All roads led to Lincolnshire for Cereals 2008, a show which I thoroughly enjoy visiting each year.

This year was no exception, with plenty of kit on show to satisfy even the most ardent tyre-kicker. The white Cat Challenger certainly caught my eye, as did the V8 JCB.

While walking around, I couldn’t quite figure out where all the noise was coming from every half hour or so – until I came across this rather unusual wheeled digger. It certainly had everyone’s attention during the day.

The rising cost of inputs and fuel were certainly the focus of debate at this year’s event. I’m sure we are all implementing strategies to help reduce their impact on our own businesses.

Frontier spring barley has received its T2 fungicide. The crop has remained exceptionally clean and looks extremely promising.

In conjunction with Siobhan Treacy, our in-house agronomist with Cooney Furlong Grain, we decided to use the Acorn Barley Gold Pack (epoxiconazole + pyraclostrobin + boscalid + fenpropimorph) + Bravo (chlorothalonil) which delivers a combination of actives in ratios optimised to cope with the challenging Irish cereal disease pressure.

The third week of June saw 80mm of rain falling on two separate days -equivalent to the average June rainfall in one week. It was a grim reminder of last year, when it rained for 55 consecutive days, and has led to the some lodging on overlaps.

The winter barley looks promising and should be ready for harvesting after the middle of this month. As I’m the only grower of the crop in the area all the crows move in with me while they wait for the spring barley to ripen.

Winter oilseed rape should be desiccated this week with Roundup (glyphosate) along with a pod sealer to help safeguard yields.