Out and About - Winter 2021

Harvest offered no sun... but a good deal of rain Berkshire Farm Girl, aka ELEANOR GILBERT, is on a mission. She wants to educate people about farming in the 21st century. Eleanor is halfway through her second year at Harper Adams Agricultural University in Shropshire and continues to juggle university life with farming. She also finds time to visit schools in the area to educate young ones about agriculture and has appeared on the BBC farming programme Countryfile to talk about the future of farming.

H arvest is finally over and it has been one of the most challenging years for harvesting. But why? It all comes down to the weather and this year the weather was against us. We already have a difficult job due to an extremely short window when the crops are fit for harvest – getting the timing right can be the difference between a profit or a loss within an enterprise. With 12,000 acres of straw to cover – equivalent to 9,075 football pitches – and 3,500 acres of cereals (wheat, barley, oats etc) to combine – equivalent to 2,646 football pitches – we had our work cut out for us this year.

The straw that is a by- product of the cereal crops kept getting wet and made it nearly impossible to bale. Day after day we would ted it (flick it out to dry it in the sun) only to have a rain shower. It was relentless, the workload kept increasing day after day after day. Nevertheless, we grafted through with long hours (100 hours plus a week) lack of sleep, hard work and not a single day off resulting in an extended harvest. Normally we would have a week or two getting all the machinery up together and slowing up before drilling (sowing next year’s crop) started. This year we were drilling and harvesting all at the same

Eleanor visits Ladybirds pre-school to talk about farming

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O&A WINTER 2021