Many successful men are driven by a woman. I wouldn’t say that I am a particularly successful man, but there are many occasions when I am driven by a woman.

It was early in May when the other end of the table strongly suggested that it was time to go make silage. I could think of several reasons why it was too soon:

“The pit hasn’t been cleaned.”

“Has all the N been used up?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for more grass?”

But I knew from bitter experience that if I delayed and the rain came I would be reminded three times a day: “If only we had gone when I said to go."

The pit was cleaned out in time, just, the N was used up, just, and the crop was there, just. And the rain came just after we’d sheeted up. This year we insisted the contracting team helped us sheet up, as in the past we had issues.

We have moved to nets and gravel bags to cover the clamp – a great improvement over wet and smelly tyres. The only problem is what to do with those tyres now.

Going early with the first cut meant we had to go early with the second cut, because the heat and drought were making it head out, and what bulk was left was shrinking in the heat. Hopefully we will get some regrowth on these pastures to graze the milking herd, rather than hope for a third cut.

At the moment the paddocks are looking brown and thin, so we have just purchased 30t of brewers’ grains at £52/t. This will be used to compensate the lack of grass. Up until now we have been feeding wraps made this year from the pastures that got away from us. This was caused by a two-month late turnout and having to leapfrog over wet paddocks.

At the moment we are drying cows off from the autumn-calving group and selling barroners, which will take some of the pressure off the grazing, but it is still going to be expensive to maintain milk yields and fertility.

The milk price is rapidly rising, but with no grass how can we possibly take advantage of the situation?

My accountant tells me that looking forward labour will become such an issue. It will either be 100-cow family farms or 1,000 cows. We’ll definitely be the former.