Donald Ross – Rhynie Farm, Tain

The older I get I appreciate the seasons more and more. As the nights draw in and the leaves turn rusty and fall, it appears autumn is upon us with a bountiful supply of offerings from the hedges and garden. For us on Rhynie its been a good year. Yes I could have done the sheep better. Foot problems mean I still have a few lambs to sell as well as a lot more culls than normal, which has led to a slight shortage of grass. I have finally got the ewes bolused as well as footvaxed. The Footvax like many things of late was very hard to acquire.

The cattle have been kept pretty tight due to lack of grass but dividing 30 acre fields into 3 or 4 paddocks has meant we can leave grass to grow with very little extra hassle – until the mains electric fencer breaks! Calves were inoculated with Bovipast Intranasal and RSP for pneumomia before harvest and have been on creeps since mid September utilising our own Barley, Oats, Peas and OSR pellets from my neighbours Rape oil business. Its fair to say they are motoring, normally I would be thinking about moving them off our peat grassland on to stubbles but we are still dry so will leave that as long as possible and look at taking them in mid November.

A week ago I had the pleasure of a visit from 6 farmers from County Wicklow, it was interesting comparing their system to ours. For instance they did not get penalised for beasts over 400kg despite the animals eventually going into the same market.

On the arable front I am happy with the end result, the 1200 tonne grain shed is full of wheat and oats. Barley results were mixed, fantastic yields (8.2t/ha)due to a good growing conditions but Nitrogen levels were high 1.55-1.74 with only 100kg/ha Nitrogen applied. I think one reason was a lot of Nitrogen not taken up by the 2021 harvest was utilised by 2021 cover crops before rotting and giving our barley a late boost to the head.

Oilseed Rape is offering a good margin, with no Light Leaf Spot fungicides applied but 2 flowering sprays. I have achieved our best yield to date. Although I haven ’t cracked 2 tonne per acre yet I am getting closer.

It’ s been a hell of a year to market any commodities, 2022 wheat for example has been sold at £150-£343/ tonne with about 200 left to market. I really pity any of the co-op guys who have had to market crops on behalf of farmer members.

Harvest conditions were fantastic we never dried anything over 18%, our 29 year old Case Axial Flow only let us down once when a tyre rotted out, I have been expecting this to happen for some years and have a couple of dodgy spares available so we were back going again after 20 minutes. However this year I think I will have to put at least £12 000 into it as it needs a set of tyres, the auger turret needs renewing and the front of the rotor started leaking plus numerous other “ wee jobs. ” It seems a lot of money for an old combine but a 2nd hand modern model (12 years old) is between £70-80 000 and getting a contractor to cut it all would be £20 000+ for the year.

This year ½ of my arable acreage is into wheat, it’ s a risk but it gives me the best margin year on year. I bought a 2nd hand Philip Watkins subsoiler cultivator to help speed up ploughing as my ploughboy was working for Mark McCallum on the Black Isle before heading down under to work on a corporate farm near Geraldton where by chance the manager is the son of the farmer I worked for almost 30 years ago! Anyway ‘Philip ’ has worked well speeding the job up and I finally got to spend 200+ hours on our big tractor. I have ploughed 9 metres round headlands in a bid to minimise the spread of sterile brome into fields. All wheat is drilled including a dozen trials for Scotgrain although one seed supplier has left us with a guess the variety competition due to them not putting a label with variety or thousand grain weight on the 25kg bag.

Finally its with sadness I read of the sudden passing of Donald Fraser Dunain Mains. Donald a director of The British Wool Board, Dingwall Auction Mart and past president of The Black Isle Show was also a tremendous farmer as well as a haulier carting draff into Rhynie and barley away to Highland Grain. I had the pleasure of his company at numerous Highland Grain events and enjoyed his thoughtful knowledge and couthie wit. Thoughts go to his wife Mary and son Donald and the rest of the family.