I always find it amazing that the huge crowds keep flocking to the Ploughing match each year and especially this year with the floods and the rain that were well forecast.

People had the day out booked well in advance I suppose so they threw on the wellies and made the best of it.

As usual, the resourceful people at the NPA made a huge effort to pump the water off site and get things up and running again after Wednesday’s deluge.

I don’t know if many people saw anything new or different at the event this year, but it’s always good to take a day off and to get out and meet fellow farmers and sit down and have a coffee with the people that we do business with across the year.

We also had a quick look at some machinery that might be needed over the next few years on the farm and it’s great from the point of view of comparing machines and prices in one location rather than doing a tour of garages over a few days.

The scale of the event and the amount of celebrities, sports people and politicians that were in attendance speaks volumes for the importance of agriculture to our economy.

Back at home, grass growth has slowed a lot over the past few weeks but we have carried a high cover of grass right through September so we are still in a very good position starting the last rotation next week.

We will continue to feed 3kg or 4kg of meal right through October and hopefully keep silage out of the diet until November.

Neighbours on heavier ground are not so lucky and a fair number of cattle have been housed, even in the sunny southeast over the past week. Hopefully an Indian summer will arrive at some stage to get a few more days at grass on these farms and to get the last of the slurry out. It’s very early to be pulling the pin on what was an excellent grass growing season.

We are planning to milk the cows once-a-day from 1 November until drying off in mid-December this year to reduce labour requirements but mostly to reduce wear and tear on cows’ feet for the last month or so of the grazing season. In any case it always seems a bit pointless driving in spring-calving cows for evening milking with less than five litres of milk swinging around in a slack udder. We will try it this year anyway and see how it goes. They have milked very well all year so, if a few go dry early, they probably deserve the break.

We pulled out the cull cows this week as well after grass growth fell back a bit.

A few are in-calf to Belgian Blues and will be sold to a neighbour for multiple suckling. A few more are getting old and worn out and need to get the road this year. The rest are scanned empty and yield is starting to fall off with them so they will go for fattening as well.

We will make a decision this week on whether to finish these cows ourselves over the next two months or to sell them quickly for feeding elsewhere. Price is very strong in both the mart and the factory for these cows this autumn, which always softens the blow of losing a few that you’d rather had stayed around for a few more years.