By Georgie Cossins

With the leaves turning, and the days shortening, summer 2016 is officially over.

The combine harvesters have finally finished their harvesting season, and in our haste to prepare for this autumn's sowing season, these threshing machines have been left in their sheds looking dusty and neglected.

On the next rainy day we shall take them out once more this year to give them the full valet service and return them to their shiny glory.

But for now it’s a quick turnaround with tractors hitching on their ploughs and cultivators in order to get the ground ready for sowing this autumn’s crop.

With our oilseed rape already planted and growing, we are now putting our efforts into sowing winter barley and afterwards the winter wheat.

We hope to have all the seed in the ground by November, no pressure!

Elsewhere on the farm, the first group of dairy heifers I reared two years ago are nearly ready to give birth.

Last winter they were served with sexed semen, and later put with our Aberdeen Angus bull to ensure that they will all calve this autumn and winter.

Their udders are beginning to take form and their bellies are filling out, so we are keeping a close eye on them.

Although the cows are still out to grass we are now buffer feeding them with the grass silage we made in May. By this time of year, the fresh grass has very little nutrient value and in order to maintain our milk quality as well as quantity we need to ensure that they are fed top quality forage.

And finally, when the evenings draw in, Dad and I have been working on our application for the Mid Tier Countryside Stewardship Scheme, as our previous environment scheme has come to an end.

As well as farming for food production, bio-diversity and the environment is something we care about deeply. Next year we are considering growing temporary herbaceous crops during the autumn and winter months to help protect our natural water courses from nitrate leaching during the wet seasons.

The theory is that these cover crops will absorb any left over nutrients in the soil, leaving less nitrates available for the rain water to transport into our streams.

We are also planning to grow “nectar-pollen” and “bumblebird” mixes to enhance the butterfly and pollinator populations, beetle banks for invertebrates, and reduce the amount we cut our hedges in order to provide better food and habitat resources for our birds and other wildlife species.