North End Farm
milling wheat and came in at four tonnes per acre this last harvest but we didn ’ t get it away as milling . It was my fault as I didn ’ t think it was going to yield as high as it did so I didn ’ t put enough nitrogen on and it ended up with a protein of 11.7 per cent although we may get some away for biscuit .’
Richard ’ s favoured winter barley variety is Cassia .
‘ It seems to work well on both light and heavy land . We did 3.5 tonnes per acre this year at last harvest and have sown just short of 100 acres of winter barley this time . It gives us the opportunity to get stubble turnips in .
‘ Our spring barley acreage was 130 acres in 2016 and we ’ re looking at the same again for 2017 growing the Propino variety . We used to grow for malting barley and if it achieves malting quality that ’ s a bonus but overall we ’ re now growing for yield . We ’ re also using spring barley as a blackgrass tool .’
GREENING MEANS BEANS
Greening rules have brought about the addition of beans to Richard ’ s cropping roster .
‘ We had beans 20 years ago and they are back now mainly because of the government legislation over greening . We have 30 acres at North End Farm and grow another 27 acres on two other farms for the same reason . The market for them has been for human consumption in Egypt but with everyone going into the same market the price has dropped .’
Richard is trying to take out blackgrass as much as he can and is being proactive about it . ‘ We ’ re trying our best to address blackgrass and wipe it out through a number of methods . Five or six years ago we had a serious patch in a field that we just sprayed off taking it out with Roundup . There have been some patches where we ’ ve not had a recurrence but where we have had returning growth we ’ ve turned the land over to set aside . We ’ re now putting a pre-emerge spray on
and then using Avodex . We still end up going in with Atlantis along the way .’
Although the 2016 harvest was affected by a poor winter it proved an easy harvest for Richard and his team .
‘ We were up to date when any showers came and we haven ’ t damaged the land either because soil conditions were dry . That means the crops were sown in good seed beds , so we are as happy as we can be going into winter despite not having the tonnage to sell that we had the previous year .’
Ripon Farm Services are proud suppliers to Richard Burniston of North End Farm
The team at North End Farm includes his nephew , Edward Watson who runs the contracting operation and Allan Davy , who drives the combine and sugar beet harvesters . He ’ s been with Richard and Richard ’ s father for 47 years having started at 18 . There is a team of five fulltime men .
INFORMATION , Richard Burniston , North End Farm , Tockwith Road , Long Marston , YO26 7PJ , 07595 070834
46 Dec / Jan 2017 www . farmers-mart . co . uk