FARM DIARY BY GWYN JONES

A window of opportunity this weekend was seized upon to make our second cut of grass silage. After attending the Royal Show at Stoneleigh last week, and seen it abandoned on the Wednesday due to torrential rain every day turning the car parks into quagmires, I could scarcely believe that we could cut silage on the Friday. But with three dry days forecasted, and field conditions wet, but drying out, I decided to take a gamble.

As the mowers raced up and down the fields on Friday afternoon, the sun came out, and the ground started to dry in between the rows. Over 400 acres cut by Saturday night, and the forager was busily eating up the rapidly drying grass all afternoon.

It stayed dry, and by Sunday night it was all in, with weather conditions ideal, and the grass (after tedding) almost becoming too dry! A supreme job as always by Glebedales and the ground just about held them all up; touch and go this time in places.

With another wet week forecasted, it was a great opportunity to cut our vitally important second cut of silage on time, and the quality looks superb. We shall now go for a third cut, as there is plenty of moisture in the ground, but I shall only apply half the fertilizer required to begin with, as there is a real possibility of a scorching second half of July and August after all this rain.

It was a real shame that the Royal Show was washed out. A new management team, great effort, and all thwarted by the weather. I thoroughly enjoyed the show, and the layout was so much better than last year.

The appalling weather was incredible; the rain falling from the sky like stair-rods every day, with bright sunny spells in between the thunder showers. The car parks were so bad that cars were towed in by tractors as well as out, and despite cutting two fields of barley in order to have fresh car parks for Tuesday, the organisers had no choice but to close the event on Tuesday night and miss the last day.

Frank Tyndall tells me that heavy rain is falling in Australia. His local town of Sale was due to be flooded last week as the three rivers (Macalister, Thompson, and Latrobe) which join up at Sale, were all in full flood (which is very rare), with timber and massive amount of soil being washed downstream due to all the bushfires in the summer.