After a day of continuous rain on Saturday, I was convinced that winter had really arrived. But no, instead we have had a few glorious days so we tackled into the last field for winter sowing. The oaten seed arrived on Monday and we will give the ground another day or two for the Roundup to work fully. As it’s for the gluten-free consumer market, the attention to hygiene and lack of contamination are both critical. Once we have ploughed, we will have the seed drill ready for its pre-sowing inspection. At this stage, the harvest seems a long way off with a lot of attention to be paid to crops between this and then.

The oilseed rape has already had its first herbicide application but I have noticed an increasing amount of charlock or praiseach as we used call it, creeping into the fields. With it being the same family as oilseed rape, the choice and timing of the selective weedkiller is important but with ground conditions so good, we will try and get it done this week.

Meanwhile, on the cattle side, the sunny days and high soil temperatures are giving terrific growth, while the recent rain had no effect on ground conditions so we are continuing to graze paddocks with the light weanlings.

The extension of the slurry-spreading season has let us completely empty all the tanks, so hopefully we will not get into the situation that we faced last spring with a very wet, late March and April forcing us to spread slurry when conditions were less than ideal.

Since we changed the straw and gave the cattle a bit more room, we have had no more cases of Mycoplasma bovis but you can never take animal health for granted. A major expense that seems to be looming is the replacing of at least some of the slats.

Many of the older ones have visible cracks which became very apparent when we added water over the slats to loosen up the slurry for agitation.

As these slats are over 30 years old. I can hardly complain but it’s still money that has to be earned.