NSA South East Region farm walk

Date: 25th November 2021

Location: Chequers Inn, Niton Road, Rookley, PO38 3NZ

Clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine welcomed members from across NSA South East Region on its farm walk on the Isle of Wight back at the end of November.

We firstly saw an excellent aftermath sward of grass/red clover that had provided late summer/early autumn grazing for weaned lambs, prior to catch crops being available.

Then we toured round  a range of catch crops grown for both the overwintering of late April and May lambing ewes and for finishing lambs/hogs for our hosts, Les Morris and Angus Baird. The growing of maize for AD, together with later sown sweetcorn and cauliflowers on the Island offers a wide window of opportunity for such crops.

We saw turnips that had been blown into standing wheat in late July, two to three weeks pre- harvest with added Berseem clover to provide extra protein to the mix. Using an “economically purchased” second hand 24 meter air seeder this was proving a cheap, quick and effective establishment technique. The trial addition of the clover is an interesting idea! We saw other turnip crops established by more “conventional” drilling methods with various different drills which, whilst perhaps more uniform, had incurred considerably higher costs.

Forage oats/legume, forage  rye and Westerwolds ryegrass were also being grown to take advantage of the long gaps between the primary crops, with potential to provide multiple grazings.

It was very interesting to see the innovative ways that Les and Angus have used, and are continuing to use,  the evolving crop production systems on the farms around them to advantage in benefiting their all-forage sheep production systems.