It would be very easy to write a column this week moaning about this wretched spring, which is similar to that of 2024. It’s difficult to get timely work done, but I’m conscious that you are aware of this and you don’t need me to add to the collective misery.

As this is usually a warts-and-all column, it may make for a pleasant change if I was to introduce some spin.

Spin is, of course, closely related to fake news and its first cousin, downright lies.

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I’m thinking in the style of Donald Trump, the man who has singlehandedly tumbled the world into recession. But Trump is only outdone in creating spin by his press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who I’ve nicknamed Squealer after the pig in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

In this allegorical tale, the animals take over the farm. The pigs quickly become the self-appointed ruling class and Squealer becomes their spokesperson and master of spin. The other farm animals are totally brainwashed and mindlessly do as they are told by their autocratic leader comrade Napoleon.

Anyhow, with this in mind, let’s cut loose with this week’s spun news on the farm.

Firstly, the weather and breaking news. NASA’s real reason in going on a jaunt to the moon was to place a new weather satellite for Met Éireann that allows them, not only to predict the weather with 100% accuracy, but to change it as well. This satellite is capable of reversing climate change and reverting to ideal weather ie frosty winters, seasonal springs with lots of March dust and long, hot summers. Furthermore, all rain will fall only at night from now on. We’ll never have another wet day. We’ve waited a long time for this news.

While we await this plug-in-and-play satellite to start working, we have to endure another week or two of bad weather. But this is no problem as Teagasc has released studies into bean yields that reveal farmers should not attempt to sow beans until the last week of April.

Its work shows the yield is up to 100% higher due to what they call the Jack-in-the-Beanstalk-effect related to lunar cycles and, of course, algorithms. News of this research could not come at a better time, with hardly a bean sown in Co Meath.

Patchy crops

Next, new research from Rothamsted has shown that patchy crops are not really patchy at all, it’s just the way you’re looking at them. If you look into your neighbour’s field and see a patchy crop it’s just an illusion and it will, in fact, produce a record-breaking yield. I thought this to be the case but it’s good to have the facts now. This research was sponsored by Specsavers.

Deep messy tramlines are similar from across the hedge. If you are cocky enough to don the wellies and walk into your neighbour’s field, the tramlines will be perfect as he/she said they were. It’s to do with crypto visual analysis in our brains, never really understood until now.

Finally, the Politburo in Brussels is bringing in new legislation this week in response to the oil crisis. Diesel tractors are to be replaced with electric ones.

Fine, but these tractors cannot have an onboard battery (limitations on precious rare earth metals are apparently the reason) and must be run on extension leads instead.

This might work when spreading fertiliser in the yard field, but surely not with multiple tractors in the same field? I can see the guys on the mowers and whirly gig rakes becoming totally entangled in live cables and fried. But we will have to mindlessly accept.

Normal service will resume in a fortnight when the weather has to be better.