While it is always a dangerous thing to wish for rain in Ireland, there is no doubt we could do with some. While the fertiliser granules on the crops and closed-up grass for silage are smaller than they were, they are still there. The weekend drizzles did little to wash them down but, that said, one of the best harvests in my memory was in 1984 when it didn’t rain from St Patrick’s Day until just after the wheat harvest, so perhaps a prolonged dry spell is no great harm if temperatures are not too high.

I must admit my faith in human nature was restored somewhat following my comment that I seemed to have oats contamination in winter barley. The seed supplier came out and dug up a few of the offending plants and found decaying seeds with traces of the seed dressing still there. They put their hands up and said it was their fault and asked what I wanted done about it. Thinking about it, not a lot is probably the answer. I was relieved that it was not a wild oats infestation, which would be much more difficult to cure. I was also relieved that buying certified seed actually means something insofar as the supplier stands behind it. On top of that, as it was not a crop of winter barley for the seed market, any prospective yield penalty is very small.

Despite the dry weather, the crops seem to be making reasonable progress but there seems to be very little doubt that the second wheat after maize is suffering much more from take-all than I would normally expect. I have learned never to grow a second wheat after oilseed rape because of the take-all risk. I am convinced that the dry autumn and recent harsh dry spell have put extra stress on the crop, but we have no option but to wait and see how the crop yields.

While the oilseed rape is past the peak of flowering, the beans have a long way to go, but the transition from the bees’ point of view should be painless. We now have about 22 hives straddling the two crops and we will take care to spray with the most bee-friendly insecticide we can find and apply it as late as possible in the evenings.

The bulls not for finishing within the next 140 days or so are all out at grass. We are giving them fresh paddocks every day. Is it worth the effort? I am never quite sure. As I mentioned, we have excess grass so we have taken more out for silage and are not grazing quite as tightly as before. We are aiming for maximum cattle performance rather than maximum grass utilisation and, if necessary, we will top after a grazing to keep up the quality of the regrowths but all this adds to costs so it is a constant balancing exercise.