I spent a sociable day at the FTMTA machinery show in Punchestown. It’s always a good show and it’s a great venue with ease of parking and reasonably-priced catering facilities. While there was a huge range of machinery on show, I have to confess that I was largely a tyre kicker for the day. Between falling grain prices and rising costs, I’d need an epidural to induce me into parting with money at the moment.

However, I spent a while on the Claydon strip-till stand, as I have done before and it’s nearly time that I put up or shut up on this matter. But successful strip tillage requires not only the drill itself but a straw harrow, all of which represents a substantial investment. A number of Irish farmers have taken the courageous plunge into cost-reducing strip tillage; Claydon has sold over 50 machines and there may be half as many more machines of other makes, namely Mzuri, Sumo and Vaderstad.

Whatever about the trend towards strip-till, there’s a definite swing back to combine drilling. Placing the fertilizer beside the seed has a certain yield advantage for spring barley; especially so if soil levels of P and K are low. But, as a technique, it’s not for me. Nothing would persuade me to rust up a shiny new drill with corrosive fertilizer – I confine its ill- effects to the fertilizer spreader and leave it at that.

Nonetheless, the argument for effective use of fertilizer, given the cost of the wretched stuff at the moment, is very strong. It’s prohibitively priced now after rising €30/t since Christmas. It makes no sense since oil prices are falling by the hour, as are grain prices. Internationally, there’s a complete lack of competition in the fertilizer market and shame on Brussels’ regulatory authorities for allowing this to happen. If only they’d focus on important matters like this rather than torturing us with EFAs and 2m strips.

Meanwhile, we’ve little choice but to use the stuff – we took a P and K holiday a few years ago but, with hindsight, it wasn’t a great idea. But good pig slurry might allow some saving.

Strictly speaking, it’s not within the remit of this column to talk about shopping, food or cooking. Nor do I know a whole lot about any of them. I’m not charged with the chore of the weekly shopping, and nor do my responsibilities extend to a shift in front of the old Aga. I’m seldom in a supermarket or any sort of a shop. But for all of that, I do have an interest in the marketing of food.

With this in mind, I suggested to the senior household management that we should visit Country Crest’s new farm shop just off the M1 motorway. The north Dublin farmers are a progressive lot and the Hoey brothers, with their Country Crest brand, are up there with the best of them.

The attractive farm shop stocks a range of their own vegetable produce and that of other local producers. You can choose from four or five potato varieties. There’s a butchery as well, supplied from their own beef unit.

I picked a couple of thick rib-eye steaks, which were aged for a mouth-watering 28 days. I nearly started to drool at the counter. The next evening, I donned the apron and cooked them myself, mine medium rare – about three minutes on the electric ring. On a roll, I sautéed mushrooms, caramelised Co Dublin onions and chipped Maris Piper potatoes and it was a cracking meal. You know, I could get used to this…