Brandon

I am spending the weekend with Ryan Boyd. Ryan and his dad grow crops and breed and trade cattle. When you are driving around the area it is easy to know which paddocks are theirs because they are the only one with fences around them. Ryan felt that they were pouring money into their cropping land and not getting the returns, especially with all the capital tied up in machinery. So they now background around 400 calves a year on lucerne based pastures. As the pastures are rotated back to crops, they are growing much healthy crops that require fewer inputs. The cattle also have access to the stubbles post harvest, this allows more pasture cover going into the winter and then quicker access back to the pastures in the spring. The system was a win-win for both enterprises. I was amazed firstly at the amount and maturity of the pastures the cattle were going into and secondly at the residuals he was leaving post grazing. You could be excused for thinking he was under stocked but it is all part of the holistic management approach and building soil fertility.

Once again a lot of weather damage here. This canola was falling over and will be windrowed, or swathed as they call it here in a week or so.

Portage La Prairie

I spent the day with Don and Kim Scissons on Thursday. Don together with his brother and son run one of the tidiest farms I have ever seen. One thing people say about Nuffield is that you get to visit and learn from all the top farmers around the world, no matter what their enterprise is. This was no exception. They farm around 1600ha of wheat, canola and beans. They are also partners in two large sow units, 5 finishing sheds and a feed mill. Don said the two things he wanted to do after returning from his Nuffield travels was to integrate livestock into the business and buy more land. Fingers crossed, looks like I could be on the right track!!!

The Scissons are in the fortunate position of changing over ALL their machinery EVERY year. When I first drove in I thought I was in a John Deere dealership. They are just starting harvest and juggling rain/storms nearly every day. We have all heard about how wet it has been over here and flying over the prairies there is a lot of evidence of water logging in crops and they say that there is a huge area in Saskatchewan that didn't get sown at all. Good for our grain prices at home though. Still getting my head around converting bushels/acre to tonnes/ha.

They were harvesting canola the day I visited. Canola yields are generally pretty close to wheat.

Plenty of on farm storage. Don grows a lot of crops for seed, so needs lots of smaller silos for different varieties.

Two more were delivered the day I left.

Captain Compass

I flew into Winnipeg on Thursday, this time with my luggage, all fired up and keen to get going to my first visit. Little did I realise that if you buy a Tom Tom that says it has maps for UK, Europe (which it did), America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand you have to down load them first. Traps for young players hey. Anyway found myself an internet connection and soon realised that I didn't have a spare 13 hours to wait for a Nth America map to sort it self out. So back to the good old days of a map. The thing is, you don't even really need that. All you need to know is that there is the Trans Canada highway that goes from one side of Canada to the other, then everything else goes either North-South or East-West. So far - so good anyway.

Whistler

Spent Wednesday in Whistler along with 50 000 other people but it was still amazing to see. Not many integrated livestock and cropping systems here, but they did integrate livestock and recreation pursuits (bears and people). Although unfortunately I never got the chance to have a picnic with Yogi or any of his mates I had a great day out. The place just oozes money, like someone said to me "you are in (British Columbia), - Bring Cash".

Not again.....

Yes folks, the airport gods have done it to me again. I must admit I was not confident when I checked in this morning in Dublin that my bags would also be making the same journey as me. You now when you get that feeling. Anyway my thoughts were right. When I arrived in Vancouver, I was greeted over the PA system "Could Mister Roowann Paulette please make your way to the British Airways desk". They have assured me that they will be here by the morning but I am not getting my hopes up. Last time I lived out of my backpack for 8 days. So if there is no blogs posted in the near future it will be because my computer is flat with my charger leisurely making its own way around the world. Thats number three for me on my Nuffield journeys. All character building stuff they say.

Thankyou

I am off to Canada tomorrow for the third part of my Nuffield travels. A few days in Vancouver and then going to Winnipeg which I am looking forward to. Thanks to all those who have hosted me in the UK and Ireland over the last few weeks especially Jo and Luke, James and Fiona, Kev and Una and Bill and Audrey. Your hospitality has been greatly appreciated and hopefully one day I can repay the favour back in oz.

Northern Ireland

We headed up to Northern Ireland later in the week and visited Hillsborough and Greenmount research farms. At Hillsborough they have just installed a 600 tonne biodigester that runs off dairy effluent.We were also fortunate enough to stay with some previous Nuffield scholars and see their businesses. This is 'ladder farming' on the hill slopes.

This is a pellet mill that uses by-poducts such as straw, turns them into a pellet and uses the pellets for heating. An automatic dispenser ticks over all day feeds the fire. Not a bad system I thought.