Blogs

I start with a falswhood. Did you know that the carbon footprint of the Coca-Cola company is greater than that of the entire UK livestock industry? No?

October started and ended dry and I cannot remember a kinder autumn than the one we are currently having. I am sure at some point the weather will turn for the worst and test us, but for now long may it continue.

With the clocks changing, the dry weather came to an abrupt end on the last day of October. What we were not prepared for, however, was the absolute deluge of rainfall which fell out of the sky on that morning.

In October I stood in a room full of 800 farmers and rural businesses at Farmers Guardian’s British Farming Awards and watched Sheena Horner step onto the stage and accept the Farming Hero honour.

The weather the last two weeks has been just what we needed. With being half down on of our normal shed space, we needed to sell a group of calves before we could bring the cows in.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are recognised as the two existential threats to our civilisation and the next few years will see a major transformation in how we use land so as to tackle these crises.

As I sit down to write this we are in the middle of some seriously wet weather.

Rachel and husband Stephen and family farm 66ha (163 acres) mainly tenanted at Baildon, West Yorkshire. They milk 85 pedigree Holstein and Jerseys, selling milk to Meadow Foods. They also have an on farm vending machine. Their son, Ben, works full-time on farm and daughters Felicity and Zoe also work in the agricultural sector. Rachel is a director of the local farmers’ market.

It has a while since I last wrote an article and there has been a lot going on, having taken on another farm and unfortunately suffering from Covid-19 along the way.

September finally saw the return of sunshine and warmer days which allowed us to finish the cereal harvest with some of the driest combining we had all season, which was a relief.