any risk of run-off into watercourses, a decent-sized field margin or buffer strip between fields and rivers or streams will prevent this, the fines you can receive for polluting a watercourse are very hefty, of course there’s always the wind direction to take into account as well when spreading.
Weaning calves
Some livestock farmers will now be thinking about weaning calves, although it’s still a bit early yet, weaning means reducing a mammals reliance on milk and with calves this can be achieved at anything from 5 to 10 months of age, dairy and upland cattle will also be weaned earlier than lowland cattle, as will calves in areas where the grass growing season has been poor.
Mending and Maintenance
On a farm there’s always things breaking down, holes appearing in fences, gaps to mend in walls, tracks to mend and constant cleaning to carry out.
Hedge-laying is one of those jobs that’ll be done in January whilst the grounds hard and before things start to grow, although many farms use flails which are tractor-mounted devices which basically operate by thwacking lots of lumps of metal on revolving chains against the hedge.
Hedge flailing has become a very contentious issue but is usually used by farmers as it’s cheap, quick, and efficient, tenant farmers who are under pressure to keep the hedges looking tidy as part of their tenancy agreement may have them flailed as well, it should only be carried out between Jan and March before birds start nesting, although it is sometimes done at other times of year to maintain visibility on roads.
Soil
A good farmer should care for his soil, after all soil is his whole raison d’être, the basis for everything he does, so he might get someone in to do some soil tests at this time of year, or do some simple tests himself.
If the grounds soft he might carry out an earthworm count, (although it’s probably a little bit too early to do this at the moment) this entails taking a spade and some kind of container and simply digging holes in a pattern throughout the field, taking the worms out of the soil and counting them to see how healthy the soil is.
There are three main types of earthworm, epigeic worms, which live in the top layers and eat leaf litter and dead plant material, endogenic worms, which live in the topsoil, and anecic worms, which burrow quite deep, each has a purpose and the target should be to have more than one epigeic worm per hole dug, over 14 endogenic and more than one anecic.
Another soil test that can be done is an infiltration test, whereby a pipe is knocked vertically into the soil and a quantity of water is poured into the top, the infiltration of the water is measured with a stopwatch and the result tells you how waterlogged the ground is.
One simple testing method has the delightful name of “soil my undies” (I’m not making this up I promise!) this is carried out by burying a piece of cotton cloth one year and then digging it up a year later to see how much has been eaten by soil organisms, if it’s all gone your soil’s healthy, if all the cotton is still there then the soil’s effectively dead.
There are many other tests which can be done to measure ph, chemical composition, ‘slake’ etc and countless other jobs that will need doing too, but I’ll leave those for other articles.
A B-H
Northwest Nature and History 