Over the weekend, we had the heaviest rain of the winter. It has at least washed in the slurry that was, during the comparatively dry spell we have enjoyed over the last month, inclined to stick to the grass.

As I mentioned last week, the ambition was to get the rest of the oats and winter wheat sown before the promised storm. Just as the drizzle began on Friday evening, we finished the last headland on the main field of winter wheat that had to be done.

There is one corner of an odd field to be completed but apart from that, we met the target of getting everything sown before 15 February. Conditions at sowing were better than I could have reasonably expected but the real test will be when we see how these February-sown crops emerge and whether we can keep the crows off.

We have now just the beans ground to plough but we will give the land a chance to dry out again.

Meanwhile, last year’s volunteer beans are coming up among the seed wheat but from experience, these are easy to control so we will wait.

Any hope we had of getting young cattle out to graze in the immediate future has been put on hold for the moment. We tried two paddocks at the end of last week and the poaching damage done was minimal but everything is back in now, including the ones we had grazing down the uncut meadow we never got to save last summer.

The field is pretty well grazed out in any case so we will keep everything in for the moment. We have plenty of well-preserved silage and still have hay from the long dry summer of 2018 and with the slurry well under control we should be able to deal with a period of difficult weather.

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Tillage management: some planting done in variable conditions