After a hectic week, we only have the gluten-free oats to sow. Despite the rain in the south and a messy forecast, we took the view that if we got a chance we would try and harvest the beans with the aim of getting wheat sown to tap into the bean-generated fertility.

While the beans looked ripe, there were occasional plants with still green pods, but with a quick moisture test giving a reading of 18%, we took the plunge.

In fact, the dense late April-sown crop had smothered out the weeds and gave us ideal harvesting conditions.

As the final artic pulled out, we had a mildly disappointing yield of 2.25t/ac, less than my target of 2.5t, but given how late the beans were sown, it was an acceptable enough result.

We chopped the bean stalks with the combine and followed immediately with a five-furrow plough and the one pass into excellent ground conditions.

We now have to get our invoices ready to avail of the lime scheme payment

With such good conditions, we sowed at about 11 stone of seed per acre. We had two varieties of wheat with very different thousand grain weights – one 53g and the other 48g. Why such a difference? I am not sure, though I imagine it may have meant that one variety had more disease-induced shrivelled grain than the other, but both had good germination results.

In any event with all the wheat, barley and oilseed rape safely sown, there is only the oats left.

Spring oats

Given this year’s 3.7t from spring oats, while I would much rather get it sown over the next few weeks, I wouldn’t regard it as a disaster if we had to postpone it, assuming we could repeat this year’s yield.

What we don’t need, however, is a prolonged period of wet weather. We still have paddocks to graze out before we bring all the cattle in – also bringing cattle in early puts pressure on slurry storage, as well as silage supplies.

Last week I mentioned that we had spread lime on some of the grassland. We now have to get our invoices ready to avail of the lime scheme payment though I note that the invoices have to be uploaded in a definite way, so again I am going to have to call on family technical assistance.

Meanwhile, I received a text message from the Department of Agriculture saying that badger activity had been noticed around the place. Hopefully, this programme will result in an effective vaccination for bovine TB being developed but, so far, real progress seems elusive.