I doubt there are many people around who haven’t uttered the words ‘if only’ to themselves at some point in their lives. It’s certainly a term I’ve been musing over for the last four weeks, after our cow went down.

If only I’d rung the vet, or if only we’d used a different bull, but hindsight is always 20/20 and so far we’ve not discovered a method to go back in time and change a split second decision. In farming there has to be confidence in the actions we carry out daily, where we have to weigh up our abilities against self doubt and act accordingly.

However, we do learn best from our mistakes and nearly as well from other people’s when we view the resulting consequences, so the best learning opportunities often arise from the least likely sources and this learning curve is one I’ll not forget in a hurry.

While we have not yet made the call to halt our daily battle with the cow in question, it’s likely we will have come to a decision one way or another by the time this is published, as delaying it out of hope does nobody any favours.

Meanwhile, farming has to continue on regardless and we finally got around to baling a few more meadows and adding 30 more bales into our winter stocks. Ever optimistic, we’ve held back a couple of lighter meadows in the hope that we can get hay at some stage, though it won’t be the end of the world if we’ve to make silage from them at the same time as our second-cut fields.

The poorer quality grazing has had a knock-on effect on the cows, and we’re seeing a higher-than-usual demand on the creep feeder for the calves. All are thriving well so far, and the older calves were wormed last weekend, after noticing they had looser manure than normal, even after taking the wet grass into account. While we rotate between treatments each year, they were treated with a pour-on this time, as all are docile and could easily be wormed while walking out of the creep feeder or while snoozing in the field. Definitely less stress all round, as it took less than 10 minutes, instead of having to gather them into the shed.

Even though the weather has remained on the cooler side of things, there is still a healthy amount of flies knocking about and after a couple of summer mastitis cases last year, we’re watchful of any sores or cuts on the cows. One in particular seems to have quite sensitive skin and most years she requires some added protection against flies. With no Cheno Unction to hand one day, I gave her a liberal covering of a green barrier spray and tar and thought nothing more of it, until I spotted a very green-nosed calf walking nonchalantly around the field that evening. While I’ve heard of a person being brown-nosed or green-eyed, it’s the first time I witnessed something being green nosed.

While I don’t miss the backbreaking work, it’s possibly the first time in centuries that no turf has been sourced for use as winter fuel. Despite having two turf banks of our own, it takes a really dry summer to save them and those are increasingly difficult to come by.

With two houses predominantly warmed by solid fuel, the only saving grace of ash dieback may become apparent in frosty weather.