Our Farming Year

Spring (March/April/May)

Spring marks the start of the ground maintenance season, with soil testing being a simple but effective way to assess your land’s needs. This is best done early in the season to ensure any necessary treatment or maintenance has the greatest impact.

Following wet winters, paddocks often require maintenance due to poaching, particularly grass paddocks. We offer harrowing, reseeding, and rolling services to help restore the land. Fertiliser application may also be necessary, with various options available for different needs. For horse paddocks, for instance, fertilisers for laminitic ponies or high-nitrogen fertilisers for better grass yield can be applied—just let us know your specific requirements.

To maximise the productivity of your paddocks and fields, it’s important to control weeds that thrive in poor ground conditions. Different weeds grow at varying rates, requiring different treatment timings. Creeping buttercup, for example, should be sprayed at the start of spring, while ragwort requires treatment later, towards the middle or end of the season.

Summer

Hay making is our speciality, and we are proud to have won the Hertfordshire Agricultural Society Hay Cup several times since 2011 and most recently for the past two years, both 2023 and 24.

June and July are the prime months for haymaking. The old saying "make hay while the sun shines" remains true—successful haymaking relies not just on a good grass crop but also on 4-5 days of dry, sunny weather. Rushing the process can result in damp hay, which leads to spores that cause coughing in horses, or, worse, hay that becomes hot and self-ignites.

As expert haymakers, we take pride in producing top-quality hay. We only proceed when conditions are optimal. We offer baling (both conventional and large square bales) for your own use, or we can cut and clear the paddock based on your preference. We may also be able to store and deliver your hay back to you.

Throughout the summer, we continue to monitor crops, ensuring effective weed control, fertiliser application, and pest management. This is also an ideal time to clear muck heaps that are not situated on a concrete base.

Autumn

Autumn is the perfect time to prepare for winter and the coming spring. Overgrazed paddocks from the summer can benefit from harrowing, reseeding, and rolling. Paddocks prone to becoming waterlogged can also benefit from aeration or mole draining to improve drainage.

This is also the time to top and clear areas that have been left as wildlife meadows. If these areas won’t be grazed down hard during winter, it’s best to cut and clear them to prevent nutrients from returning to the soil. This is done using a mower and hay baler, with the bales being composted at our farm.

If you have your own clamp or well-rotted muck heap, we can spread the muck back on your fields using our muck spreader.

Hedge cutting begins in September and runs through to the end of February. For field hedges, it’s best to cut early in the season while the ground is still firm. Hedges along roadsides and tracks can be cut later in the winter, during the wetter months.

We also take this time to replenish our woodpiles - cutting, splitting and stacking replensihing teh stock we used last winter and ensuring we have several years supply in hand.