With the first warm day of spring, there are fertiliser spinners and sprayers charging around the countryside like a non-league goalkeeper at a pasty stand.

However, I am still to turn a wheel in anger and probably won’t for a good few weeks yet.

With all the locals excitedly talking of the imminent arrival of spring and the start of their drilling campaign, I have to satisfy myself with monitoring the news, trying to second-guess who will press the red button first – Donald J Trump or Vlad the Impaler.

With the winter workshop/talk/conference season drawing to a close, it was nice to sign off with the best of the lot.

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I spent a very pleasant day in Stratford attending the Base UK AGM to learn more about my foray into conservation agriculture. I came home thinking I could take on the slugs, compaction and residue and win.

You may wonder where this cavalier attitude has come from. Well, it is inspired by a short, fat bloke with a big arse from Birmingham (his description, not mine!), who incidentally knows nothing about farming but is a YouTube no-till convert.

Fear is holding us back

The thing holding all of us back is ourselves, or the fear we emit from within. So we need to think positively and banish the gremlins to the back of your mind.

I am certainly guilty of becoming more risk-averse. Ten years ago, in the years BC (before children), I would take a chance in the knowledge that I had the energy and time to correct the situation if it went belly-up.

All field and establishment trials were conducted next to roads, as the added pressure of the certain neighbourly ridicule in the event of a failure meant I got it right.

Therefore, I am going to continue with my policy of summer cover cropping some land, this year next to the road, in order to guarantee 0% blackgrass seed return and a prompt entry into winter wheat to return to a more settled rotation.

I am even considering buying some sheep to graze them, but this might just be the inner stockman acting as today’s gremlin.

Will Howe farms 384ha of medium to heavy land at Ewerby Thorpe Farm, near Sleaford, Lincolnshire. He mainly grows spring crops and also manages a further 200ha on contract.