This week, our new ‘Field Margins’ column will again focus on the trials and tribulations of a round robin of four progressive Scottish farmers eager to survive not only the uncertainties surrounding Brexit, but also ever changing farmgate prices and, of course, Scotland’s unpredictable weather. This week’s it’s the turn of Black Isle-based mainly arable farmer, Rachel Young.

Each week, Field Margins will highlight what our four top farmers have discovered works for them, and just as importantly, what doesn’t and how they intend moving their business forward as a result.

Rachel Young

BASED at Ballicherry Farm, on the Black Isle, my parents, Brian and Caroline Matheson, and I farm predominantly arable, though also have 150 Texel cross ewes, and overwinter 100 cattle.

We farm approximately 350ha and this land is a mixture of owned, contract farmed, long and short term leases.

With our rotation, our areas change year on year, but typically we have around 190ha spring barley (with 100ha for seed and 90ha for malting), 40ha of seed wheat and 30ha of oilseed rape. We let out 30ha of land to local potato growers and another 30ha is let out for carrots.

We also have land in the AECS (agri-environment climate scheme). We do contracting for carrot growers, including straw and plastic removal, bed tilling, drilling and spraying, plus a small amount of arable contracting.

In addition we run two Hesston balers, buying and selling straw for carrots and livestock, and contract baling for other farmers.

We sold our suckler herd three years ago as we didn’t feel the return was good enough for all the hassle and upped the sheep and wintering cattle numbers instead.

We lamb our ewes indoors in April, and winter cattle from November to April, with them leaving just before they calf. Having livestock on the place is important to maintaining our soil fertility and we feel there is merit in keeping grass in the rotation of poorer fields.

We have recently changed our business structure, largely influenced by information received through being an AHDB Monitor Farm, to run a partnership and a limited company.

The farm, land and buildings, are owned in partnership by my parents, while all equipment is owned by Ballicherry Farm Contracting, of which I and both my parents are directors.

We were first drawn to this set up by the obvious tax relief we hoped it would provide – not that tax is really something we’ve had to worry about much the last few years with prices the way they’ve been! However, creating a new company was also an attractive way of incorporating me into the business without bringing me into the land owning partnership just yet.

In terms of labour, we have had full time workers for the last 15 years. However, this year, following many comings and goings of staff, we decided we were better off without the hassle.

We now hire self-employed staff at peak times, such as cereal and carrot drilling and harvests, and for running the mobile grain dresser we operate for Scotgrain.

Both of my parents work on farm full time. I work on farm five days a week and two days off farm as an NHS physiotherapist. There are clear benefits to not having a full time staff member, such as no holidays, sick leave or pension to pay. However, we are finding we are non-stop ourselves trying to keep up with everything.

Scottish agriculture is already in a real crisis regarding a lack of skilled labour coming into the industry and I genuinely feel self-driving tractors and the like will be the only way we will be able to survive looking into the not so distant future. Prototypes of such are already being tested at the moment.

Our harvest got off to a slow start in August with our OSR. Many growers in our area have moved away from swathing in favour of spraying off, with the belief it is a safer option for getting the crop in the combine and not on the deck.

But, so far, we have stuck with swathing as our combine doesn’t have a header suitable for direct cutting. Fortunately, the soaking that the swaths got at the end of July didn’t seem to affect the yield, but the fact we had swathed did mean we were held up a few days waiting for it to dry out, enviously watching neighbours chapping on with their sprayed off crop.

We may consider a combination of swathing and spraying next season to compare yields with the different methods, though it seems to really just depend on the year which will work out best.

With all the wheat and about 100ha of spring barley cut, I moved the last of the wheat from the drier bunker this morning, which is a load that was harvested from our 2.5ha YEN (yield enhancement network) trial site.

YEN is a really interesting project run by ADAS which we have been involved with for the past two years. It focuses on soil and plant health to help you achieve your land's potential in terms of yield.

Last year, only two of us in the Highlands entered, but this year there are four of us entering locally, which makes a bit of healthy competition.

In order to participate you must give all the details of the crop (seed rates, fertiliser, sprays, soil type etc), and then send in a soil sample, a sample of the standing crop at senescence, and a grain sample – simples! You then get a full report back on what was good or bad, which can aid next years’ decision making.

This year’s crop of the soft wheat Motown didn’t look as good as a field of Zulu we entered last year, which won the national bronze award for yield potential and was seventh for overall yield.

This may be due to the fact that we drilled it straight into cultivated ground following potatoes, which left a very fine, but shallow seedbed. On later inspection, the plants' rooting seemed superficial. We wonder if the shallow cultivation caused water-logging, which then impeded rooting, leaving the crop vulnerable to the drought in May, during which it looked stressed.

We usually always plough before drilling wheat, but last year skipped this to save time and reduce costs. In hindsight, we feel this may be the wrong place to try save money and have decided to plough all our wheat ground this autumn to improve root development.

As a variety, Motown is brand new to us, though we don’t know much about its potential, or what a good crop of it looks like. Let’s hope it’s just an ugly variety and that we are ‘dancing in the streets’ when we get the weigh bridge ticket back!

Next month, we will hopefully be rounding up after harvest and looking at how it will influence cropping decisions for next harvest.