At 11.10am last Wednesday morning, I was among the crowd outside one of the entrances to the National Ploughing Championships, when we were told to go back to the car park for another hour.

There was an under current of anger and frustration outside the gates from people who had been told the site would open to the public at 11am. Some had driven over four hours to get there and had had enough of the car seat for a while.

I met a few parents with their children who were at this stage anxious for a bite to eat and had banked on getting grub once they got in. I was glad I wasn’t in their shoes.

At 11.40am I met an NPA volunteer who told me it would be opening in the next half hour. I had hardly walked the length of two cars when a member of the gardaí told me it was cancelled for the day.

We had been duped. The wild goose chase was over for the public and beginning for exhibitors as they sought information on what was happening so they could organise the rest of their week.

What followed for the next few hours, was a level of uncertainty that resembled a condensed Brexit.

It’s all done and dusted now and hopefully lessons will be learned. Last-minute cancellations due to weather aren’t new. While an inconvenience, they could be worse. With weather warnings and near-instant communication, such as radio and social media, why was the call left so late?

Countless times over the airwaves on the three-and-a-half-hour drive up, I heard that gates were opening at 11am. It would have been a useful medium to get word out that it was off for the day too. Perhaps like health and safety at farm level, we need to take orange weather warnings a bit more seriously in future.

Home farm

The dry ground in the car parks at Screggan contrasted with home, where weeks of rain have softened things up.

To ease pressure on the grazing platform, the cull group was housed at the weekend. The calves have since been left back out but with ground conditions a bit soft I held the cows. Silage ground should be available for grazing in 10 days or so and that, along with a dry week forecast, will give a bit of comfort again.

The weaning process began last week with the cull group and it was my second year using the quiet wean system. This involves putting an anti-sucking device in the calf’s nose. The calf then stays with the cow for a number of days and gradually they can be separated. It reduces the dual stress of separation and diet change in one go.

I tried them last year and was unsure if I would use them again after my first experience of this weaning method. It took a bit of time to work out how to insert the anti-sucking nose paddle and most weanlings had to be stalled up which generally doesn’t go down well. Those few seconds stalled can take them time to forget and a few proved to be more awkward to work in the yards after it. Thankfully, I was more adept at inserting the paddles and, as a result, only a small percentage had to be stalled this year.

They were left back out the field as a full group and while the calves weren’t overly happy at having no access to milk, there was silence.