Last week, the firm I had ordered my fertiliser from rang to ask me to take it as soon as possible as if I didn’t, they couldn’t guarantee that they would be able to keep it in stock for me in the face of the intense demand.

I told them to deliver it whenever it suited them as I reckoned the minor inconvenience of moving the bulk rolled barley into a slightly less convenient shed, to leave the one able to cope with a fully-loaded tipping artic was worthwhile, given the peace of mind of having the fertiliser on site ready to use when needed.

I then rang my usual diesel supplier to order a refill of the yard tank. I hadn’t really believed the stories of 500 litres being the normal delivery, but it was true. Our tank holds 2,000 litres so while I will obviously take the 500 litres, the limitation leaves me nervous of a shortage later on in the season. I must admit I would see the provision of adequate fuel to guarantee essential farm work as one of the most fundamental duties of Government.

Grazing

Meanwhile out on the land, we have been able most days to graze the young cattle by day. There has been some superficial damage but we have stuck to dry paddocks and I wouldn’t expect any lasting damage to carrying capacity.

I have however been really disappointed with some ground we reseeded early last September. Everything seemed to go perfectly at the time with good emergence of the grass clover mix and the sward was well established on schedule.

I noticed quite a bit of young chickweed plants but assumed they would disappear over the winter. Instead the chickweed has exploded and it’s now apparent that it has totally dominated the new reseed. We turned out a group of light cattle onto one paddock at a time but there is too much bare ground after grazing and it’s not clear if the chickweed has been eliminated by the grazing, leaving the grass/clover to emerge. We will go out with around 1,500 gallons of slurry per acre and reassess.

After many years of reseeding on a variety of land types, this is the first time I have experienced such a potential failure because of the smothering by chickweed. I have a real dislike, as I have mentioned before, of using blanket herbicides on grassland because of their effect on the clover. So we will see how it goes over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, herbicide treatment has really worked in dealing with the volunteer beans in the seed wheat and the wild oats in the winter barley. The development of selective herbicides is one of the marvels of modern science - why we cannot have the same in grassland farming escapes me.