My first-cut silage is in and covered about two weeks earlier than last year.

I hadn’t really intended cutting until 2 June, but the weather last week was so good I just didn’t want to miss it. Mowed last Thursday in 23°C heat, wilted for 24 hours and then lifted.

Bulk wasn’t huge to begin with and the good wilt made it smaller again, but as I have plenty of silage left over from last year, I’m happy enough to lose a bit of bulk in order to make some top-quality stuff. And this I’m hopeful should be top quality.

'Hard to beat the help'

As the sayings go, “it’s hard to beat the help and it’s hard to beat the youth” and a big thanks to everyone who helped me cover the pit on Saturday evening.

A small army of friends and neighbours arrived to give me a hand and we had the whole job complete in slightly over an hour, record time indeed.

There aren’t many upsides to the lockdown, but being able to get people to help cover a silage pit at 7 o’clock on the sunny Saturday evening of a June bank holiday weekend is definitely one of them.

As my mother always says, thank god for small mercies.

Grass growth

Grass continues to grow reasonably well on this farm at the moment, although it may be getting a little hard in places.

Because the farm is heavy in nature, it can stick a bit of drought, but I’m starting to hear a lot of farmers complain about lack of rain.

Not something we like to do in this part of the world, as we normally get way more than our fair share of it, but, unfortunately, we can’t do without it either.

There is an open drain on this farm that dried up in 2018, the first time I ever remember it dry. But it has dried a month earlier this year.

There is some rain forecast this week which will hopefully help things along a little. The weather is absolutely glorious and no one wants it to change, but a little rain at night would be nice!

The biggest problem I’m having with lack of rain is having to listen to my wife complain about having to water the beech hedge she planted in front of the house this spring.

It was doing great until the wind last weekend blew a lot of the leaves off it - the last thing it needs now is a drought.