Cattle are ready to graze

What a hard act to follow; so many years of experience in farming condensed into 250 words. I only hope I can enlighten you with a little of what I do.

Sitting here at the end of February the air is blue with the smell of diesel and slurry. At last we’ve had a bit of dry weather. It nearly beat us, but year to year I am not too far behind. Urea on, slurry out, and while no cattle are grazing yet they will be soon. My re-seed has just about hung on and the rigs will need a further bit of attention.

Focus farm visits are going well. I’m just waiting for calving and lambing, which will happen from early March.

The horsemeat scandal rumbles on and has actually helped lift prices in Northern Ireland, but we are still 40p behind the rest of the UK. I was asked to appear on the BBC to defend beef farmers.

After I blamed the supermarkets, the presenter said that people want cheap food. When I told him we all have expensive phone contracts and Sky TV and said it was a matter of choice, he quickly moved on.

My kids are getting big. Lauren is at Harper Adams University and Robert hopefully will be going to Scotland’s Rural University College. I haven’t yet worked out how to sort, move and handle all the cattle totally on my own yet.

Hot off the press, I believe our Single Farm Payments are once again to be available for all to see. I wonder, if it was called supported food payment would the consumer be so interested?

Well that’s it for my first month. Good luck to Robert Neil and Robert Craig on their Nuffield travels. I missed out on that one.

A passing thought, be proud of what you do as you hold the lives and health of the people you feed.

Read more from our other livestock Farmer Focus writers