It’s been a very busy week here. After housing everything over Easter in preparation for a deluge that never came, we were able to let the store cattle out day and night on Bank Holiday Monday.

There was some marking of the paddocks, but nothing that should do any lasting damage. We just had all the stores out when suddenly, without any warning, our electric fence stopped. It has given us excellent, fault-free service for as long as I can remember, certainly over 40 years. It’s a New Zealand make and even though they apparently have an Irish office, I reckoned that after that length of time, it had probably reached the end of its useful life – so we bought a new one and had it going within an hour.

We are giving the store cattle a fresh paddock every day and are concentrating on the land that we intend to close up this week for first-cut silage. After a tight grazing we will go out with around 1,500 gallons of slurry and a high nitrogen compound. The aim is to cut in the last week of May or the first week in June.

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For the first time since Christmas, we sold a load of finished cattle when we didn’t have a lower price than the preceding load – hopefully we will see steady increases from now on. I am keen that we get rid of as many finished cattle as possible over the next few weeks, as we have received notice that we must have our annual herd test (which we pay for) in early May.

On the tillage side, again despite dire weather warnings, the land ploughed for the beans dried out well. Nevertheless the view was that it needed some kind of harrowing before going in with the one pass to sow. We went in with a levelling harrow, with crumbler bars just ahead of the one pass. We ended up with a really nice seed bed. We got the beans finished just ahead of the time a deluge was forecast for, but again, it never came. The next step is to put on the pre-emerge herbicide as soon as possible. While this usually gives excellent weed control in the beans, it does need some moisture to be fully effective, but the first step is to get it applied to the crop.

We also got the final nitrogen out on the oilseed rape, so that crop which is now a glorious vivid yellow is essentially finished until harvest time – unless we need to go in and treat it for sclerotinia.

Looking at the figures underlying the agricultural dimension of the fuel protests: the diesel for my car has gone up by about 10%, for the tractors it’s up by about 50% or more. Of course it’s the excise that makes the difference, but the key question is whether an actual farm fuel subsidy is justified in present circumstances?

The announcement of the special 20c/l payment based on the amount of green diesel used between March and July last year is a breakthrough and must be welcomed. While it doesn’t compensate for the increase in price, it demonstrates what’s possible in policy terms. I will be interested to see what documentation I need to dig out to apply.