Shropshire Farming Talk: Travelling to experience agriculture is an opportunity to grasp
October always seems like an all-go month, both for work and for socials.
This time nine years ago I’d landed in New Zealand at their busy time of tailing lambs and calving.
North Island’s 8000-acre (3237ha) Otapawa Station ran 22,000 sheep, a few hundred Hereford suckler cows and 2,600 dairy-cross mixed-age cattle, with five full-time staff, and several working dogs.
Inaccessible pastures could be improved through helicropping – dropping grass seed over ground by helicopter – and cattle grazed the electric fenced road verges to make use of every blade of grass.
There were countless interesting lessons about NZ’s various farming systems, export markets, and farming without subsidies.
Travelling to experience agriculture in other countries is an opportunity to grasp if you have it!
There’s also lots to experience at home in the UK, with farming discussion groups and Young Farmers’ Clubs offering talks and visits, welcoming anyone keen to learn.
The Blymhill Agricultural Discussion Group committee is planning next summer’s farm walks, after this year seeing cheese production at Joseph Heler Cheese, touring Isobelle and Richard Robinson’s dairy enterprise at Stoke-on-Tern and exploring strawberry production with Charles Kidson at Lower Reule Farm.
After two years of chairmanship, I hand over the baton to Michael Kavanagh on November 7 when guest speaker Geoff Sansome will explain his 42 years of working with farmers all over the world – if you can’t get out to travel the world, others will gladly bring the world to you, through their stories of agricultural exploration. New members are always welcome.
