We are seeing two sides of the same weather coin. I don’t think we have ever had such grass growth, it is truly exceptional. In the main, I don’t put out nitrogen on the grazing ground but the recovery in the paddocks after grazing has been more rapid than I have ever seen it.

So far, while there are some hoof marks in the paddocks, I would not term it poaching, but the continuous damp weather has prevented us from making a field of hay I had earmarked.

On the tillage front, we finally succeeded in getting the barley straw baled

I have resigned myself to strip-grazing it, moving the electric fence every day. One of the advantages of the 24-month-old dairy-beef cross steers may be their ability to munch their way through more mature material than young weanling bulls which up to now would have been the main stock on the place.

On the tillage front, we finally succeeded in getting the barley straw baled. With just one to 1.5 8x4x4 bales compared with a more normal three to four bales per acre, my straw yield seems to match the general reports of straw yields being about half the normal.

We tried the winter oats but had to pull out after 20 or 30 yards; there were far too many green tillers and unripe heads

The late-sown winter barley has left a mass of new green tillers across the fields. This is the land I had earmarked for oilseed rape and we took advantage of one of the dry days over the weekend to apply Roundup to it.

But having got through the oilseed rape and winter barley, the rest of the harvest is at a standstill.

We tried the winter oats but had to pull out after 20 or 30 yards; there were far too many green tillers and unripe heads.

While the seed wheat needs some time yet, the weeds in the poor crop of commercial wheat are taking longer to die off than I would normally expect due to the moist mild weather, I imagine. I presume and hope that we get seriously moving over the next week or so.