Thinking of just arable farmers. What do you do with the days when you’re just waiting for the crops to grow?
I figure if you have so much land that you have something to do every day, then you’d have way too much to do during harvesting or planting season. But if you have a smaller amount so that the peaks are manageable, then you must have loads of down time. Am I wrong?
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Well maintaining machinery and the buildings , make sure ditches and drains dont cause issues , loading lorrys with the store harvested crops , courses , general tidying and rodent control .
My partner was a farmer
Neighbouring farms have generally been consolidated to a single farm of a size that provides enough work for the farmer all year round. There’s a lot of maintenance to do year round, and a lot more paperwork than there used to be. Plus growing crops do need attention from time to time, and not all crops are harvested at the same time of year.
Not a farmer, but there’s more to it than just waiting for the plants to grow, they need to be monitored for pests and disease so need regularly checked, there’s also irrigation systems than need to be up kept maintenance of various equipment and such. you’ll also have multiple crop types that will grow at different rates as the fields need to be rotated amongst different plants to keep them healthy and fertile, there’s also the business side of things too where you need to balance out your expenses and budgets and deal with contracts for various things and ultimately who your selling your crops to and buying next years seed ect
One of my Dad’s acquaintances is (or at least was) a farmer – so much pressure these days to produce at least something year round, so he had a lot of crop year round under glass in giant greenhouse type buildings… And had converted part of his land for something-or-other (can’t remember if wedding venue or BMX course or what… something for people to hire anyway). So yeah, “traditional” farming for part of the year, but always something to do
Maintenance on equipment, land, fences, walls, buildings, plus lots of paperwork.
Not all farms grow crops, as they are livestock farms. Eg, Dairy farms need to milk their cows twice a day, every day.
During winter the animals maybe kept indoors, so they need to be fed and have their sheds mucked out.
End of winter is lambing season, so a very busy time of year for sheep farmers.
You will struggle to find a (good) farmer who has nothing to do.
My brother in law is an arable farmer and I live on his farm.
This is what I see.
Harvest Season – Busy harvesting everything
Post Harvest – Cultivating land, fertlising and planting things which start growing before winter
Winter – Maintenance, tractors, combine harvester, seed drills, etc. He also cleans grains and prepares them with fungicide ready for planting and or sale. There’ll also be projects like upgrading the workshop, buying old equipment to restore and sell.
Late Winter (i.e. now) – Start of fertlising once the allowable date is passed, plus planting of some things.
Spring – Checking crop health, fertlising, herbiciding etc.
Summer – hay baling
In amongst that there’s a lot of maintenance.
It is worth noting that he has a second job as a farm machinery salesman
Barn dances, burning virgins, drugging and buggering stupid townies. Oh its all fun and games out in here country
I guy I knows dad is a farmer. Kind of. Farming isn’t really what you think nowadays. You might have one person owns the land, another organises investment in the crops, while the machinery is leased or even just run by operators moving south to North with the harvests. So the guy I know leases land according to predicted prices, invests in seed along with other investors, contracts out for planting, takes a while off and plans for harvest season, then contracts harvesters and leases barn spaces, deals with buyers etc. Much like many industries its much more compartmentalised than we imagine it to be.
Making sure the crop grows
They sit and watch the plants grow.