Hope springs eternal is one of the main adages in farming. No matter how bad the year, how bad the price, how bad the yield, we go and do it all over again. But better days have not followed poorer ones this back end.

Across the country the weather came in lumps with an occasional few days of glorious sunshine but then bursts of serious rain to undo any benefit. And so the story goes.

We always hope that when conditions are poor at sowing, they will improve thereafter.

Patchiness seems inevitable but for some growers it might be the best possible outcome

This was not the case this year. Some crops have had a lot of water on top since planting. That, combined with the fall in soil temperatures in October, is now leaving many growers concerned about establishment in recently sown crops.

Patchiness seems inevitable but for some growers it might be the best possible outcome.

Variable rainfall

This almost incessant wet is making field work difficult to impossible and perhaps the boat has sailed for many growers on heavier land.

An analysis of Met Éireann data shows considerable variability in rainfall amounts across the three planting months in the main tillage regions (see Figure 1).

But just as differences exist between stations, there was as much or more variation within relatively local regions.

The data in Figure 1 suggests that most regions appear to have around their 30-year three-month average so far. But this is only up to 12 November.

Some southern stations had a very wet October, eg Cork Airport, Roches Point, Moorepark and Johnstown Castle, while north Leinster stations have been very wet in November so far, following spells of heavy rain in the preceding months.

That wet is likely to kill any chances of getting satisfactory work done this month on heavier land, but who knows.

It seem that the areas worst affected by the wet weather have been parts of north Leinster, specifically parts of north Dublin, Meath and Louth.

The drop in soil temperature will partly explain the slowness in emergence

Planting progress varied from zero to about 30% but now there is great concern for the safety of those planted crops.

Most of the planting in this region was done in the past three weeks or so and many of these crops have still not emerged.

The drop in soil temperature will partly explain the slowness in emergence but the fact that these fields have been waterlogged for much of this time adds to establishment concerns.

The particular difficulties experienced in this region are best shown in Figure 2 – the daily rainfall amounts recorded by Tramline grower, Ronan Snow.

High levels of rainfall towards the end of September stopped field work until the second week in October and, with land just coming right, there was another downpour in the middle of the month.

This eventually dried up to allow an amount of field work but rain again on 25 October halted planting once again.

It takes less rain to wet land as the season progresses, especially on heavier ground.

Since early November, farmers in this region have been virtually washed out of their fields, as can be seen in Figure 2. And those rainfall figures only include the first 11 days of the month.