September 2023 at Stourton

September Artisan Market – WOW!

What fabulous day we had on Sunday 17^th September for the Autumn Artisan Market! The atmosphere on the day was just lovely and the weather was very kind to us. Thank you to everyone who came along to support the event, the turnout was incredible. We are also delighted that all of the winners in our car Park Prize Draw have come forward to claim their prizes. We hope you enjoy them!

A great big thank you goes to our joint organiser Jodie at Lincolnshire Makers. The stalls at the event were of such high quality with such a large range of products on offer.

We hope that we can host these events next year and that we can count on your continued support.

Enchanted Lights – Tickets are selling FAST!

We have had a great response to the launch of our Enchanted Lights event for 2023.

Running over 4 nights this year from 2^nd – 5^th November come along and enjoy an enchanting walk through our arboretum, lit with soft lights and atmospheric sounds. You can take in our LED & fire dancing performances. You can also make a wish whilst donating to a great charity in St Barnabas Hospice with our wishing fountain. Also, brand new for this year is fairground carousel as well as a story telling tent – perfect for your little ones and big kids alike!

We haven’t forgotten about your tummies! As well as buying marshmallows to toast on our specially designed fire pits you can buy a hot or cold drink from one of our two bars operated by Ferry Ales Brewery and enjoy food and refreshments from a wide variety of street food style vendors each night.

Tickets are still available – however Saturday 5-7pm night has already sold out so if you want to come along please don’t hesitate to book or you may miss out.

To book your tickets of for more info about the event please click here.

We’ll be at the Lincolnshire Day School’s Event at the Showground

We are delighted to be able to support the Lincolnshire day’s school event at the showground on Thursday 5^th October. This event provides a farm-to-fork education to KS2 pupils from around the county.

The day aims to provide a comprehensive insight into all things Lincolnshire, with hands-on activities for all students to enjoy including food, farming, sport, heritage and culture. Students take part in a carefully timetabled day, working in small groups across a selection of unique hands-on learning workshops led by businesses such as ourselves. We look forward to meeting some of your children there ?

Logs – Please order soon!

As the weather takes a turn for the, if not chilly, certainly unpredictable, it’s time to think about getting your log order placed.

We have a very limited supply of logs this year, so please order soon to avoid disappointment.

Each bag of logs sold by us are made up of the highest quality kiln dried hardwood, all seasoned, graded to remove dust and kiln dried on our farm in Lincolnshire. Each kiln dried bag of logs are made up of hardwood varieties including ash, oak, and sycamore.

The firewood logs are sold in builders bags sized at approx 0.7 cubic metres.  Our logs are cut to around 10 inches/25 cm.

For more information or to place your order please click here.

We’re Lincolnshire Food and Farming Award Finalists!

We are absolutely delighted that we’ve been selected as finalists in the Lincolnshire Food and Farming Awards in the Farming Innovation category.

The work diversifying what we do on the farm here at Baumber has been a labour of love (& is an ongoing challenge!) which has only been possible with support from the fantastic team that work with us.

Just to be recognised alongside other amazing businesses in these awards is a huge privilege.  Please keep your fingers crossed for us on 17^th November when the award winners are announced.

On the Farm

Since our last blog post we have been busy in between showers with land work to make ready for next year’s crops. The only harvesting we have remaining is our plot of sunflowers and the sugar beet which we have made a start on.

Firstly sugar beet, we’ve lifted just over 30 acres which is around 20% of our area. The sugar content of the sugar beet is relatively poor at the moment, sitting around 15%.  Whilst this is not unusual for this time of year, it unfortunately means we receive a lower price from the factory.  However, it does mean we can quickly drill another crop – so we have only lifted what we have with the aim of establishing a decent crop of winter barley behind it.

I mentioned we have been busy working land. All ‘primary’ cultivations have now been completed for all winter crops and for some spring crops too. We are now picking through which fields need a little more work before we drill. The aim is to start drilling winter barley imminently before moving on to winter wheat. We have an approximate 4 week ‘window’ which is optimal for establishing our winter cereals. The higher the black grass risk/burden in any particular field the later we leave sowing if the weather allows.

We have also been late sowing some oilseed rape. Due to the wet weather at the beginning of harvest we were unable to sow oilseed rape into an ‘early’ window. For the past few years we have had significant establishment challenges in the second 2 weeks of august. Firstly because of dry weather, but mostly because of cabbage stem flea beetle. Their main ‘migration’ (where they grow wings and move into a new host crop) tends to happen in the 3rd/4th week in august. If you have emerging oilseed rape cotyledons at this time the flea beetle can move in and destroy the crop. The only tool we have in our armoury at that point is broad scale applied pyrethroid insecticides to which the majority of the beetle population have developed resistance. As a result of this we decided to sow our oilseed rape in the middle of September if we had some moisture.   Therefore, we have our planned area sown and are hopeful it will establish well, the flea beetle pressure is lower but there is still some grazing present. Given our rape plants are so small going into autumn we really hope there won’t be too many early frosts. Time will tell whether later drilling was a wise or foolish move but we had to do something different to try and make this increasingly risky crop work for us.

All being well by the next blog we will have finished or almost finished winter wheat drilling, wish us luck with the great British weather!!

Deer Diary

The herds have been treated and separated and are almost all in the right place ahead of the Rut which is about to start. If you are local or passing on foot, you may hear quite a lot of noise in the next few weeks as the boys: Winston, Nelson & Harry – ahem, do what they do best!

We hosted an event with deer farmers from around the UK last week.  It’s always a nerve wracking experience showing your stock off to a delegation of deer farming professionals but they seemed to have enjoyed the tour and were all very complimentary – phew!