Spring at Foulumgaard
The weather is capricious, but the work in the field needs to get done all the same. It is time to sow, place suction cups and clear up after the willow harvest.
It is the last week of April. The temperature is a miserly seven degrees and the rain seems to have decided to stay around for a while. Sometimes it turns to sleet in the fields. There is no feel of spring at all, but undeterred by the showers the people at Foulumgaard are carrying on with their field work. It is time for the experiments to be set up.
In a break between the showers, agricultural technician Arne Grud starts sowing oats for the organic cattle crop rotation. This is part of an experiment that has used the same crop rotation since the 1990s under the management of senior researcher Karen Søegaard. There are no experiments on the plot this year, but the crop rotation still needs to be maintained. In another field Søren Sommer is busy sowing cereals and grass for the VirkN project.
Arne Grud takes an accurate measurement and then inserts the measuring rod. He then drives the tractor to the measuring rod and calibrates the tractor’s autopilot:
Farm manager at Foulumgaard, Jens Bonderup Kjeldsen, describes how spring presents many different tasks:
- We have established experiments with cereals and forages. We also have experimental plots with inter-row weeding in cereals, catch crops and biomass. For the VirkN project, which is looking at intelligent measures for reducing nitrogen leaching, we need to update with new crops and new measurements.
While he is explaining this, agricultural technician Erling Nielsen comes into the office. Erling has just shown a group of agricultural diploma students around Foulumgaard. Meanwhile, technicians Holger Bak and Jane Schiøtt have been busy installing suction cups in a field of willow in the eco-platform. The suction cups are part of an agroforestry experiment with free-range broilers in willow and grass carried out by the Department of Animal Science. The suction cups will be used to measure how much nitrogen is leached from the areas where the chickens roam.
A team consisting of, among others, agricultural technician Per Nørgaard and assistant technician Helle Baadsgaard is also outside under the grey – but so far dry – sky. They are tidying up among the willows and picking up the last willow branches left behind from the harvest. This is purely manual labour, but the branches must not go to waste and will also be included in measurements of yield.
Since AGRO no longer has the sandy soil facilities at Jyndevad, we have rented 5.5 hectares of sandy soil in three fields near Foulumgaard as a substitute. This is a JB1 soil which is currently used in VirkN, Figaro (a project on drip irrigation in potatoes) and in experiments with slurry as a fertilizer primer for maize.
The semi-field facility is also being readied for experiments, including the growing of winter wheat at a high water table, and experiments with grass-clover, maize and biochar.
- The weather has been really obstructive. The spring has been cold. And now they are again promising rain. As of today (April 25th, ed.) we still need to spend 4-5 days sowing spring cereals and maize, but they are promising rain this afternoon and for the rest of the week, sighs Jens Bonderup Kjeldsen.
Fortunately, the weather brightened later in the week and the following week. The sun peeped through the clouds and the soil dried off, so much was sown by Ascension Day.
