What a glorious spell of fine weather we have had for almost four weeks with hardly a drop of rain. It’s been the perfect antidote to the wet winter. Crops have been sown in excellent conditions and timely too.

It would restore your faith in the seasons and especially so as RTÉ’s prophet of doom, George Lee, hasn’t mentioned global warming for a month now.

It’s always a feel good factor to be up to date with field work and it hasn’t happened in a long time. With all done and the sun shining, I’d love a blast in the Mazda MX5. Eh, not allowed.

I’ve a feeling that the spring-sown crops maybe the highlight of the year which is something I’ve never said before. Certainly our spring barley should yield better than the winter barley we have, which resembles my head – patchy in the middle and every growth stage around the edges. Winter wheat is also too patchy to generate good average yields this year.

The winter oilseed rape is spindly-looking but in flower now. The winter oats look OK but oats will never make you up and we have rather a lot of them this year. The beans are close to emergence. I hope they look better than the first field of emerged barley – it’s a disgrace with two blocked coulters. Visible from the road? Yes – and from outer space.

The wheat’s first growth regulator spray is due this week – which tells you how behind it is.

Cattle

All the cattle will be out this week but we’re not inundated with grass. Foolish traditionalist that I am, we carried the usual stock number this winter, which I regret at today’s factory prices.

While we, as farmers, can carry on with the work, nonetheless I’m fed up with these further weeks of lockdown. I find the whole scenario depressing and, I can only imagine, all the more so if you are not working. I personally think the virus should be managed differently. Hundreds of businesses won’t be able to survive this extended lockdown and will never re-open. Those which may survive will open to a very changed world, a world in the grip of a recession, perhaps like we have never seen before.

In many ways the unthinkable has happened. If someone had said to you last Christmas that one quarter of the world will be in lockdown by Easter, you would have said they’re crazy – that can’t happen in today’s world. Public health in the so-called developed world was entirely taken for granted. A rogue virus has escaped the grasp of scientists and been allowed to run amok and leave a trail of misery and lonely death in its wake.

There are, of course, many lessons to learn from this period in our history. The unthinkable can now happen. Food, like health, is taken for granted. Likewise world starvation could also happen by unforeseen circumstances. Brussels would do well to stop fooling around with European agriculture which is continually being locked down with environmental shackles to production. GM technology, for example, should be embraced and pesticide product withdrawals should cease unless there is a cost-effective substitute. Essential glyphosate – for sustainable tillage farming – should remain.

It’s going to be a very changed world out there and we‘ve been caught off-guard. We don’t want the same to happen with food production.

And finally, to end on a lighter note. In desperation, on Easter Saturday, I brought Mrs P grocery shopping. It’s the only way I could legitimately go for a COVID-busting blast in the MX5. You see, the boot’s much too tiny for collecting sprays … couldn’t even fit the Easter eggs.