Celeriac Harvest 2014 view from a Quadcopter

Sam Spridgen, here at Jack Buck Farms, has been flying his DJI Phantom Quadcopter whilst we were harvesting celeriac this autumn.  Again he has taken some great birds eye shots of the harvesting team on the move.

The 2014 celeriac harvest saw high yields in moderately challenging conditions. We started to harvest the celeriac in early November and with rain interruptions, it took all month to finish. The celeriac is now all safely in store for the season and being washed and packed to sell to the markets and supermarkets for the rest of the year.

Potato Lifting September 2014

We're now getting stuck into the potato harvest here on the farm. This is a busy time of year for us with the lifting of Celeriac and Potatoes happening in tandem with teams working around the clock. 

The early signs are for a great yield on all the varieties but with the dry conditions care is being taken not to bruise the potatoes at any stage of the process. This means taking things a bit slower and applying the usual care and attention that goes into all our work. Maintaining a high standard with our produce is critical. As well as the main supermarkets, we also supply into both Marks and Spencer and Waitrows who demand the highest quality of produce. We're confident that our hard work over the year will have paid off and this crop will go down well with both our customers and the end consumers.

A New Perspective on Bulb Planting September 2014

Taken in September 2014 (slightly belated in the posting), this video gives a great perspective on planting our daffodil bulbs. Typically this takes place during August once the land has been prepared following the pea and wheat harvests. These bulbs will be in the ground for up to three years with the flowers cropped each spring.

The video was taken by Sam Spridgen, one of the team here at Jack Buck Farms, on his new DJI Phantom Quadcopter. As well as providing us with some fantastic footage of the farm in action, it has also demonstrated the possibilities this type of technology could enable from crop inspection to bird scaring! Always keen to be at the forefront of agricultural technology we'll certainly be keeping an eye on this emerging technology.

Daffodil Cropping February 2014

We are cropping daffodils today; we have about 160 people cropping; mostly they are from Lithuania but around forty people are English as there is still a strong tradition of land work in and around Boston. For many of the croppers daffodils are the first job since Christmas so it needs to be a good one! It is piecework, the crop is good and the croppers will earn between £70 and £140 a day so they go home tired and happy as will our regular staff I hope. It is just about the only hard physical work on the farm these days.  The temperature will probably get to 15 degrees today with warm nights and the crop is racing along so we will be working over the weekend. This could be a worry that there will be too many flowers for the demand but so far so good.  Our customer has found another 140 million potential customers in Russia this year although I don’t suppose we will be delivering to Vladivostok. Scandinavia is a traditionally good market for us, their daffodils are weeks away yet.

Whilst the flower market is buzzing, the market for the bulbs is less so. Daffs in the garden seem to be less fashionable for some reason and I will return to that another time. We will be selling bulbs direct again this year so if anyone wants to register their interest, do so by email (robin@jackbuck.co.uk) and we will get back to you in August.

Daffodil bulbs contain a chemical called galanthamine that pharmaceutical companies have been extracting for use in treatment of Alzheimers disease and of course I am hoping that a little bit of that galanthamine is volatile and wafts about around a vase of daffies. Now wouldn’t that be a terrific U.S.P.  So far so good for me, although my wife might not agree.