THE past week has been rather chilly, especially when there has been cloud cover, with winds predominately coming from a northerly direction. Higher air pressure has remained almost constant, keeping any rain at bay, which has allowed the ground to dry enough for field operations to begin in earnest.

Following recommendations from our agronomist, it was time to use our new sprayer. This sprayer is larger than the one it replaced, with a spray width of 20 metres compared to the 12-metre spread of the old one. The tank also has a greater capacity, up from 1,000 litres to 1,500 litres and the spray booms can be folded up from the tractor cab using an electric hydraulic mechanism. An engineer was called to fit an in-tractor monitor, which will enable even more precision when spraying. The screen enables the tractor driver to closely monitor the contents, alter the flow rate and pressure as required as well as using a GPS tracking system to tell you exactly where to drive.

This is done by setting the width on the first pass so that when you drive back you are able to follow a set of green lines, which show on the screen. This will be very helpful when spraying fields with no tram lines or in the over-wintered stubble fields, which have tram lines set to the old 12-metre width. The navigation aid will also be very useful when using pre-emergence sprays i.e. on fields in which the crop sown has not germinated. Spaying operations for Ian will now be a great deal easier, as he will be able to cover almost twice the area without having to go back to the farm to refill the spray tank. The increased spray width will mean fewer tramlines, so reducing the area of soil compaction and less journeys on the road as well as the whole operation being completed in less time so making the most of weather windows.

Ian has now sprayed the winter wheat with a herbicide to kill the blackgrass, the winter barley with some zinc, as it was showing signs of deficiency and both the wheat and barley have been treated with an aphicide. Our fallow ecological focus areas were also sprayed to rid them of blackgrass.

During the week David, our nutritionist, brought two Americans to see our farm. One was from New York State, the other from Pennsylvania. They were looking round some British dairy farms to try and establish a market for some of the animal health products they supplied. We were told that on the eastern side of the USA, which has a higher population, the farms tend to be smaller with an average herd size of about 80 cows.

Calving on Manor Farm has almost finished until it begins again at the end of the summer. One of the last cows to calve has been Ruth, one of our Jersey xs. She is predominately black and still shows some of the Jersey traits. She was born on August 27, 2008 and has just given birth to an Aberdeen Angus x bull calf and has never had a dairy heifer, so has no daughters in the herd. Ruth has been a good cow with a consistently high milk yield, butterfat (averaging just over five per cent) and protein. Her udder health has also been excellent with low somatic cell count readings.

On one rather chilly afternoon during the week I went on another of my strolls around the farm. On my way I noticed a mass of bright yellow flowers along a ditch running just beyond the farm buildings. On taking a closer look I was able to see that the yellow flowers were Colt's-foot, a plant that will grow in the bleakest of situations. The bank was dry, with clay lining the sides, which suits Colt's-foot. On a sunny, wintery day in February/March it will burst upon the scene in an explosion of yellow blooms. When flowering no leaves are visible, except for a few scales on the stems and the flowers close as evening approaches. The plant gets its name from the leaves, which are hoof-shaped.