After more than a week of settling down, we hadn’t got a drop of silage effluent.

The channels we put in, at some expense, to convey the effluent to the dirty water tank are completely dry, and as we agitate the slurry to go out onto the freshly-harvested ground, we have very little water left in the tank.

This is always a conundrum in a dry year, and we will have little option but to take some water in the tanker from a wet area at the bottom of the place.

The drizzle over the last few days has greened the place up, but I imagine much more rain is needed before we can go out with nitrogen for the second-cut.

Meanwhile, out in the crops, we are coming into inspection season. The Department has been around looking at the seed wheat. While there are some wild oats and brome in the headlands, the crop itself is as clean as I’ve ever had.

The channels we put in, at some expense, to convey the effluent to the dirty water tank are completely dry

We will get the final head spray on as soon as possible and then it’s a case of getting the field tidied up for the final inspection. We have also had an intensive look at the gluten-free oats crop.

Again, there are odd bits of contamination, which will have to be cleared up over the next few weeks, and then hopefully the crop will get a clean bill of health.

We have already submitted the oaten straw for the straw chopping and incorporation scheme – the rest of the acres will be made up with oilseed rape.

The final crop needing pre-harvest attention is the late-sown beans.

I was in Wexford a fortnight ago and saw beans sown I reckon in late February/early March, and they were a completely different crop compared with my late-April sown one.

Ours are making progress, but they will need a close eye kept on them to avoid an attack of chocolate spot, which can wipe out a crop. Also, our bean harvest will come much later than the Wexford crop I admired.