They say it never rains but it pours and that’s definitely the case in Kilkenny where we have had over 120mm of rain since the Ploughing.

Ground conditions are holding up reasonably well on dry ground that probably needed the first 50mm of that rain but gaps and roadways are coming under a bit more pressure as it continues.

Grazing conditions are still reasonably good, especially when we can get a dry 24 hours overhead so clean-outs are OK most days.

We have stripwires up now for the last rotation to help with that and to protect regrowths for the spring.

Farm cover is at 1,100kg DM/ha, so we should have plenty of feed in the paddocks to keep meal feeding at 3kg or 4g and keep silage out of the diet for October at least.

Maize

We harvested our maize silage earlier this week and a bumper crop means we can put 150t aside in an old indoor pit in the calving area.

We will feed this through November to buffer the cows and extend the grazing season into December, if possible.

We had a pit of maize in the home yard left over from last spring

We should get this comfortably used by Christmas and get our calving area power-washed again and back ready for the spring rush.

We had a pit of maize in the home yard left over from last spring so we put the rest of this year’s maize in a pit on an outfarm as a rainy day store after the lessons learned from spring and summer 2018.

The quality looks excellent with this maize silage with plenty of grain through it.

Silage testing

We will test the silage in due course but there is great peace of mind in putting a good bank of good -quality fodder into reserve for whatever the next few years throws at us.

Off farm, it’s all about the Bs with Brexit, Boris, Borders and Budget

We seem to get more and more extreme weather patterns in recent years with exceptional wet conditions followed by exceptional cold and exceptional drought.

Off farm, it’s all about the Bs with Brexit, Boris, Borders and Budget making the headlines this month.

All are interlinked with Boris hell bent on pushing Brexit through regardless of a deal being agreed. Hopefully a disaster can be averted.

Budgets across Ireland and Europe have contingencies built in but farmers’ pockets will be hit hard despite these funds.

Hopefully, plenty of midnight oil will get burnt and we can get some sort of a deal ironed out.

The dragged-out nature of the process is causing as much long-term damage

It’s as important to get a result and an end game now with the whole Brexit mess as it is getting the right result.

It’s time to move on now and deal with the outcome, however bad it may be. The dragged-out nature of the process is causing as much long-term damage as the outcome will cause.

Our own budget in Ireland has built-in provisions for a no-deal Brexit which may be geared around borrowing money if the worst happens and not borrowing if we can get a good outcome, but even the threat of a crash-out is having a negative effect on our planned spending for next year.

Making provisions and attending negotiations are all costing money all the time and the longer it goes on, the more it costs so, hopefully, we get some sort of conclusion at the end of the month.