Our crops include spring barley, winter wheat and oilseed rape.
These are harvested and are mainly sold off the farm for processing. Although wheat is commonly associated with milling to make flour, we mainly grow it for feed wheat that goes to animals, some of which stays on the farm to help feed our own.
We have grown potatoes in the past and more recently have grown barley to compliement our own animal feed. Oilseed rape is sold and processed for its oil.
Maize and Red Clover are grown for livestock and act as good break crops for the cereal crops. Red Clover is a particularly good break crop as the roots of the plant fix nitrogen to the soil which means the crops that follow are usually plentiful.
Our crops are usually sown in the autumn or early winter. They are looked after during the spring when we have to control weeds and certain pests. All being well they will grow strong and tall in the late spring and ripen in the summer ready for harvest.
At harvest the combine will extract the seeds or corn and leave the straw behind. We bale the straw and use it for bedding for our livestock. The stubble is then covered with farmyard muck and straw from the year before and cultivated into the ground. A seed bed is prepared in the autumn and seed drilled. The cropping cycle then begins again.
Churchfields Maize Maze
Maize is very good for our cows and is sown in May and harvested in October. During the last few years we have cut some paths through it to create our Maize Maze – available from mid-July until September. Shapes and designs have included an ice cream, a cows head, salt crystals and a spaceship with crashed aliens. We plan an exciting new Maize Maze design every year!
