Good news stories are few and far between in farming at the moment.

Between depressing farm-gate prices across the board and a world of rain in September and October, you could be forgiven for having something of a sour face on you lately.

And that’s even before you listen to the radio or switch on the television to hear the latest expert tell us that farmers are the devil incarnate for causing climate change and stopping those cute little wolves from being released into the wilds of the Irish countryside.

Despite it all, there are still positives to bear in mind and here are a few:

1 . Things are quiet around the yard. The autumn-winter routine is settling in on most farms and there’s no pressure on trying to get silage cut, animals calved or lambed, or fertiliser spread before the rain.

2. Similarly, the clocks have gone back and darker evenings mean finishing whatever job you’re at a little bit earlier – shorter working hours and into the house in plenty time for Home and Away.

3. It’s early to talk about the shortest day of the year, but 21 December is little more than six weeks away. A week or two after that and there’ll be a bit of a stretch in the evenings.

4. Spring will arrive then and while it will be busy the sight of new life, suck-calves and lambs with bellies busting full of milk, will lift the darkest of spirits.

5. I spoke in jest above when I mentioned farmers being blamed for climate change and other environmental carnage but, in reality, the debate is maturing here too. In 2020, we’re likely to see farmers being rightly viewed as part of the solution to various green issues rather than being part of the problem.

6. This brings us to the new CAP and, hopefully, we’ll get some more detail on what that entails in the coming weeks and months.

It’s easy to make a dramatic hullabaloo about flattening of payments, and I have some sympathy for those who have been led to believe they’ll be wiped out completely if the dreaded flattening takes place. But not all of us have extremely high area-based direct payments.

Small consolation to those who may lose some payment, but many will gain.

7. Staying with CAP: new schemes will mean new opportunities. Yes, these schemes may force you to change the way you currently farm, but look at the current low margins and ask if change is necessarily a bad thing?

8 . The dreaded Brexit is off-the-table for another while as the EU has agreed to yet another extension request from the UK. The uncertainty is damaging but at least the hour-by-hour updates on Boris Johnson’s latest brain-fart will drop back to day-by-day updates for a few weeks at least.

So, there is an attempt to inject some positivity at farm-level as we enter the final months of 2019. If prices get better in 2020, then great. If they get worse, then something will have to give, and bigger changes will have to be made.

Either way, things never stay the same and we’ll have to get on with it one way or the other. Life is too short to do otherwise.

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