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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Opinion
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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.
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27th June 2025
Talking Taties: Chalk and cheese
Contrasting years don’t vary much more than 2024 and 2025. We finished planting this year’s crop more than a month earlier than last year and are currently at a point where all pre emergence herbicides are…
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27th June 2025
Nature Natters: Variety is the spice of life
As always, time is flying by and somehow it’s event season again. This is our chance to study crop variety trials at the various shows and open days, and explore the latest options entering the…
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26th June 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: Seedy speed dating
Visiting Cereals 2025 in Lincolnshire found me in a nostalgic mood – it’s a sobering thought that in 2029 the event will be fifty years old. That’s presuming its appearance on Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm…