A farmer's view, from the Vine House Farm newsletter. Vine House Farm in the Fens is where I buy bulk bird food from, online. Thought I'd better say that, and how efficient they are, since I'm borrowing from his newsletter. (
https://www.vinehousefarm.co.uk/ )
NEWSLETTER ISSUE 183 AUGUST 2023 from Nicholas Watts; Extracts which refer to weatherWhat a month here at Vine House Farm, was June warmer than July? No, if you remember the first nine days in June, the temperature only rose to 17°C. It turns out that July had an average temperature of 17°C, which is the 50 year average, but it was of course wetter than average, with 73mm of rain. There was a total of 48.1mm of rain on 16 of those days but spare a thought for the farmers and holiday makers in 2007 when we had rain on 20 days in July totalling 118 mm.
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July has been a frustrating month with the rape and winter barley being ready to harvest. We only had half a day here and there when we could get the combine out. I can’t remember a more frustrating July, but on looking back at my weather records, July 2007 was far worse. More rainy days and twice as much rain! ..... The plus side of this is that the winter barley and rape are yielding well, they had sunshine when they were flowering. President Putin has again shown us what a terrible man he is, and by bombing Odessa, he has elevated the world price of grains.
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Wheat was ready for harvesting at the end of July - it never used to be. Scientists are breeding new varieties of wheat for early harvest as well as higher yield. Average temperatures have also risen which means they will ripen earlier. I remember a particularly cool summer in 1978, when the average July temperature was only 15.1°C, so we only had one field of wheat harvested by September 1st of that year.
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Irrigating potatoes came to a halt on July 10th which meant there was more time to do some much-needed maintenance jobs. We may not like the cool July weather, but potatoes and other vegetables will be enjoying it; they can keep growing 24 hours a day. Last year was too hot for our crops, they would’ve stopped growing on at least 20 of those hot sunny days and consequently did not produce a good yield.
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Weed control in our organic crops has not been very successful this spring as, when we were doing the weeding in April, it was too wet - we simply moved the weeds from one place to another and they continued growing. This year we are growing oats organically, for porridge and for oat milk, so there might well be some organic English porridge oats on sale in the Farm Shop later this year.
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Barn Owls are having a very poor year, the worst year since 2015. Usually, a very good year is followed by a bad year. A very good year is when half of the pairs have a second brood and they have this second brood because there are plenty of voles around. .... Voles do not breed well in wet weather, so those Owls that are trying to feed young this month will be struggling. In an average year, we would have between 12 and 15 occupied boxes but, as I write this, we have just five boxes with eggs or young, two with eggs and three with just one young and it is possible that one or two of those young will not survive. Slightly better than 2015 however when not one pair of Barn Owls reared a chick in Deeping Fen, because of the huge amount of young reared in 2014. Despite this setback, there is no need to worry yet about Barn Owl populations, the future of voles in our countryside is good as they live on young grass shoots.
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It is a good year for some species of butterfly; Peacocks especially but not for Tortoiseshells, they both lay their eggs on stinging nettles but must have different lifestyles thereafter. We also have plenty of butterflies in and around the Café Wildlife Garden; during the last week in July there must have been 300 butterflies on site of 12 different species.
War does not determine who is right, only who is left - Bertrand Russell
Chichester 12m asl