This week’s Focus is about planning for spring. Soil sampling, measuring silage stocks, the importance of lime and planning the workload all feature. The spring workload can be overwhelming.

The shortage of help on farms adds to the workload and the stress. You and your family’s health and wellbeing are most important, so don’t risk this. Some farmers do too much of the wrong things.

Prioritise what’s important during calving: for me, it’s about looking after animals and feeding them well. So that’s plenty of colostrum to newborn calves and plenty of grass to milking cows. Get these two things right and everything else falls into place.

Help is scarce. How can we encourage young people thinking of getting a trade to get into farming instead? I put it that many young people from rural areas entering apprenticeships are as interested in farming as they are carpentry or plumbing or block-laying, but they see these careers as being more attractive, despite the fact both involve manual labour, long hours and getting their hands dirty.

Farmers have developed a bad reputation as employers and this needs to change. Everyone has a part to play. The days of taking advantage of farm labourers are well and truly gone.

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