Harvest at Hope Farm finished at the end of August, and ran smoothly in comparison to last year. Yields were variable though with oilseed rape and peas producing average yields, as did the first wheat. Our spring wheat yielded well above expectation, balanced by our second wheat which was exceptionally poor.
Harvest at Hope Farm Copyright Andy Hay (RSPB Images)
It can only get better, as they say, and looking forward we are currently in a much better place than we were at this time last year. Oilseed rape is growing nicely in one field, but is worryingly sparse in another. Different establishment methods may be partially to blame, but the variation across the farm is always intriguing. Our winter wheat has just been drilled and the winter beans won’t be far away.
Bringing visitors to the farm is a very important aspect of daily farm life. We have had nearly 300 visitors to the farm this year, including two Government Ministers, David Heath MP and Lord de Mauley. We look forward to inviting the new Farming Minister here, now that David has departed. All our visitors leave impressed by the work we are doing here and the demonstration that it is quite possible to successfully integrate high-quality management for wildlife into a commercial arable farm, without compromising the cropping and commercial integrity of the farm.
One new enterprise that we are starting is selling our own Hope Farm rapeseed oil. Rapeseed oil is apparently even healthier than olive oil, and is being heavily pushed on TV cookery programmes. We are very keen to highlight the potential added value from wildlife friendly farming, so please consider supporting this by buying a few bottles when they appear for sale in our reserve shops and online.
The weather also greatly influences the wildlife around the farm. During last year’s poor summer, butterflies were a real scarcity with even common species being largely absent. In contrast, during mid-August we had several surveys were we counted 500+ butterflies of up to 24 species.
Birds have been as challenging and variable as our crops. The breeding bird population reached a peak in 2011. Since then we have had two years were breeding numbers have slightly dropped. It is likely that the poor weather during the summer of 2012 reduced nesting success which has carried over to low numbers of adults this year. The diversity of breeding species has also dropped, with sadly no evidence of breeding kestrels, lapwings or turtle doves on the farm this year. This is the first year since we bought Hope Farm in 2000 that we haven’t recorded any turtle doves on the farm at all - a very sad state of affairs.
To finish on a positive note though, an indication of how good the breeding season has been this year is the number of grey partridge coveys we are seeing. We have found five discrete coveys in the last few weeks with between five and eight chicks in each covey.
This is a really fantastic sight, and shows that all the effort we have put into creating safe nesting habitat and insect rich areas for the chicks to feed in has been worthwhile.
Grey Partridges copyright Chris Knights (RSPB Images)