Santa left me a crystal ball in my stocking this year, so I settled down to see what 2012 had in store.

Snow hits the country in the second half of January and brings the south-east to a standstill. Heathrow, however, continues business as usual after its timely purchase of a fleet of John Deere tractors and snow clearing kit.

March sees us don shorts as it comes in like a lamb, but goes out like a lion with a cold and wet spell. April continues mild but very showery. The upshot is a manic rush for field work in March including lots of top dressing because we all expect a spring drought. Crops end up over-thick and full of disease.

Spring turns into summer, still damp but now it’s cold as well. End of June, all through July and August and not a drop of rain. Poor harvest, cheap on drying, but it costs a fortune in cultivator steel. September wet. An Indian summer in October.

Sporting achievements: England crash out of the Six Nations. Rob Andrew and all the dinosaurs get the sack. In comes Graham Henry as coach and Sir Clive Woodward as director of rugby. The tight budget for the opening ceremony of the Olympics sees Boris Johnson on a bike as a one-man cabaret. The UK tops the medal tables thanks to winning all the gold medals in the sports that involve sitting down.

Politics: Conservative backbenchers force a referendum on membership of the EU, but before this can take place the Germans pull out of the euro having secretly been printing deutsche marks for months.

I hope your crystal balls are operating on a different channel to mine.

Happy new year!

Simon Beddows manages 1,000ha of arable land at Dunsden Green, south Oxfordshire. Cropping is cereals, oilseed rape, beans and forage maize.

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Farmer Focus arable Simon Beddows