Even though it’s not yet October, the place already has a wintery feel about it. Cattle are getting through closed-up grass quickly and the high sugars of spring and early summer are clearly missing. We have separated out the most forward cattle and put them in a big paddock near the yard.

We give them a little silage and 1kg of meal in the shed each morning. I cannot believe how they queue up in the morning to be let in on the slats. Once they finish what we have given out with the diet feeder, they happily go back out and graze.

From a purely visual point of view, they have been transformed over the last fortnight of supplementation. Beef farmers’ attitudes to autumn supplementation while cattle are still at grass vary – some simply give them more room and hope that by consuming more, they will continue to gain at least some weight. Others have troughs in the fields and physically bring supplement out to them.

A few years ago, I was on a large beef farm and they had built a feeding facility at a number of strategic points around the farm that were serviced with internal farm roadways.

From a purely visual point of view, they have been transformed over the last fortnight of supplementation

This, in my view, is the ideal, but the cost of the setup was significant. We will stick with what we have for the moment and monitor progress.

Meanwhile, following this year’s disappointing winter barley harvest, we are just now preparing to plough. This time last year, the winter barley was peeping above the ground and looked really well. Little did I think that the incidence of take-all and barley yellow dwarf virus were going to extract a toll on both yield and quality.

However, we will give the winter barley another go. We have the seed in the yard and we have allocated land for the usual mixture of winter wheat for seed after the beans and wheat for feed in rotation after oats.

Direct drilling may be more carbon friendly, but it lacks the visual appeal of a well ploughed, tilled and sown field!

We will sow the oats in rotation after the oilseed rape while the beans will be aimed for as close to St Patrick’s Day as possible, but all of this depends on the weather allowing us to complete everything as planned.

It’s this balance between not sowing too early or too late that weather and soil conditions cause real problems in tilling and sowing. We ran too late three years’ ago and paid dearly. So far, the oilseed rape has emerged well, but the direct drilled fields look a mess.

We have the herbicide out, so I presume that in time, as the grass dies back, the rows of oilseed rape will be the only growth visible.

Direct drilling may be more carbon friendly, but it lacks the visual appeal of a well ploughed, tilled and sown field!