We had been worried for a while that we were going to run short of silage but, as we come up to the end of March, we have a comfortable three weeks left.

We are still giving silage in the evening to the cattle that are out by day while the finishing bullocks are in on full feed for their final 40 to 50 days and we continue to send them to the factory as they become fit.

Over the last week, all the crops had got their first application of a 10-10-20 type fertiliser with sulphur. The oilseed rape, especially, has made rapid progress and we will aim to get its full nitrogen allocation out by the end of this week, so that it doesn’t get too tall to interfere with even spreading.

During the week, we gave it a growth regulator with some fungicidal effect as well as a boron dressing, so we are very near the stage when we will have done all we can to maximise the yield of what has become a valuable crop in its own right, as well as a good break crop in the rotation.

In fact, of all the crops, oilseed rape is the one that has at least in our case shown the greatest yield improvements over the last 20 years or so. The normal yield back then was 1.3t or 26cwt/ac, but now the target that we aim for is 2t and, inevitably, I hear of neighbours beating that.

I note that under the welcome new straw incorporation scheme that rape straw will be included, though at a reduced rate, but at least there will have to be some pre-harvest clarity as to whether the mushroom compositors will need the oilseed rape straw. I look forward to reading the rest of the conditions of the scheme but unless it is an extraordinary harvest, I expect I will use it to chop the difficult to save oaten straw and recycle the organic matter.

As I write, we have almost half the beans sown and rolled in lovely conditions.

We are ploughing the last field for beans, the final crop intended for the 2021 harvest. Mention of the beans reminds me that we have used a different herbicide to take out the volunteer beans in our seed wheat. Hopefully we will see it have some effect within a week or so.