I farm: “Sheep and tillage on 275ac, made up of owned and rented ground.”

Family: “I’m married to Zaebeth and we have three daughters aged 10 to 14 – Iona, Jane and Peppa. My eldest, Iona, is a great help at lambing.”

Weather: “We’re behind in our tasks and it’s all weather related. We’re doing what we can, when we can. I ploughed down 30ac of straw last week. We made a number of attempts to bale it since September but failed.”

Ground conditions: “We couldn’t travel fields. The centres of fields were quite good, but the headlands were a disaster and we would have done too much damage. You almost had to sit on a ditch and wait for the field to dry before you could make a move.”

Planting: “We got our beet drilled and got 30ac of maize under plastic on Saturday. There’s still maize without plastic to be planted. I got 60ac of wheat in two weeks ago. I haven’t drilled wheat in May in over 20 years. I’m not hugely optimistic about the yield, but it is up at this stage.”

Crops: “I grow beet, grain for crimping, maize and provide straw for dairy farmers. There are 1,700 cows within a 1m radius of the yard. I also take in pig and cattle slurry.”

Demand for forage: “I’ve gone from 55ac to 90ac of maize this year and I could have grown the same amount again without looking for customers. The season we can work in is getting shorter and shorter.”

Sheep: “We keep 200 Lleyn breeding ewes. I’m quite pleased with them. They spend the winter tidying up silage and stubble ground, so we can run them reasonably efficiently. The lambs are mainly sold to Michael O’Neill, a butcher in Clonakilty.”

EID: “It came out of the blue and is more hassle. The ewes are all EID tagged and it makes sense for breeding animals. From a lamb point of view it makes no sense. If there was a return on it at farm level it might be a different matter, but now it’s more expense and a bother.”

Quotable quote: “The last time we would have drilled cereals this late we would have ploughed with a David Brown 1212 and a three-furrow ploughing machine and used a Massey seed drill, which would date it to over 25 years ago.”