Oakley Farms

Getting itchy feet now about planting so changing wheels today starting with Marks tractor, then he will put the planter on and front tank, this takes a good day with all the hoses and electric boxes. Changing Maurices wheels next for the destoner, hoping to start friday at Hinton fingers crossed

No problem Paul, this 68 came with this type of front links supplied by model-farmer, these got broken as you may have seen in the earlier posts in the workshop with the linkage on the floor, i was working on it one morning and when my back was turned it rolled off the coffee table, survived well all apart from a snapped link arm, this couldn't be fixed so i sourced another front links set from farmmodels.nl, managed to remove the old set and put this new set on, you do have to put it together yourself as it comes in kit form and spray it up yourself, its a little fiddly but the results are ace, i tinkered with this one and made a top link stand and a pin and hole for connecting chains when stuck

The last of the Fuego Spring Beans drilled today before the rain, at 280kg/ha, the challenger wearing the new Oakley Farms logo and signwritting. Seed rolled in nicely behind and waiting for pre em spray from our partner when conditions allow. Im pleased thats out the way, now we can turn our attention to prepping the spud land, 360 acres this year, 217 at Atherstone, 103 at Knott Oak and 40 at Hinton Park for Charlotte, possibly some grown for North Barrow Farm too. Ground temperatures are on the up but still cold nights so not rushing just yet, will start shakerating after round up in a day or too if dry. Maurice has made good progress drilling some margins for LEAF, open farm sunday & our HLS scheme, seed mixture is a cornflower mix for bumblebees. The Express drill preformed ok, coped with trash very well but i think next time we will cultivate before hand. Phil has got on very well and finished all first dressings on Wheat & Rape and is now going like a mad man at second dressings before stem extension on the Rape, its really motoring now so probably only hit into the poorer looking crops, may even get the mounted out as well to help due to the later start with wet conditions back in Feb. back around the farm we are clearing up odd jobs before planting, the builders have dug out the weigh-bridge and marked out the holes for solar panels, moved the grain lab and we have a CS90 spear on order to complete the grain storage part of the business. The last fridge units are going in and the final cold store door is being put up, all small jobs that haven't cost too much money at the mo!

Yes we de-stone then plant, pics of the planting operation will be put up this year

Nope no ploughing at all, very few growers down here do, we go straight in with the Shakerator, then topdown, and straight in with the bedtiller, we used to ridge up between the topdown and bedtilling but that doesn't work with a tracked tractor on the bedtiller and to be fair we are seeing no worse results and its saving a job.

Still in the early stages Paul, looking at a ground level bridge to be able to load spuds whilst lorry is parked on it as well as using it for grain storage

Spring drilling is going well with all of Oakleys own 240 acres of beans in the ground, rolled and pre em spray on, attention has now turned to putting in the 500 acres up at Cadbury, of which 145 acres are already in the ground. As this is a joint venture our business partner has sprayed off the ground and disced using their Simba Solo with rear press and we are drilling and rolling, it a bit slower going due to heavier ground conditions, and now we have been rained off! Back at base we have been granted planning permission for our solar trackers which the builders returned today and marked out as well as putting in a new weighbridge. We are hoping to sprinkle in some wild flower and bumblebee margins next week for our HLS scheme and Leaf Marque, going to try the horsch express snd see how we get on. Hopefully ground prep for spuds will start straight after drilling is complete looking like the end of next week.

Looks like trying to plant spuds up the side of a mountain

We don't tend to have too much trouble, spuds and rape work well in controlling certain weeds, being light land we dont have a problem with black grass, it would be nice to plough to start a fresh but on this scale its simply too expensive, slow, creates a plough pan, not good for CTF either. It simply doesn't figure in our equation, stubble to seedbed in one pass makes far more sense to us, dealing with weeds with herbicides, we will however be moving to DD which will help as its minimal soil disturbance not allowing weed seeds to germinate.

No plough here at Oakley, they are the work of the devil! I would say we would use cambridge rollers as the discs would block a lot and create drag, unless it was over wintered ploughing where it would work very well

Slightly yes, we don't use the carrier much on our own land because its relatively light, usually topdown and straight in with the drill, our rented land and some of contract farmed ground is heavy and the carrier helps, its very good for whizzing over rape stubble to get it to germinate before spraying off

A picture i found on the internet of one of the farms Oakley is based upon

Finally after all that we got the JCB up on the low loader ready for Bondip in the morning, we have sold the old 531-70 to a local builder which meant changing all our trailer number plates!

Tonight is the official opening of our grainstore by Frontier, we decided to have an open evening for farmers to see the facilities on offer, the 60ton reception pit, wet bins, kentra automated dryer, storage shed and grain lab, refreshments and hog roast served, guest speaker from Frontier, a chance for the company to tempt farmers into signing contracts with them, it was also a chance for ourselves to showcase and promote the Agri Business contract farming, offering the whole package for farmers from seed sourcing to grain marketing with the whole cycle in between covered with Us and Frontier, a great partnership

Its been a busy week so far, yesterday i was invited to a NFU conference on arable & vegetable topics, a very interesting day learning about soil health and water preservation, a guest speaker from Sainsburys Agricultural team talking about their 20x20 vision working with farmers to run trials and supply 100% british produce, she also spoke about sustainability and how farming will have to change to feed a growing population with less, this is something we hope to work with them on how to achieve more with less. Oakley Farms has put a lot of local farmers backs up by the scale we are moving too, some see it as taking over but here we believe the future is scale, the days of the small arable farmer relying on subsidy are numbered, by contract farming we make kit justifiable, provide a large scale service to the farming community with minimal environmental impact but at the same time improving yields efficiently, the combinable crop model where scale is the future while keeping quaility high, achieving this by efficency and timeliness for our farmers. Back on farm the grain store is now empty and the spud trade has all of a sudden picked up, x4 lorry loads a day going which is all helping with cash flow but going straight back out on fertilisers, agro chemicals, seed, contractors spreading bills, recovering from the break in and now diesel is starting to be burnt too. Talking of seed, all of the potato seed is now in cold store despite the delay from seed growers struggling to lift in the wet conditions. In other news, compost spreading has finished on our bean ground and has been disced in with the Topdown and the drill is now on ready to start tomorrow All first dressings are now finished on the rape and wheat is starting tomorrow with the 460 acre rented block at Bondip, we took the opportunity today before the JCB goes up to Bondip loading fertiliser to put up CCTV cameras, since the crime wave started last weekend we had to do something, the workshop is now alarmed and goes through to mobile phones, we have infra red beams across the diesel tanks and three cameras are up, one by the workshop, one by the diesel tanks and the other looking at the grain lab

On a brighter note, Barrow Agri are getting on well spreading compost, we are discing this in behind them with the Topdown, hoping to start drilling the end of next week. This morning after sorting out the break in we fixed a broken roof sheet on the grading shed roof, gave me a chance to take some snaps of the farm on a sunny morning from the man platform

Unfortunately i got a phone call from Phil this morning to say we had visitors during the night, on arrival its fair to say they had a field day, workshop broken into with tools gone, both diesel tanks emptied and the door handel on the Challenger broken, gained entry and smashed the Trimble screen out, not what we needed.

Spring is here at Oakley, all things go, Mark & Maurice are on hauling compost back to farm, tipping in heaps at strategic points around the land area, Joe is on spraying Round-Up ahead of cultivations for spring beans, its not quite dry enough to pull the Topdown through yet but Steve has it Hitched on and is thinking about it! It is however dry enough on top to pull the trailed fert spreader, this will help Phil cover the ground more quickly, but he is fustrated at having to travel back to the farm and use the forklift to load bags as the JCB is being used to push up compost.

I try to spread business around and give everybody a chance, that way one person isnt bombarded with a huge list of orders to do, everyone i deal with are very helpful, its nice that friendships are formed too with the same interests

Like the solar panels, and some very familiar looking bollards nice touch

There is not a lot of kit left to arrive now, only a Tong Peal Caretaker 1800 and a irrigation pipe trailer, but looking ahead to late Autumn/early spring next year will see the transformation accross to CTF, some big kit to arrive then

No Fendts, probably my second choice, but in the model world they dont offer flexability for potatoes like the wiking john deeres i have

Thank Barry, if it inspires others to start a layout the more the better

Smarts are in today fitting Trimble to combine 2, dave the fitter is also looking at putting Variable Rate Technology on the fert spreader & drill, now we have all fields soil mapped we can put this into place, with the drill placing more seeds per metre squared in poorer soil quality areas and less in higher areas, the same with the fertiliser, reducing some money but getting a more even crop to harvest which will help the combines, easier fungicide applications, no loging crops, improved yeild per hectare. We are unsure which route to take with fertiliser, looking at a yara N sensor or usb stick style option taken from yeild maps off the combine, thats the brilliant thing about it, seeing visable results whilst combining but backed up by a map which we can then use to improve on and benchmark for our customers.

At Oakley we also have a commitment back to the environment, planting new hedges & trees, this year we are planting a wildflower bumblebee mix around the boundries to fields, awkward shaped fields and areas unable to be reached by the sprayer etc. The construction of our new grain store facilities gave us an opportunity to install a rainwater harvesting system. By capturing the rainwater from a section of our grain store roof we harvest sufficient volumes of water for crop spraying, washing the company’s machinery and running the farm’s toilets. The environmental benefit of this direct re-use is that our need for mains water is greatly reduced, and this in turn results in a reduced demand on water treatment facilities, pumping & operation. When we began the development of our new grain store, we knew that we had to consider ways to reduce the costs of the energy required to run it. Our solution is to look at the installation of five ground mounted “tracking†photovoltaic panels, each one more than five metres high.These solar panels would reduce the farm’s electricity bill by around 40%, at the same time as reducing our carbon emissions. Making the storage carbon neutral & saving around £40 000 a year. Finally our baling contractor Barrow Agri has signed a deal to supply Ely power station with straw to burn for electricity, another renewable souce.