With the beans harvested, the second-cut silage safely covered and the new reseeded ground showing a very faint green, the essential ground of 2026 has been covered.

The oilseed rape for the 2027 harvest is well emerged, with what looks like good, even germination.

I was regretting that we hadn’t Roundup-ed the volunteers, but we have been able to get a graminicide out and have done very little damage despite some heavy rain. There are no signs of grass die-off yet, but I presume that will become visible soon.

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We have ordered the seed wheat and barley seed, though we will probably allocate a little more ground to beans – given how they came through an exceptionally difficult 2026 – though I would like a definite indication of what the area aid payment is likely to be for 2027.

Meanwhile in the yard, we have opened up our first-cut silage. It is certainly well preserved, having had a good wilt with a really nice sweet smell, but it looks a bit stemier than I would like having closed up the ground later than the ideal.

Weighing and monitoring performance

With all the 2024 cattle gone, we are beginning to house their 2025 colleagues as they reach around 500kg. It means a lot of weighing and monitoring performance. Looking at the figures, it is clear that the ICBF commercial beef value (CBV) figures, that formed such a part of their successful Tully open day, are being borne out in practice at farm level.

Our only way of coping with the differences in beef merit among different animals is to leave the lower value bullocks out on low-cost grass for a longer time, to allow them to hit their housing weight.

They spend longer on the place with this system, but their final time on a high cost finishing diet is at least, to some extent, controlled.

We now have two major decisions to make on the cattle side.

When do we start buying in and at what weight? And also, how much grain do we forward buy? We have sold all our own wheat, so we will have to buy-in barley.

Whether we buy as we use it or buy most of our needs in advance has to be decided. Meanwhile, the cattle that are in will be fit in a few weeks. The cycle is starting again.