LEAF Water Management Training

Today we had a really interesting meeting with a select group of people for a follow up meeting on the LEAF Water Management tool.

From January 1st this year we have had about 55% of our annual rainfall on the farm and it is still very dry so the water training comes at a very poinient time.  We know it is a very precious resource and we need to learn how to use it wisely.

Our training today was reviewing the LEAF Water Tool for each of our farms.  This tool was launched at the LEAF Presidents Event earlier this month by Jim Paice  MP (Agriculture and Food Minister), demonstrating the importance of water as an issue.

Then we moved onto how we use our water knowledge to pass onto other farmers to become a 'Water Champion'.  This means using our skills in communication learnt through our LEAF 'Speak Out'

training to encourage other farmers to learn more about water use and it's protection.  There is much to learn about how we use water on the farm, from reducing its use or increasing the quality of the water leaving our farmland.  I will try and keep you updated on how our journey progressess, but to start off with here's a silt trap and bio bed that we have just created on the farm to do just that.  bio bed

 

Re-vamp

Work started this week on upgrading our sprayer filling/storage area on the farm. The new site is in the existing building, which was the site of a static pea viner, many years ago. The vines were cut in the fields at carried back on trailers before being fed into the machine where the peas were removed from the pods. These days the work is completed in the field by mobile pea viners which work 24 hrs a day to ensure that the peas are harvested and then transported to the freezing factory within 120 minutes.

We have decided to re-do our spray store and sprayer loading area to increase our safety to the environment when we are filling the sprayers. The store and filling area will be fully bunded so that if we have a leak whilst we are filling up the 'juice' can be contained in a special area. Touch wood we have not had a problem before and this should give us a state of the art area which will be fantastic to work in as well as giving the environment maximum protection. The dome to the left will also be the home to our re-cycling area where we will aim to store and then send for re-cycling as much of the waste produced on farm as possible. The works should take about 4 weeks to complete.