26th September 2025
Talking Taties: Gleaning the positives
The only thing worse than a poor performing year is one that follows another poor performing year. It’s safe to say arable farming and taty growing isn’t much fun at the moment.
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Opinion
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26th September 2025
Nature Natters: What next for nature?
We seem to find ourselves in a two-tiered farming system. We have those that are in Countryside Stewardship alongside those in an overgenerous Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI ) scheme, receiving public money to deliver public…
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26th September 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: Watch this space
My father was one of those post-war farmers where the success of the crop was determined by what you did before you sowed the seed, as opposed to what you did to the crop afterwards.…
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27th August 2025
Talking Taties: We’ve come a long way
Taties get a bad press when it comes to soil. If we were to assume nothing had changed since the ‘bed-till to death and blather everything with Temik’ days of the 1990s, perhaps it’d be…
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27th August 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: No profiting from perversity
I know I’m not the only one who won’t remember 2025 for its benign weather. The scale of this meteorological adversity is neatly illustrated by the accompanying image of my neighbour’s maize…
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27th August 2025
Nature Natters: To plough or not to plough?
As harvests have progressed and fields have cleared, we begin to refocus on what to do with our soil to prepare for the next crop. Post-harvest soil condition varies tremendously each year depending on what…
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26th August 2025
Last Word: Hatching happiness
Is there anything more joyous than new life coming into this world? Albeit, the planet is a slightly frightening place these days…
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28th July 2025
Last Word: Farming forgiveness
Something I was exposed to very early on in life was how to bear an effective grudge, and while I loved him dearly, this was an attribute my grandad John was most skilled at.
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28th July 2025
Nature Natters: Beat the heat
It’s been the sunniest, warmest and driest first half of the year on record, and like many around my way in Cambridgeshire, we’ve harvested our crops around 2-3 weeks earlier than in a ‘normal’ year…
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28th July 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: Timeless charm of the tented field
One suspects crowds of folk have been occasionally gathering in farmed fields for as long as there have been farmed fields. In times past, the causes of such al fresco occasions could be manifold – from…
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28th July 2025
Talking Taties: Ever optimistic
Is it going to be a back end of sheeting trailers and dragging tow straps around? Who knows? Mother Nature tends to pay her debts at some time or other.