Sooner or later, the county council was bound to come out and have a look at my septic tank. It is in position for about 100 years and has given hardly any trouble. There is an inlet linked up to the dwelling house and the outlet lets the effluent soak away in a dry ditch. However, the ditch is not as dry as it used to be as it now takes the water from a yard which has a lot of concrete.

While the man from the council was looking at the septic arrangement he also understandably had a look at how the silage effluent and the yard water were separated in practice. Broadly, I was pleasantly surprised that the refurbishment I carried out six to eight years ago during the farmyard improvement programme met with his approval. There was a bent grid that needs replacing and a general tidying up of the junction box and waste pit but that was broadly it.

However, my septic tank is a different story. I have been given until July to get everything in order and I am resigned to the fact that I am going to have to put in a new treatment unit and have a clean discharge into the ditch. My setup, I was informed, was no longer acceptable, so we will move on.

Meanwhile, on the day-to-day business side, we have continued to sell bulls as they have become fit. I am surprised and disappointed that there has been no lift in the market, but we have now space to buy in cattle. It’s a toss-up whether to go for weanling bulls, which will have an expensive finishing period of about 120 days and an expensive all meal diet. The other option is to buy 500kg well-conformed bullocks and finish them off at grass. There are as usual several sides to the argument. I have plenty of first-cut silage to bring them through to grass but my own supply of wheat and barley from the harvest is finished. It’s full market price from now on, though we still have beans left which at least reduces the cost of protein. Though, of course, I could always sell them.

We still have no spring work done though the worst of the pools of water have subsided in the fields.