At last, we have fibre optic broadband direct to the house. It passes on the road outside on the original Post & Telegraph poles so it was easy to use the existing phone infrastructure to bring it down to the front door.

Up to now, the wi-fi quality was poor and we had to use a booster box at a rental cost of €40 a month which we moved from room to room.

With the new installation, we had been warned that we would need at least one range extender which we bought and plugged in.

That has given good coverage and for the first time, we can have video calls on Zoom etc.

I would have taken the new facility for granted if I had not been talking to a local business owner who complained about intermittent supply, poor speeds and constant breakdowns and despite his central town location, could get no improvement.

Another administrative chore is getting through the Quality Assurance scheme for the cattle. With a 20c/kg bonus on under 30 month cattle going to the factory, this is obviously a vital component of the overall return.

This year, after lots of annual practice, we got our highest-ever score of 99% so we await official confirmation. The only quibble consistently raised is the lack of protection from vermin for our rolled barley.

We get it dropped over in 10-12 tonne loads from a neighbour who stores and rolls it for us.

I had looked at getting vermin-proof roller doors but the cost was significant, the gain marginal and the inconvenience and the exposure to possible breakage through machinery damage was real so we continued with a commercial vermin control service and a few cats.

We continue to house the cattle as the last paddocks are grazed out but despite reasonable grass covers for the last few weeks, some of them have actually lost weight.

While this may show the advantage of having our own weighing scales, it raises real questions about what is sensible autumn management for store cattle.

Out on the land, we have applied slug pellets to the wheat following the chopped oaten straw and the hedges have been given their annual trim.

The new fashion may be to let them grow wild for a few years but apart from the place looking messy and unkept, a few years’ growth poses disposal and handling problems now that we are not meant to burn the discarded branches.

An annual trim gives no such difficulties so we will stick with that for the moment.