How your farm could benefit from agricultural contracting this spring.
Spring is, arguably, one of the busiest times in a farmer’s calendar. Calving and lambing are well underway during the spring months, whilst slurry spreading, drilling, sowing, fertilising, crop-spraying, sheep dipping and many more tasks are added to the list of to-dos to help prepare the farm and arable land ahead of the hottest months.
Unsurprisingly, this is also the busiest time for the AWSM Farming agricultural contracting team, as we provide farmers and landowners across Britain with our specialist services to help keep them on track and their farms running at their smoothest.
But how exactly could your farm benefit from our agricultural contracting service during spring this year?
Get your house in order with soil sampling
The spring months are a fantastic time to hit the reset button, and make sure that everything is just as it should be on the farm – this includes the quality of your soil, which makes soil sampling an essential agricultural contracting service for this time of year.
Soil sampling is the process of taking a small amount of soil, and testing what nutrients are present, as well as the chemical, physical and biological properties of the soil. This means that you know whether or not you should be adding extra nutrients into the soil.
This is especially important when precision farming, as soil sampling allows you to build a map of soil type and topography across your fields. This gives you the opportunity to take a more informed approach to where you should be planting your crops, and also which type of crop, helping you to plan for more profitable harvests.
At AWSM Farming, we use GPS technology alongside accurate mapping of where soil samples will be extracted. We can then provide you with a detailed soil map that helps you to alter your cropping areas accurately.
Make light work of cultivation work and drilling with agricultural contracting
Cultivation work and drilling – preparing arable land for the hotter months – is often conducted through tilling the land. Tilling the land is a method that is most commonly used to prepare the land for planting large vegetable gardens and crops.
Often, cultivation work is a large and time-consuming task and can be difficult to handle during the spring months when the resources and team members on your farm are stretched especially thin.
By using an agricultural contracting service such as AWSM farming, we can help you to turnaround large cultivation and drilling projects fast. This allows you to focus your attention on other tasks at hand, with the peace of mind of knowing that your cultivation and drilling work is being carried out by a talented team of farming contractors that are qualified and experienced in this area.
We have a large range of cultivators, available either on their own for hire or alongside a farming professional. The cultivators that we currently have include: Vaderstad Topdown, Vaderstad Carrier, Vaderstad Rexius Twin Press, Terratech 3 Leg Auto-Reset Subsoiler, alongside an assortment of ploughs, and the Amazone Combination Drill and the Vaderstad Rapid RD400S.
Agricultural contracting is the perfect solution to all your spreading needs
It’s crucial for the development of crops and profitable yields that fertilising, digestate and slurry spreading are carried out in spring to increase the natural fertility of your land.
In light of this, entrusting this key step to a highly experienced and qualified agricultural contractor such as AWSM Farming gives you the peace of mind of knowing that your spreading will be carried out correctly, whilst also taking the pressure off your own resources which allows you to focus on the farming demands that particularly require your attention.
Here at AWSM Farming, we offer a range of agricultural contracting services to satisfy your spreading needs including slurry injecting, digestate spreading, manure spreading, fertiliser spreading and lime spreading to farms with compatible land.
Lime spreading can be incredibly beneficial to your soil, as it has the ability to increase the pH of acidic soils, increase the levels of calcium and magnesium and improve water penetration. It is important, however, to have your soil sampled as discussed above to check if your soil is suitable for lime spreading.
If you haven’t already, then you may also be thinking of switching to digestate this year due to its many benefits in improving the fertility of farmland and low cost to source and store, in which case read our blog ‘3 reasons why you should make the switch to digestate in 2020’.
In summary…
Spring can be an incredibly busy and stressful time of year where you, your team and your farm’s resources are stretched to the limit – but it doesn’t have to be.
By taking advantage of the many agricultural contracting services that AWSM Farming has to offer, you can increase the productivity of your farm during this busy season in preparation for the challenges of summer.
