Due to a tractor breakdown (yes, Fendts do breakdown), we failed to get any barley sown over the four fine days which were the spring of 2018, before the weather broke again.

When you only run two tractors, the loss of one hits hard. However, we did get the sowing finished last weekend in good enough conditions but little dust.

We’re fallowing a continually wet field for remedial drainage and mole ploughing ahead of sowing a cover crop next July.

Never, in my memory, has there been a season like this and harvest prospects for spring-sown crops look poor. The season may compensate but even it does, it will be at the price of a late harvest.

You begin to wonder about the increasingly unpredictable seasons and climate change. It’s been raining since mid-August with just one all-dry week last November. If climate change continues at this rate, there’s a risk Ireland will become unfarmable.

Does that mean we should forsake fossil fuels, wear sandals and a ponytail and vote for the Green Party? No, not for me. As I’ve said before, my belief is that our climate has always been subject to change from the accepted norm and we are in one of those phases right now.

Beans

The 22ha of beans were sown into a decent seedbed, following a cover crop. The bean fields were cultivated with the Horsch Joker which did a good job.

We had tried the Joker on winter ploughing destined for the spring barley but the discs and tine toolbar made a dog’s dinner of a seedbed so we reverted to the old reliable, the Simba Unipress.

The beans are being grown on a low input basis with disease control entirely based on cheap tebuconazole and chlorothanil, as any strob-based fungicide is a complete no-no.

Strobs with their usually beneficial greening affect will only drive the harvest date deeper into late October.

However, I won’t skimp on weed control – to do this would be just plain foolish.

And yet despite all this apathy about tillage crops, tilling the soil may actually be very good for your mental health and wellbeing.

Scientists in the University of Bristol have discovered that a microbiome present in the soil activates serotonin release in your brain which is a relaxant and feel-good stimulant. They injected some of this soil bacterium into mice and they went ballistic with excitement.

This may explain why many people find gardening therapeutic and there’s a definite feel-good factor with the earthiness of a freshly tilled field.

Of course, there is another side to all of this. Does this mean that ploughmen (or women) are a happier bunch than those of us min-tillers who only scratch the soil? Maybe they are, at least until they see their diesel bill.

But what about this resurgent breed of tillage farmers who practise no-till and direct-drill their crops with no soil disturbance? They are certainly not availing of the free doses of soil-induced happiness that’s available to the ploughman. As a result, they risk being a glum lot. Whatever the case, I think I could never be a happy no-tiller/direct-driller. But it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with soil bacterium and serotonin release. It’s entirely related to the fact that I’m fairly convinced that no-till would be a disaster on our heavy soils. However, that won’t stop me and son Max from experimenting.

But Mrs P says I’m mad to be thinking about no-till – not because she knows anything about tillage because she doesn’t. She just thinks I need all the free serotonin that I can get.

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