Farming News – May 2023

I always look forward to May, a month of promise of warm summer days. An easy month when the cattle and sheep are outdoors, eating the spring grass, after the winter when they needed feeding twice a day, bedding up every second day, and mucking out every six weeks.

I still have a small area of spring barley to plough, harrow and sow and then the potato land will need rotavating, ridging up and planting with the seed for this summer. I am only going to grow half as many this year because I lost too much money on last year’s potatoes; I might as well grow crops which earn money rather than unprofitable ones. I have a feeling that this year will be a ‘grass year’ by which I mean that we should have good grass yields after the wet spring. Autumn sown cereals should also yield well for the same reason.

On the first two weekends of June, I am holding my first ever exhibition of paintings, 50 years since I began. More details next month.