Conditions have been excellent for spreading slurry, so we took the opportunity last week and spread about 2,000 to 2,500 gallons/acre on the ground we had zero-grazed. We have put out about 100 units of CAN and are now waiting for some soft, moist weather. I have been offered urea at excellent value but I think it’s too dry for it. People have strong opinions on when it makes sense to use urea and the normal advice is to use it for early grazing from a mid-January application. This makes absolute sense but after that, I tend to be influenced by the year. Last autumn, I bought CAN with 9% sulphur at well less than €200/t. I have run short and the extra I needed has cost €250/t. Whether there will be the same competition in the fertiliser market next autumn will be interesting to see. We have now closed up as much silage ground as we had intended to for the first cut but we will still have surplus grass, which I am going to zero-graze to the maximum extent possible.

But, on the crops, the beans – despite my worries about the timing of the pre-emergent spray – have emerged evenly across the field. There is some odd yellow blotching on the leaves of some plants but not enough to worry about as much as I can judge. The volunteer beans in the seed wheat have been well killed off while the oilseed rape is now showing clear signs of pod formation just down the stem from the main flower. The field from a distance is still a vibrant yellow. I had been concerned that the cool nights with some frost forecast would kill off the blossom and pod formation as happens so often with apples, but so far so good with the oilseed rape.