A late Easter makes for a late year. So goes an old country saying and it’s certainly true of this year. While the recent rainfall figures here aren’t abnormal, there’s been poor drying and the land has remained stubbornly wet.

Winter ploughing has achieved nothing due to the lack of frost and instead the soil has slumped into a sodden mess. Patience will be required before spring drilling can begin and a few white-topped furrows on a sunny afternoon shouldn’t trick us into frantic activity.

The spring barley is a dry week away (Taberna) and the spring rape will be sometime after that. With so much work to do and so little opportunity to do it, there is a danger of becoming snowed under with it all.

The winter crops look well and the mild temperatures have kept them moving swiftly through the growth stages, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. The wheat has received CCC and the fungicide Bravo to control very high levels of septoria on the lower leaves.

We could be in for a period of very high disease pressure, the likes of which we have not seen since 2002. The reasons for this are to do with a heady combination of early drilled lush crops, the mild winter and the humid weather of late. And most of the current wheat varieties are weak on septoria. Without wishing to be the prophet of doom, the perfect storm could be gathering.

Given that the first proper fungicide (the T1) shouldn’t be applied much before May Day – to avoid running out of steam before the flag leaf T2 is due – it will probably mean that we’ll need a second round of the low-cost, old reliable Bravo to tide the crops over until then.

The modern SDHI fungicides with their single-site mode of action may eventually break down under severe pressure and mixing and matching different fungicides should be the order of the day.

Fungicide resistance is a huge issue and we have to protect the products we have at our disposal.

But it’s not so much the cost of product that’s an issue in a wet spring like this, but the difficulty of application. Our tramlines are becoming really messed up, to a degree not seen for years. Min till and the reasonably low ground pressure Bateman have served us well in this regard, but unfortunately it’s all gone a bit pear-shaped this year.

Despite the obvious, I’m not sure why they have mucked up so soon, but I suspect our deep-loosened min till cultivations have worked against us in this respect. Predictably, the tramlines in the ploughed fields are worse and are not a pretty sight.

I suspect those who are using strip-till drills for a few years are reaping the benefit this year with good tramline trafficability. I am deeply envious. With the last of our round bales being fed to the cattle, I am buying in bales to hold off on turnout for another week. I’d dearly love to see the cattle cleared out of the yard, but once again the fields will have to dry out before this is sensible.

For reasons that I no longer recall, I didn’t make any pit silage last summer and decided to wrap the lot. Now at this stage in the year I am completely sick of handling stinking black plastic and the disposal issues that go with it. But for all of that, the silage waste was absolutely minimal and the cattle have done well.