It’s a bright sunny day, if a bit chilly early on, a good time to visit Dell Quay and Copperas without having to walk all the way there and back thanks to the relaxation of the corvid 19 restrictions.

What’s immediately evident is that the farmland has changed enormously, someone certainly has been busy! Several of the fields to the east of Salterns Way have been tilled and re-seeded with a spring crop which has germinated and is just starting to come through. Clearly the farmer has given up on the winter crop that was just about destroyed by the storms and volume of rain. This must have cost quite a bit, let’s hope he gets a good return on this crop.

To the west of the Salterns Way potatoes have just been planted, probably part of a regular rotation as there were some there a couple of years ago. I thought the fields were fallow but that was only until a
few days ago. They’re planted by the most amazing machine that lifts the earth up, breaks it up, then puts the earth back on top in regular mounds with the potatoes buried in them. All accurately controlled by GPS, it steers itself; very impressive! Not surprisingly this expensive kit is brought in by a specialised contractor.

Regrettably a relatively small but important corner of the field that’s usually set aside with lots of wild flowers on it has been ploughed up. It’s not a valuable part of the field as it has so much standing water, I cant help wondering if it was done unintentionally by the contractor.

Driving about it’s evident that one or two farmers are getting ready to fire up the watering systems, on one Selsey farm they’ve got started. Not surprising as it’s been so dry for quite a while now.