This is the first year I can remember when we have had a lift in beef prices coming into September.

Normally, the trade is managed where, as far as I can see looking at it over many years, the factories are able to ignore international trends and simply force the price down week on week as the autumn progresses.

This year is different but our own trading pattern has been much the same as usual – as a load of finished beef goes out, a load of stores come in.

This year the stores coming in are costing more than we expected despite talk of a fodder shortage, but if beef prices continue to rise and drag store prices up with them, then the sums around the prospects for winter finishing will mean that either farmers will insist on contracts before taking the winter gamble, or factories will own even more of the cattle in sheds.

Great unknown

This is one of the great unknowns in Irish farming – what percentage of shed cattle are owned by the meat industry? The answer should be available in the interest of guiding national policy and guarding against vertical integration.

From our own point of view, with the prospect of lower than budgeted grain prices, we have sent more of our own grain to a neighbour who dries, stores and rolls it for a fee and then delivers it back as we need it during the winter.

Normally we run out of our own before Christmas. This year we will aim to have enough to see us through to Easter or so.

This year, for the first time, we have spring barley in land we never got to sow during the sodden autumn, so all of that will go as cattle feed and supplement what we have already sent.

Out in the fields, all the wheaten straw is baled in 8x4x4s for the mushroom trade.

As I mentioned last week, we got all the winter barley straw cleared, slurry applied and last week, we hired in a six meter drill and got all the 2025 oilseed rape drilled in the day.

Never have we sown oilseed rape so early, but the expensive lesson of late sowing, followed by a wet autumn, has left a mark.

We will get slug pellets out as soon as possible and then monitor the crop carefully.

Despite my reservations, we have used Clearfield variety in case we got a severe outbreak of charlock.

If the yield penalty is no greater than the reported 2%, then avoiding unnecessary risk will have been worthwhile.

There is now a slight lull in activity level until we begin serious preparation for the winter barley, but we have yet to tackle the rest of this year’s harvest of gluten free oats, beans and the spring barley.

We also have to decide how much of the valuable straw we can sell or need to keep.