I suspect we moved too early into the beans on Saturday and will pay a moisture penalty on at least the first lorry load.

Beans like a traditional Irish summer, damp and cool, and that’s exactly what we didn’t have this year.

As I mentioned before, we had an excellent stand, but as the spell of very warm weather arrived you could see the beans becoming progressively less comfortable.

While the rain was welcome from a grass point of view as well as making the ground softer when we get around to ploughing, it came too late to do anything for the beans.

We had desiccated them 10 days earlier so I reckoned it was time to move in if possible.

We had just begun cutting when I became conscious that the weather forecast had changed and instead of a continuation of broken weather, a long settled spell was promised.

We had about two-thirds of them cut before the rain on Saturday night/Sunday morning with yield I reckon approaching 2.5t/acre, though that is subject to a lot of caveats.

We should get them fully finished fairly soon if the weather forecast is accurate.

In the meantime, the slug pellets are out on the oilseed rape which is now visibly growing in the mild moist conditions.

While the war in Ukraine is on everyone’s mind, its effects on energy supplies and prices is the most alarming feature.

Energy options

The Russian ban on gas exports is forcing everyone to look at the options. Some years ago I had given an option to a solar company to put up solar panels on a portion of the place.

At this stage they have applied for planning permission and last week they rang to know if they could come out and put up a small monitoring device to measure the amount of sunlight being emitted.

Obviously I said yes, but I will be interested to see whether this is the beginning of something substantial being planned given the explosive rise in the cost of energy.

We will have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, we have weighed most of the dairy beef steers that have been out for the bulk of the grazing season. The average daily gain seems to be between 0.6kg and 0.7kg a day since February.