As I flung open the cab door, the unknown caller said to me: ‘‘You’re better looking in reality than you are in the Journal.’’ I was mad busy sowing winter barley when his pickup drove right up to the tractor in the field.

This was guaranteed to annoy me because once I’m in sowing mode on a cracking day, nothing short of the arrival of Cathrina Claas-Muhlhauser or Cornelia Horsch would entice me out of the cab.

‘‘I read you’re looking for a tractor,’’ he said, undaunted by my less than sociable welcome, ‘‘and I knew your (late) father well. You could write a book about him’’. It hadn’t occurred to me before but he’s probably right. There clearly was a big effort to get me on side which worked and I began to thaw.

But the chances of him having exactly the sort of tractor that I might even consider buying was very remote. He’d be better off buying lottery tickets.

So I, guardedly, enquired as to what sort of tractor he had in mind, but I soon dismissed his proposal as being, I’m sure, a good secondhand Deutz tractor but not what I had in my head.

In case you’ve forgotten, it’s the nature green German ones with red wheels that I prefer and it rhymes with bent.

In truth, he wasn’t that far off the mark but, anyhow, I’ve since become ambivalent about the whole thing. Besides, another few days of this brilliant weather and the tractors will be going into early hibernation.

However, I could see that this was a decent and well-intentioned man so we chatted for a while but I had one eye on the clock; otherwise, my drilling goals for the day would fall behind. He was of the view that farms in Ireland are rapidly becoming like those in England and I dug deeper to see what he meant. He explained by saying farms were becoming ever bigger and lonelier with less manpower. And while we may not like it and it isn’t what Brussels intended, it is what’s happening on the ground. Good labour is both scarce and costly.

But with hectares to sow before I sleep, I bid him well and he went on his way.

I know I shouldn’t say it too loudly but what beautiful, dry weather we have had for the harvest, now the sowing and for generally getting work done. Even the wettest and stickiest of headlands are bone-dry this year.

We are practically all done and dusted except for the oats and second wheat. Have we sown too early? Probably, but who could resist? The barley is Belfry and Carneval and the wheat is Bennington, Costello and Graham.

Never before have we had such good seedbeds and, obviously, all without the plough.

Costs

Our diesel and wearing metal costs per acre are very low. The Horsch Sprinter drill is excellent in this regard and since we started using the tungsten-tipped points on the Joker toolbar, they last for hundreds of acres.

Granted, they cost a fortune to change but nonetheless are cost-effective.

We’ve rolled most of the fields but I’m conscious that the lack of clods could actually cause the soil to run together when it does rain but I think it’s the right decision. It also reduces slug damage and saves stone picking. And whatever about getting suitable labour to drive tractors, you’ll get no one to pick stones. Me? Can’t – I’ll be spraying.