I always take comfort from reading Farmer Focus because you discover there is always someone in a worse situation. For example, I feel as though I’m always the last to complete my autumn spraying, but then find someone else has more left to do.

In wheat crops, the pre-emergence mix of Liberator (diflufenican + flufenacet) and Hurricane (diflufenican) has worked extremely well – a little too well on some of the lighter ground with crop damage occurring after 35mm of rainfall over two days.

Where weather and ground conditions allowed, we have applied Atlantis (iodosulfuron + mesosulfuron) and Stomp (pendimethalin) to some bad blackgrass fields. We wouldn’t normally do this, but we are definitely seeing yield penalties here from holding off our Atlantis spraying until spring.

The oilseed rape looks well after being established for the third season behind the subsoiler. As temperatures plunged, we managed to get Kerb (propyzamide) applied to the whole area before the big freeze set in. No snow here yet, just hard frosts.

The month ahead holds plenty of training days to keep those BASIS Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points up as well as finalising next year’s budgets and getting the specification for the new Bateman sprayer sorted out.

The biggest concern is the announcement that this year’s Single Payment Scheme funds might be delayed, and the payment window has only just opened. As a business we haven’t received our payments until June for the past three years, which blows the cashflow out of the water and causes untold stress. Why this happens is beyond belief.

Spraying out the footpaths in our wheat and oilseed rape fields with glyphosate is next on the agenda. Now where are those thermal trousers?