This is a subscriber-only article
With little evaporation and almost no transpiration from growing plants, the only way for water levels to drop is by percolation through the soil – either by artificial drainage or natural seepage through the soil.
Seepage this year with saturated soil from two months almost continuous rain is much slower than I have ever seen it. It’s noticeable that where conditions were good at sowing, there are few pools in fields but where conditions were less than good, it seems that some compaction has taken place which is impeding normal, natural drainage.
Over the dry weekend, we began ploughing for our long-postponed gluten-free oats crop.
I had always regarded this 40ac field as the best field on the place – uniform and flat with just a trace of gentle slopes.
It has, as far as I know, no drains but having got at least twice the average rainfall over the last 10 weeks, pockets of it for the first time ever proved unploughable.
We sowed what we could in reasonable conditions ahead of Tuesday’s rain but I reckon there were no more than 30 acres sown. Should we have left it completely? Many of my neighbours in the immediate area and north into Co Meath have no winter cereals sown.
One of them simply said to me that this was one of those years and he was not going to damage his land by mucking in winter grain. But a much more personal question is, should I run gravel-filled mole drains from these wet spots or is this year a once-in-a-lifetime experience?
We are having no such problems with the dairy-beef steers. Their average age is about 18 months and their hardiness compared to just weaned, high-quality bull weanlings is very visible.
Some of the new ones are out tidying up odd areas of grass with gusto before housing and wait patiently for the electric fence to be moved on, whereas weanlings would be restless and disturbed. Those housed inside have been wormed and vaccinated and have settled in.
SHARING OPTIONS: