I write to you from the beautiful Flaggy Shore in north Clare on the edge of Galway Bay. It’s a rather dull Sunday morning and I’d love to be able to tell you that the wild Atlantic is a wonderfully deep azure blue and sparkling in the sunshine but it isn’t. As a matter of fact, it’s quite grey, calm as a duck pond and Galway is barely visible across the bay.

Despite the fact that we are just 120 miles from home, it’s a completely different climate in the west of Ireland. But you don’t go west for the weather and a whole week of relaxation lies ahead of me while the rest of the country’s tillage farmers are combining winter barley, of which we have none.

I’ve changed my tune on all this sunshine. I think the weather of the past fortnight has been too hot for the crops which are ripening prematurely.

Temperatures under 25°C were fine but the high 20s have just scorched everything. Grain yield is being evaporated and I now think even heavy land winter wheat is suffering and yields may be little above average.

Our clay land resembles the limestone pavements in the Burren, fractured with deep vertical grikes wide enough to lose a visegrips in. Second wheats won’t be exciting and the winter oats could be like Rice Krispies.

Grass growth has totally stopped and we took the grand total of 2.5 round bales per acre of second-cut silage. Yes, I know we could have left it for another while but it was well shot out. Meanwhile, the meat factories are having a ball as fat cattle are flowing off the land (ourselves included) and they’re slamming the price. Nothing new in that.

It’s amazing the way cattle thrive in hot weather and while they’re eating grass that resembles bad hay. But access to good water and 3kg of meal works wonders even if the fields are as good as bare, as they are in Clare.

We have about three-quarters of our silage in and no matter what, I don’t expect we’ll be feeding any of it in the fields. The remainder of the silage will have to come from a third cut for which I won’t fertilise until it rains, probably at the end of this month when we are at the wheat.

I sprayed off the rape before I left home and a good fortnight should see the combine in the fields. Like that, I was hugely optimistic for mega rape yields but now I think it has run out of water and come in too quickly. But oilseed rape is notoriously difficult to gauge and there could be a surprise either way. I’m suffering slightly from a bout of pre-harvest tension brought about by an idle mind.

However, these extremes of weather over the past 12 months must have a bearing on future farming plans as perhaps this is the new norm. But taking a much longer view, all this extreme stuff has happened before and even more so; in the 12th century, the Shannon was dry in Athlone.

Dairy farmers will have to seriously rethink their headlong rush into expansion mode. Teagasc must take some of the stick for driving this reckless pursuit of the conversion of grass into milk helped by thousands of tonnes of urea. How sustainable is that while Bord Bia continues to promote Origin Green?

Neither can I see tillage farmers producing forage crops for dairy farmers – it’s difficult enough to agree a fair price for straw.