BASE VISIT TO JOHN COOPER FARMS

Posted April, 16th, 2019

David White writes:

On the afternoon of Friday 12th April, a small group of members met at the farm of John and William Cooper near Loth, Lincolnshire.

Another dry cold day for a farm walk but that didn’t curtail the interesting time we spent in the field adjacent to the neat farmyard observing differences in spring barley establishment across a varied series of cover crop mixes.

The crop had been established with the home made “Cooper” Cross Slot drill which had clearly been developed into a very versatile machine with no less than five sources of seed, fertiliser granular herbicide or slug pellets that could be applied in any combination of ways, all precisely monitored.

We also saw the early stages of modification of a Simba Free-Flow, one of two in different widths available on the farm, which will I am sure be ready to quickly establish cover crops right up behind the combine this harvest. The standard of ingenuity and engineering excellence produced from the “unassuming” farm workshop impressed us all.

I would like to thank John and William for their generous time and hospitality, a perfect example of farmer to farmer knowledge exchange. We all got a lot from the visit.

If any BASE-UK member would like to hold a farm walk, please contact Rebecca to arrange rebecca@base-uk.co.uk