It’s hard to believe that we are now desperate for water, given the oversupply that we had from last harvest to this spring. It certainly seems to have completely disappeared now. Looking at the forecast, there is always a slight chance of rain in two weeks’ time, but that always seems to evaporate by the time you get there.

The first cut of silage on 11 June was better than expected, but there isn’t much regrowth due to the drought. Our earliest-sown (7 April) spring barley looks quite well, despite my best attempts to kill it off. I decided to top-dress it with slurry in the middle of a two-week heatwave in May.

This had the same effect on the foliage as spraying it with Roundup. The fields are right next to the main road. I had various farmers expressing their concern (glee) by phoning me up or asking me at the mart what I had sprayed onto my crop.

Luckily the roots survived, so rest assured guys, there will be a crop after all. Unfortunately, the tillers were stripped off by the slurry, but there is a large ear at the top of each stalk!

Staying on a watery theme, has everyone heard of Water Byelaws? In Scotland, these are enforced by Scottish Water. A nice Scottish Water officer came out and inspected our water storage tanks and water troughs six months ago. If there is any risk, no matter how small, of your water flowing back into the mains supply due to the position of your ballcock, Scottish Water will require you to make some modifications.

Now, I will admit that the officer came out three times and after each visit, I was sent a letter telling me what modifications were required and threatening various courses of action.

However, I decided to bury my head in the sand – a lot easier to do in the current climate. I have an outstanding issue with a water supply at another site, which Scottish Water/Business Stream have never resolved. I applied my “farmer logic” and decided that I wouldn’t do anything that they wanted, until they had done something that I wanted.

Imagine my surprise, when a Scottish Water van came out and turned off my water supply. Five thousand pigs, 120 young bulls, 60 cows plus calves, four residences, one very unhappy farmer and his highly stressed wife with no water. I got annoyed, my wife pleaded to the highest authority that she could reach, but to no avail. We were told to use bottled water in the houses and tanker the water in for the livestock.

Needless to say, we made all of the modifications as quickly as possible. I can now highly recommend responding to official letters in a timely manner, rather than filing them in a pile on the window sill.

The other main thing that has been occupying our time recently is finding and fitting out accommodation for our growing pigs so we can move them off site. Due to the price of straw and its lack of availability, this has proved to be a difficult and costly exercise. We are trying to eradicate EP (enzootic pneumonia) and PRRS (porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome).

Although we vaccinate for both of these, vaccines are never 100% effective. My pigs mainly go to Morrisons and they want our pigs to be antibiotic-free by 2020.

Fingers crossed that this partial depopulation works, as it is costing us a lot of money.

We normally sell one load of bacon pigs (180-200) per week, but in order to get pigs off-site for the clean-up, we sold two loads in two weeks. For once, we benefitted from good timing. The following week, there was no CO2 to stun the pigs and the whole exercise would have been scuppered.