Friends with little understanding of the arable farming calendar, including those whose hobbies involve livestock rearing, often ask what us barley barons do during the quieter winter months. Well, it is no easy task, I assure them.

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There is Kerb (propyzamide) to spray, drain ends to find, and important days networking on the shooting field. This year though, all the spraying and drain end finding was done before Christmas and so was the majority of the networking.

This is when I used to find a list of jobs and family days out appear on the kitchen table. Now though we are frightfully modern and I get “invites” on my phone, so there are no excuses for me forgetting.

Top of the list was an overnight visit to York to visit the Viking museum. The main thing that caught my eye was not the smell, nor the hairy Viking’s Brummie accent, but the number of people devoid from reality on their phones. Not only missing out on the museum as they insist on filming it, but also on life in general as it just passes them by while they tapped away at a screen.

The smartphone has also ruined my favourite observational game – guessing whether the middle-aged man in the restaurant is with his daughter or secretary. All you get now is a greying middle-aged man sat on his own in a cheap suit “snapchatting” his weasel to someone he thinks is a Dolly Parton lookalike, but is in fact also a middle-aged man called Leonard who still lives with his mother in her bungalow in Margate.

Next on the list was to build the chickens a pen to roam around. I don’t like pets, other than Labradors, and I don’t eat eggs after an overeager matron force-fed me a boiled egg at school nearly 30 years ago. So I saw little to gain from fencing the chickens in to protect them from Mr Fox. But you ignore the list at your peril!

As you can see, the sooner spring comes and the farm springs into action again (no pun intended), the better for all of us.

Will Howe

Will Howe farms 384ha of medium to heavy land at Ewerby Thorpe Farm, near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, growing wheat, oilseed rape and winter beans.