This year, even the old permanent pasture has a dense, heavy cover of grass that I would normally be very happy to have in mid-April.

The covers, in my view, are too heavy to risk applying slurry with a trailing shoe or umbilical system, never mind an ordinary splash plate.

While we have missed grazing the odd paddock after a night’s rain – in the main, grazing conditions during daylight hours have been good and the young bulls have come in willingly each evening for half their normal winter rations.

I am looking at our shrinking pit of silage and hoping I won’t regret having sold all my reserves last April

We have now had this regime for over three weeks but we must remember that last year it was the first week in March when we had snow over the hedges and bitter biting blizzards.

At the same time, I am looking at our shrinking pit of silage and hoping I won’t regret having sold all my reserves last April to a dairy co-op but we can only take the weather as it comes.

Meanwhile, we have bought in our first load of weanlings to replace some of the beef that is gone.

With the continuing falls in the beef price, the gap between buying and selling is too small for sensible profit – we can only assume that beef prices will improve. But factories are still having cattle thrown at them and as long as that lasts, the possibility of price rises for the well-bred suckler progeny seems remote.

One expense that we don’t have to face is extra pollution control work.

We had a follow-on inspection to see if we had met the requirements that follow from farming in what is becoming semi suburbia

During the summer, after a full inspection, we installed a new septic tank and sewage treatment unit to replace the old system put in 100 years ago.

We also put in a new reinforced grid over the junction box diverting the silage effluent into the dirty water tank from the clean yard run-off, which goes harmlessly into the ditch.

A fortnight ago, we had a follow-on inspection to see if we had met the requirements that follow from farming in what is becoming semi suburbia. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an official written letter giving us the all-clear but of course, pointing out that we were expected to keep the yard, etc, in its present satisfactory condition and that we would be subjected to future inspections!

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