No sign of rain on the horizon and as always, there is always one person to give out about the good weather. That’s me.

The unseasonably high temperatures are driving huge evapotranspiration in the carrots which will wrinkle if they are thirsty. The parsnips on the other hand will just stop growing which is no harm with their current crop stage. We will pump 15mm over the top of the carrots from around Tuesday on.

The parsnips haven’t escaped entirely though, as the dry weather causes them to brown off in the soil. To combat this, rather than set up the irrigator which is cumbersome, we have been using a large bowser tank (the night before we lift) to pump water over the beds we intend on harvesting the next day. To put it politely, it’s somewhat of an inconvenience.

An exciting development on the machinery front; we bought an old International 584 three years ago to pull a car trailer while cropping flowers. After an engine rebuild, and accepting that we would never extract the value back out of her, she was sold up the country at a modest profit thanks mainly to my father’s haggling skills.

Unfortunately with August and September being our lowest months as regards income and cash flow, this has consigned what was to be a part payment on a replacement utility tractor to be consumed as cash flow.

This time of year is a killer. The volume of cash going out on day to day running of the flower bulbs, carrots, parsnips and grass is upsetting.

The hunt for a new primary tractor is starting to heat up with three realistic contenders, time will tell, but the flirting is coming to an end, time for us all to have “the relationship chat” and see if our life goals are aligned, or more in real speak, the price is right.

My over the fence involvement with the cereals sector in Ireland is ongoing. We really need to get back growing cereals but I absolutely refuse to make a loss doing so. The price of land is abnormally high with SFP capitalised into land prices. Perhaps Big Phil, a Kilkenny man also, might address the need to remove the link between SFP and land prices. At the very least in Kilkenny for old times sake.

Beef, sheep and tillage are really struggling and dairy is facing a cooling market. The land leasing industry is the only one that isn’t suffering this last while, all thanks to what many describe as the cheque in the post. This cheque comes with a big cost, especially in the tillage game.