For anyone who thinks farmers are prone to complaining about a range of issues from weather woes to low prices, I have a message – the month of July on this farm has been nothing short of perfect.

We’ve put up with quite a few barriers in the past year that tested both physical and mental resilience. Plenty of us questioned why the tide rarely flowed in our favour. But, for the record, I can only think of one negative in the last month, and even that merely served to highlight just how satisfying our agricultural life can be.

That negative came when transferring flights (between terminals) in Heathrow airport. It is an experience every farmer should have to endure, simply to give them a sense of perspective.

When you’re galloping through a vast airport, surrounded by people just as tense as yourself with disinterested and surly staff not caring whether you miss your flight or not, then green fields and quiet farmyards suddenly seem like another planet. That comparison is, honestly, no exaggeration.

Caribbean

Early July saw Susan and I jetting off to The Bahamas to see our son, Sam, who is on a two-year teaching contract out there.

It is a completely different type of holiday to anything I am used to, but I managed to cope with having to cool off in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea. It’s like getting into a lukewarm bath, and entering the water is done without the inch-at-a-time method that I employ when faced with Strangford Lough.

I’d estimate the cost of living out there to be almost double compared with home, and anyone who thinks food prices are too high in this country should price-check the supermarkets in Nassau. Again, it makes you appreciate just how cheap it is to fill the shopping trolley here (or should that be how far the retailers have screwed us to the floor?).

Grass

After a mild panic in the middle of June regarding grass growth, I sowed about 30 units of nitrogen across a few fields. Steady rainfall while we were away turned that situation around, and swards were looking fairly lush by the time we returned.

Jenny (our daughter) had been left in charge, and there were no urgent text messages requesting the phone number for the fallen stock lorry.

Usually something manages to drop dead as soon as I drive down the lane, but all classes of livestock remained fit and healthy.

TB test

With the script for July starting to pan out like the ideal month, my good fortune continued.

We had a TB test as soon as we came home. It was the final part of an almost year-long process involving three associated herds and means the main dairy farm (who I rear heifers for) should now be able to sell off a pile of calves. I was dreading having one reactor.

Lambs

Next on the ‘perfect month’ list was the weighing of a batch of 90 weaned lambs. I thought they looked alright, but the acid test is always the first one fired into the weighbridge.

Three weeks after weaning and being put onto silage aftermath should translate into about 5kg of gain, but you can never be certain. So, the big moment arrived, and with palpable relief, he was 45kg.

Any shepherd will tell you about the horrible sinking feeling in your gut when the first lamb only weighs 43 or 44kg, and you know rightly it’s going to take a month to turn things around. In the end, 40 lambs were marked for selling.

Birthday

The end of the month saw me celebrating my 62nd birthday, and my newfound reduced workload meant taking things easy on the day (as befitting a man of advancing years).

In truth, having less work on my plate was a huge contributing factor to the overall success of the holiday.

For decades, I used to detest the first week back at work after a break, because the job list had piled up and it took nearly a fortnight to get back on top again.

Easing slowly back into the working week is a new experience for me, and one that I’d like to repeat a few more times. I’ve a funny feeling I’m developing an aversion to hard work.

PS: Three hours after writing about the ‘perfect’ July, I received several phone calls to say 23 of my calves were in someone’s garden about half a mile from their field. As they say in these parts, “That’ll learn ye”