As November comes to an end, I can certainly say we have seen the wetter weather return! For those of you that attended our Hedgelaying Demonstration kindly hosted by Rob Graham, thank you for braving the rain! It was very wet, but still such a great morning and really interesting to see Rob’s work and hear more of the benefits of hedgelaying. Rob has said he would be happy to host another demonstration in the new year if people were interested in attending – hopefully in better weather!
We also had a great event in Pluckley which included updates from Robin Kelly at Southern Water, Trayton Pont from Natural England and Ian Robertson from Sustainable Soils Management before heading into the field to look at the over-winter cover crop trials, kindly hosted by Andy Gwillim.
Robin gave some really great details into why Southern Water were looking at over winter cover crops and how these could reduce pesticides getting into the waterways. Ian Robertson then went into why soils are so important and how it is down to the farmers to get the best from their soils and discussed ways this could be done. We then headed into the field to see how the trials were doing and look at the soil pits. To round the afternoon off we heard an update from Trayton Pont, one of Natural England Catchment Sensitive Farming Advisors giving details of what schemes are currently available.
