Looking at the news headlines this week, I wonder if I am the only person to spot that Rishi [Sunak - prime minister] is the perfect anagram of Irish.

Hopefully, this is a portent to the right result for the Northern Ireland Protocol - only time will tell.

I have come to the conclusion that the world, particularly the world of politics, is full of touchline judges.

Sometimes I wish that real life could be like a game show and the referee's whistle and T-shirt could be transferred to the touchline judges to see how they would cope.

With the milk price falling faster than a politician without a parachute, I’m not too alarmed, as this will only increase the exodus of producers exiting the industry, causing milk to go short so that the price has to rise again.

Land rental

What is alarming at the moment is the price of rented land, since we always double our acreage by renting, and this year there has been a hiccup.

The other end of the table and I are a long way from home on our annual holiday, but it’s very reassuring to be able to use mobile phones to keep in touch and negotiate, although I hope we won’t see the rises that we’re hearing about in Ireland.

I keep running the calculation through my head and I still haven’t got the answer. Should I rent more land and use less fertiliser or rent less land and use more fertiliser?

Diet

I wish I could discover the correlation between diet and the urea in milk. In the past, we have had ureas in the high-30s and since Christmas, I have been struggling to stay in double figures.

Is this because we introduced maize silage into the diet or because the silage made last spring was made three weeks late and is low in protein?

Urea levels are doubly important to us, as some of our milk goes for cheese making. We have a student on the farm at the moment who has to do a 10,000 word dissertation and is searching for a subject and I’m encouraging her to do one on urea.

At the moment, our 70-year-old mains water supply keeps springing leaks. I have been delaying putting in a new system, hoping for grant aid, but feel I can’t wait any longer. The question is since it’s plastic, do I mole or trench it in?

Calving progress

We’re halfway through calving the spring group and, so far, have managed to sell pre-weaned calves privately to buyers who seem to appreciate acquiring calves that haven’t been through the stress or disease risk of markets.

The cows are out grazing twice a day, but still being heavily buffer-fed, since we didn’t leave enough residuals over the winter and there is very little regrowth on the plate meter due to the cold weather.

In fact, we’re quite glad to be away at the moment, since they’re due to have a -4C frost overnight.