Farm Diary

Despite this, we were drilling maize by last Thursday, and Tillington was all worked down and drilled by Sunday night, after rain on Friday delayed operations. We are spreading lime on the maize ground at Ripley, surprisingly the only maize ground in need of lime this year.

We wasted a whole day at Crouchlands with the Rural Payments Agency last Wednesday, putting every animal through the race in order to read all ear tags. It went very well, especially as I was under instructions from Gwenan (my daughter) to keep well clear, as I only get worked up and upset the officials.

I was tied up the next day with another 'clip-board merchant' who had come along to ask me thousands of questions in order to calculate the farm's 'carbon '“ footprint'.

'Do you have a written protocol on waste management'? No, I replied, we have a culture of not wasting expensive food, fertilizer or anything else on this farm, and I police it vigorously.

Not good enough, apparently. We need to write it down, and as usual, as long as it's written down, no one checks to see if it's carried out. I will however be interested to see if my carbon-footprint number is lower (better) than last year. It is about efficiency and waste, therefore I will be disappointed if we have not improved, although poorer quality silage (no sun last summer) and lower maize silage yields will count against me.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette April 22