We are now, at least on this farm, coming into a six-week period where the foundations for the coming year are laid. Cattle of adaquate quality have to be bought to have stock fit to go out to grass next spring and sowing winter crops must be completed.

I learned from my first ever experience of February sowing that on our land, it should be avoided, and as I suggested last week, if we cannot get the winter crops sown in good conditions in the autumn, we should simply wait until the spring is well advanced, the land is well dried out and go in with standard spring barley. That said, we have made a good start with the oilseed rape. We got it sown a few days later than I would like. It is always with some trepidation that I walk across a field of just about to germinate oil seed rape, but this year we seem to have an even, consistent emergence.

The slug pellets were applied immediately after sowing and while there is some volunteer barley emerging with the rape plants, grass weeds should be relatively easy to control later on in the season. As I write, we are trying to finish off the beans, probably the dirtiest and most weed-infested crop I have had for many years, but my hope is to grow seed wheat in the beans ground.

On the cattle side, we still have plenty of grass, so nothing is inside except what needs a final 50 or 60 days finishing.

In the full lorry load we sold last week, we noticed that it was the continental steers that found it most difficult to achieve a fat score of 3. We achieved it quite easily with the Aberdeen Angus and Hereford dairy-cross steers, but they were 27-29 months of age when slaughtered. The factory stipulation is for under 30 months, so they achieved that target OK, but I am not sure how the recommended slaughter weight of under two years can be achieved without intensive feeding. We have now got a good handle on the performance at grass and we seem to be achieving a daily liveweight gain of about 0.7kg a day from turnout to now. Not a performance that will pay for many overheads.