Farming in fine weather is a pleasant business and work expands to fill the good weather available. We’ve been busy on a number of fronts. The T2 went on the wheat, the first cut of silage was taken and we’re draining a 10ha field.

I also trade straw for farmyard manure with a neighbour whereby we clean out his sheds and draw the muck back to a field heap, which we’ve just completed.

It’s important to identify a good source of muck that’s free from contaminants such as dead animals, mineral buckets, tyres, black plastic, concrete blocks and you name it. We have a good source and together with a small amount of our own, it’ll give 40ac of stubble a good plastering in the autumn.

The wheat looks well and there’s room for optimism particularly as forward prices for November have hit the €190 mark.

But, as is so often the case, wheat yields are made or lost in the weather that’s to come in June. Dry, bright and cool is the optimum.

It may seem an odd time of the year to be at drainage work but it’s the proper time when fields are so dry and structural damage is non-existent. But because of the absence of groundwater to prove the levels are correct, it’s necessary to use a laser level on the digger to get the falls right.

The pebble-filled shores are in the tramlines, 24m apart.

It’s always interesting to open a trench in a field to have a look at the soil profile. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the heavy silty clay loam in the topsoil overlay a nice-plasticity clay subsoil, with few stones, which will be ideal for moling.

This will be carried out at a depth of 20in and across the new shores, intercepting the porous fill.

Driving in the countryside

With the good weather, I’m always keen to get out for a wind-in-the-hair blast in the Mazda MX-5. Only with the roof down do you get the full-on driving experience with all the sights, sounds and scents of the countryside.

This activity is relegated to fine Sundays because if the locals saw me at any other time they’d think I’d finally lost the plot, even if I was really going to get a part.

You’re kind of conspicuous in an open-top sports car.

But prior to this leisure pursuit, there was a time when we’d head off on a summer Saturday afternoon in the auld tub down the canal but since my crew have either grown up or emigrated or died, the boat is sadly confined to dry dock.

Anyhow, back to the MX-5. While most of my driving trips are very pleasant, I have to tell you about one Sunday trip down to rural Wexford.

There was me and Mrs P, resplendent in summer dress and shades, stopped at a country crossroads – the sort of one where there might have been comely maidens dancing but I didn’t see any. ‘Twas far from comely maidens that appeared.

We were casually deliberating about which road to take when the bucolic peace was shattered by the noise of a souped-up Nissan Micra coming up behind us, full of gurriers blowing the horn. I was slow to move on – the road was wide enough – but they quickly became abusive.“Get out of the way you posh pr**k,” they roared.

Me, posh? In a 2007 car, with Benjy Riordan sideburns and friends like Bruno? Hardly.

It must have been the Biggles driving goggles. Either way, I didn’t hang around to argue.

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