Is there anything nicer than an Indian Summer in September? Lovely sunny mornings with a chill in the air, the dewy grass covered in the ballooning silk of the money spiders anxious to disperse on the rising breeze.

Some of the beech trees have already turned, and a tree which you’ve never really noticed before may catch your eye as a thing of great, if transient, beauty.

The fields are really dry now, with the cattle rising dust as they scramble for the troughs full of their morning muesli. In the evening twilight – the gloaming – darkness falls quickly, but it’s arguably the perfect day length at 12 hours.

And the aroma of woodsmoke hangs in the air as fires are lit after a hastened retreat from the chilly garden and the shrill song of a startled blackbird that’s unique to autumnal evenings.

I know the risks with early sowing, but like Oscar Wilde I can resist anything bar temptation.

With the lovely weather, it was too good not to be sowing, so I cracked on 18 September and loaded up the drill.

It is the earliest I’ve ever begun autumn cereal sowing, but only by a couple of days.

The barley seed is the barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) resistant variety Molly, which should eliminate the principal risk of early sowing.

Besides, farming by dates is seldom a good thing. If conditions are good it has to be right to make the most of them.

It also spreads the risk, and we will be relegated to plenty of later sowing this year with wheat following the uncut beans (possibly by mid-October?) and then potatoes anyway.

Equally, it’s too early for wheat following a cereal.

Though for the first time we have sown some winter barley following oilseed rape and oats. Why? Not sure.

The overriding mantle has always been that min-till (or no-till) really belongs to September.

With that said, we have hit the reset button by ploughing a field for barley that was plagued with waterlogging last season.

Swallows

Sitting out on one of these nice evenings taking tea with Mrs P, the swallows were making a racket in the garage to which they return every year – primarily to crap on my lawnmower.

“They’re just preparing for the long flight to Africa,” Mrs P said, “and I think that’s further than you’ve ever flown.”

“It’s not just me,” I replied, “Ryanair wouldn’t have a clue where Africa is.

“They’d have to follow the swallows to an isolated shed in Mombasa, which would also pass as an airport for them,” I replied.

But never mind Ryanair, I really don’t get the swallows. How come teenage swallows have never revolted and said they’d couldn’t be arsed flying to Mombasa this year and just stay in Meath?

If they stayed here, they’d find our winters are not freezing like they used to be in the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, which is probably what put them off staying.

Or for that matter, if they are so fond of Africa why don’t they just stay there for their winter? I’m sure with global warming it’s now a pleasant place to lie up.

Anyways, their Irish-born prodigy have departed to the sub-Saharan plains for a proper African summer, very unlike what passes for one here.

But the twits, they’ve gone too soon and missed our Indian Summer.