Farmer’s view of the challenges faced this year

December. How did that happen? The last year has been a busy one and as I write after yet another 22-hour shift I can’t help but mull over the past 11 and a bit months. We kicked off the year milking 55 of our awesome Ayrshire cows, with the intention of supplying milk to some of Glasgow and Ayrshire’s coffee shops, ice-cream parlours and wholefood retailers, but without losing the sight of our ultimate goal – creating a sustainable, organic dairy farm.

We were gearing up for a well-thought-out year ahead. What we received was a rollercoaster that kept us on our toes and included one of the wettest summers on record – making grazing fresh grass a challenge for the girls.

We had one milk delivery van blow an engine and another go on fire and our supporters network grew from 29 businesses in Ayrshire and Glasgow in January to more than 100 across the whole of Scotland today.

Last month, after being told off by my wife for the umpteenth time about having paperwork strewn across the kitchen table, I decided it was about time I created a farm office.

My room of choice was an old store full of stuff left from when my grandfather and father ran the farm. Whilst clearing the room to make space for my new workspace, I came across an aerial photograph of the farm from 1970.

The picture had been taken at a time when modern buildings had just been erected and it was likely intended to serve as a memory of great investment that had been made within the business.

I was more interested in how the fields looked. In the 1970 picture, my grandfather had been out turning hay and the field was surrounded by thick green woodlands and beautiful broad hedges.

It’s what you might expect on an Ayrshire dairy farm, yet we struggle to drive a quadbike across the same land today except in a long dry spell, and certainly not in 2017.

The woodland has large bare patches and the hedges are but a shadow of their former glory.

A recent soil test has demonstrated that the once rich and stable soil that provided such a good cut of hay in the photo was now saturated with sodium and the balance of various important nutrients was completely wrong.

The cause – years of incorrect fertiliser application.

And I’m responsible. During my first month back running the farm one of the first people to come up the road was the fertiliser salesman.

With neither of us having any knowledge of the soil type, he advised a quick fix which resulted in the problems we are trying to sort out with forward planning, hard work and organic management.

One day we will be able to reverse the effects of all the salesman talk for good.

2018 should be an interesting year.