Latest News / Events

Last time we reported, we were hoping for dry conditions. This has not happened, as so far in September and October, we’ve had 240mm of rainfall which is 36% of our annual rain in 5 weeks. At this time of year, we would’ve hoped to have finished drilling wheat, but at present have only 35%
Read More ⤍

Harvest 11 continues but has been majorly interupted with the wet weather. In addition to this, our winter wheat drilling has also been interrupted, with one farm suffering significant flooding. Harvest 12 – our final harvest – will be sugar beet and this is likely to start in the next week. Hopefully when we next
Read More ⤍

Harvest 11 has started with the Maize harvest. This crop will be ensiled and then subsequently used in Heath Farm Energy’s anaerobic digester. We hosted an open day looking at conservation, with particular reference to farm land birds and native English Partridges. The demonstration shows how we as farmers can mitigate the impact of delivering
Read More ⤍

We completed Harvest 7 – the Spring Barley crop, with a final yield result 5% above our 5 year average, all of good malting quality. An excellent result fo rfurther Carling brewing! Harvest 8 – Our Winter Wheat crop, we hope to finish in the next two days. Again, a good year for our wheat,
Read More ⤍

We have completed our Oilseed Rape harvest, which was disappointing with yields 20% below our 5 year average – this is a result of significant Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle pest damage. There are no effective controls for this pest, which makes growing the crop very high risk and in this particular year, we have made
Read More ⤍

Our next harvest of Oilseed Rape has started this week (Harvest 6). The majority of the oilseed which is harvested will go for crushing at Earith in Cambridgeshire, this will make rapseed oil. Hot temperatures this week have brought crops on well and as a result, we hope to begin harvesting Spring Barley this week
Read More ⤍

The harvest season started for Blankney Estates in April, with grass harvesting. This will continue into October (Harvest 1). In the middle of May, we started our Lucerne harvest, again, this will continue into October (Harvest 2). Our pea crop, grown for canning and freezing, is supplied to ‘Greenyard’. On the 16th June the vining
Read More ⤍

Some great news at this years Lincolnshire Show for four of our Blankney staff – each of whom were awarded the 40 Years Long Service Award. With 160 years of Blankney experience between them, we congratulate and thank Graham Hopkinson, Peter Coggan, David Smith and Alan Hilditch for their past and continued service to Blankney
Read More ⤍

Early in June, crops were going into serious stress with soil moisture defecits reaching 80mm. On the 7 June, it started raining and by 14 June we had reached 135mm (bibilical rain!). Since then, crops have grown extremely well, other than some surface ponding damage; however, it is better to have the rain to secure
Read More ⤍

Crops continue to grow well but soil moisture defecits continue to increase, despite 57mm of rain this month. It has to keep raining if we’re going to expect a normal crop yield. We are irrigating our grass to keep the drying operation going weekly – this comes from storage reservoirs which have been filled from
Read More ⤍