
Surprisingly June has worked out to be warmer than average, no doubt helped by the last few days of sunshine. It just shows that, what we thought was cold and miserable, may well have been normal weather 30 or 40 years ago for June. It has been a lot drier than normal with just 18mm or ¾ins of rain.

The wet winter has affected our heavier land where we have been drilling spring crops, especially where it was ploughed when the soil was wet. They are suffering as their roots have not been able to reach out and extract all the elements from the soil, that go to make healthy thriving plants. Looking across fields of spring grown crops and seeing the barley awns and oat heads waving about in the wind, does make things look a lot better than they really are.
We needed sunshine in June as the sun provides the energy to fill our crops. Fortunately, you could say, the sun arrived about the middle of June in time for the winter wheat, but it was too late for the winter barley. Both these crops are sown in the autumn, the spring wheat and spring barley are sown as soon as the land is dry enough in the spring.
Crops sown in the autumn generally yield more than those sown in the spring, as they have more time to develop their root system and cope with our variable climate, but they do need that vital ingredient of sunshine in June.
The crops in May 2012 looked wonderful but June that year was wet, cold and cloudy, with over 4ins of rain. We had the worst crop of wheat in living memory, the grains of wheat didn’t fill. In April 2013, the crops looked terrible and we were sure there would be a terrible harvest. But the sun shone all June, with just over half of an inch of rain and we had a wonderful harvest.
One crop I rarely talk about are the beans we grow on the farm. They are a bean less than half the size of a broad bean and are quite edible when picked at the right time. They are not very profitable, but we need them as a break crop as we can’t keep growing wheat, which is our most profitable crop. The soil needs this break crop to improve organic matter and structure. The beans are usually drilled in the spring and being a legume, they actually put some nitrogen in the soil for the next crop.
We’ve been busy irrigating the potatoes during the second half of June, and they are looking very well as we go into July.
Over the last 30 years, I have collated information from the older generation in Deeping Fen, about what they did, how they worked and any tales they had to tell me. I have included all this information in a book I have been writing over the last few years, titled “Deeping Fen in Living Memory”. It seemed only natural to share the information with the village and further afield, so the book is now being printed and will be available in our Farm Shop from the end of July.


It would seem to be quite a good summer so far for our birds, but they have the difficulties of there being too many predators about and a declining population of insects. If the numbers of bees and butterflies are our insect barometer, there will have been a dramatic decline of insects. This year I haven’t seen any Common Blue butterflies; I haven’t seen a butterfly on our buddleja yet and there are no bees on our wild thyme.
Despite the lack of bees and butterflies, there have been quite a few uplifting tales to tell about the farm. As I reported previously, a Bittern was booming for at least a month in one of our reedbeds. I can’t find a nest but that is a good start, as the habitat is still developing, with the reedbed getting larger. I was considering trimming it back, but with the Bittern booming, I am quite happy to leave it alone.
A Cettis Warbler has taken up residency in another reed bed and that makes eight species of Warblers on the 700 acre farm this year at Baston fen. This year I counted the following singing Warblers: 3 x Garden Warblers, 5 x Blackcaps, 16 x Whitethroats, 2 x Lesser Whitethroats, 40 x Reed Warblers, 47 x Sedge Warblers, 1 x Chiffchaff and 1 x Cettis Warbler, and including other species that breed on the farm, that adds up to 55.
A pair of Swallows have taken up residency in a wooden bird hide halfway down Vine House Farm, over a mile from the nearest livestock or house, they have a nest with five eggs as I write this. Swallows need buildings to nest in and, during the 1970s, I would find over 20 Swallows nests in the pill boxes against the sea wall on Holbeach Marsh. These were all well away from humans and livestock, they were getting their food from the flies flying above our crops. But, as we used more sprays during the 1980s their numbers declined to none in 1995. So it is a great delight for me to have a pair move into one of our double hedges and ponds which were designed to produce more insects. We will have to make more wooden huts to put next to our double hedges.
Barn Owls are having a successful year; on average they are producing two young per box. We are down a bit on numbers of pairs, but that was to be expected as there were so few voles about last year when they only produced an average of half a young per occupied box.
I have heard or seen a Cuckoo every day in May and June here in Deeping Fen, while 40 years ago I seldom heard one in the Fen. As insects nationally are on the decline, the habitat that we have created seems to be attracting lots of wildlife, including six pairs of Marsh Harriers this year.
Thank you for all donations towards the Turtle Dove project, which has enabled us to purchase 20 trackers. These will be put on the Turtle doves we are going to release, so that we will know where they get to. Recently, our aviculturist caught two Turtle Doves that he had released in 2022, and seen a further five around the farm that were released at the same time, so some of them are getting back to where they were born, although in general they are not very site faithful.
Sunflower Farm Tour 3rd, 10th & 11th Aug
