As I sit here thinking about this article, I’m determined to find something positive to write about. So where do I start? The weather?! Well maybe not.

Ok so it’s not been wall to wall rain for the last month but it’s not been far off it and the ground has barely had a chance to drain on those days between the low-pressure systems. Although given the horrendous conditions further north last weekend, we should perhaps count our blessings!

The weather forecasts haven’t been overly helpful either – we’ve continually had that ‘jam tomorrow’ promise of a good spell in about four days’ time which turns to drizzle by the time it gets here.

That said, we did manage to get about 35 acres of winter barley sown three weeks ago, which is coming up nicely and we squeezed in another 18 acres at the start of this week too. However, there’s still a fair amount of winter wheat to get in and we’re still needing to take a further cut of silage off so it’s going to be busy when we do get that break in the weather.

Thankfully the ground is still ok for carrying youngstock but I’m not sure the damp air and this unseasonal mildness – although clearly good for grass growth – is a great combination from a pneumonia point of view so we’ve had to house them.

Maybe the milk price will give me something positive to say? Well after the milk price holding for the last few months it had been hoped that maybe this was the inflection point and it would start to head back up as we moved into the expensive winter months. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be and last week we got notification of a 1.5ppl (4%) drop from start of November although maybe a very small bit of festive cheer in at least there was the promise not to drop it further in December!

Overall, we’ve now seen milk prices drop around 30% since November last year, with the rollercoaster of milk pricing over the last two years taking us from 30ppl to 50ppl and now back down to 34ppl, so about 10% rise over the 48 months. Such volatility in the price makes forward planning particularly around cash flow a nightmare, especially when the tax bill comes in January next year.

And although some of the input price spikes we saw last year have dissipated a bit there have still been some huge rises over the 48 months – red diesel is up 45%, electricity 60% (and potentially more depending when contracts were agreed). And wages will also have risen at least 17% if they matched the National Minimum Wage but more likely quite a bit more as staff have become more difficult to find and retain.

So where then to find positivity? Well, as I said the grass growth has been good this year so there’s plenty of good quality silage in the pits which will hopefully keep feed costs down. Plus, this year’s winter wheat did reasonably well at an average of just over 3.5t/acre.

The beans were a bit more variable, the earlier sown field averaged around 3t/acre while a later sown field (thankfully quite a bit smaller too) was nearer 1t/acre.

More importantly the cows seem to be milking well on the forage. Despite the average DIM being nearly 200, they are achieving 39 litres sold at 4.05%BF and 3.47%P. The %Protein figure is the highest it’s been in a long time, and means we get the maximum protein bonus for the milk.

Unfortunately though, we’re going to have to put the herd (and staff) through the stress of another TB test in the coming weeks as the breakdown at a neighbouring farm has led the APHA to ask that we do a ‘contiguous’ test even though we’ve been extremely careful not to graze any of the grass fields on that boundary. Hopefully we’ll get the all clear once again but it is always a worry.

And fingers crossed on the weather front too with the current forecast looking to give a ‘prolonged’ period of dry weather over this weekend- surely the forecast has to be right at some point!