Dan and his family own and run the 300-hectare (741-acre) Cockhaise Farm, near Haywards Heath, West Sussex. The farm is home to an organic autumn-calving herd of 240 Holstein and Friesian crosses. He also contract farms another organic autumn-calving herd of 220 cows at Bore Place near Edenbridge, Kent.
After last summer it was looking as though we would struggle to hit average annual rainfall (about 800mm) here in Sussex. However, the weather gods showed us how to turn things around pretty quickly, with more than 500mm of rain from November to January, leaving us looking at a year of feast to famine and back to feast again.
Our long-term aim is to create soils which are able to hold on to all this rain when it comes to enable us to see through those leaner times in much better health.
We are definitely not there yet, possibly never will be, but it is important to keep aiming high and enjoying the journey we are on at the same time.
After a tense wait to see if they would arrive in time for mating, our CowManager heat detection system has proved to be an instant hit these last 10 weeks.
Gone are the days when I would prowl around the yard day and night in the hope I would spot that cow bulling that nobody else had, never being able to relax, wondering if we were doing all we could to get the best submission rates.
After a week of using the new system and manual observation side by side, we quickly realised the system was winning hands down and we dropped the ritual of standing in the yards for three hours a day during peak mating.
Our submission rate improved from 90% to 95% in the first three weeks from previous years, something I had struggled to attain with manual observation alone.
As we will not scan until April, it is too early to see what effect it may have on conception, but it certainly feels like a successful season.
As I write this at the beginning of February, the first big milk price drop from Arla has just been announced, perhaps the first of many as the market continues its bearish overtones.
The only consolation for us is that it has coincided with being able to turn the cows out back onto grass on both farms and we can drop bought-in feed rates over the coming months.
In the next month I will start to put together budgets for the next financial year, the time when I try my best to gaze into a crystal ball for both feed and milk price.
My best bet is a return to the prices of two years ago, which would mean dropping at least 10ppl.
The issue, as always, is our feed costs, which certainly will not be back to those levels and are the cause of most of my worries going forward.
Each year we nibble away at the edges of winter, keeping cows out for a few more days, cutting cake a bit earlier, but it sometimes feels like I am the boy with his finger in the dam, wondering how this can work moving further into the future?
We have run a profitable and robust system organically for more than 20 years and I intend to make sure this continues for another 20.
Often the answers lie in bringing the combined knowledge of a group of likeminded farmers together, something a few of us have done here in Sussex recently.
Having the confidence to speak freely and openly about our issues has helped to stop the eternal worries whirling through my mind, and instead find modes of action which help move us forward.
