Suddenly it’s autumn, with a workload building up to be done before the winter comes and land softens.

First on the agenda is the control of volunteers in the just-emerged oilseed rape.

We had stubble cultivated after the winter barley, waited at least a week and sprayed them off. We then direct-drilled them in ideal time and excellent conditions on 26 August.

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Since then we have had some very heavy showers, which have clearly encouraged the dormant volunteers to germinate – which they have done in large numbers.

Normally I would say we can wait until much later, but with a hybrid variety and a risk of charlock, we want to give the just-emerged rape plants as little competition as possible, so that they can smother out any charlock that does emerge.

We are preparing to go in with a cheap graminicide at the first opportunity.

This need to spray unexpectedly coincided with a complacency that the spraying season was over.

So after a number of years of trouble-free performance, we decided to leave our own sprayer in for a full service and check it over to replace any parts that look vulnerable at this stage.

Luckily, our contractor is able to come to the rescue with his large GPS outfit.

At the same time, the beans now look at last as if they are fit to be harvested or at least as fit as they are going to be, so we have the combine standing by and hopefully by the weekend, the 2025 harvest will just be a memory – except for the grain price. We have received an advance payment on pretty well everything we have supplied. I presume the base price mentioned in the supplied documentation will be dramatically increased at the end of the day.

Looking through the details, the 2025 harvest gave all round decent yields and reasonable bushels at acceptable moistures well below 20%. I had sold forward as much of the winter barley as I was let under my contract and this has returned at this stage by far the highest price.

Time has also caught up on us with our reseeding. We had some old pasture which had really deteriorated. We were just about to disc and harrow it when we were offered some topsoil.

As the field had a lot of humps and hollows, it was too good an opportunity to miss so we brought in the top soil and levelled it. While everything worked, it all took time and our reseeding is later than I would like.

Meanwhile, we have taken delivery of the last load of cattle until we start buying in the spring. We have more or less kept up numbers all through the summer and autumn, but while the margin between what we have recently sold and what they cost almost a year ago has never been as high, the margin between them and their replacements is tiny.

Unlike the dairy and suckler farmers, the only net result of the increase in cattle prices has been an increase in the capital requirements to stay in business.

But if it means a stop in the continuous decline in the suckler herd, it will have been a highly favourable development.