Autumn can prove a testing time for farmers

In my relatively short time as a farmer in beautiful Kinrossshire, October has always been a race against time. Whether it’s trying to grab any window of weather to keep dragging the combine out and chew our way through the last few acres of barley and beans, watching straw disappear as it is turned in the bout time after time in an attempt for the weak sunshine to dry it enough to let us bale it. Or washing the mud off the sprayer tractor after we slumped through another wet endrig, trying desperately to get that pre emergence spray on the winter crop.

Overall, autumn can be quite testing in this part of the world and last year seemed to be one of the worst with beans not combined till early November and over 70 acres of straw having to be chopped and spread in the bout as we never managed to get it dry.

Little did I know that this was going to be one the most testing nine months of weather in my short farming career.

The Beast from the East was followed by a non-existent spring and then the big summer drought tested us all to our limits and required some true resilience to keep going.

It is a great relief now to be able to sit here in the middle of October with harvest a distant memory and the slurry store empty well before the dreaded NVZ deadline, along with a long list of other jobs all tided up before the leaves have all fallen. Mother Nature really does have her own unique way of testing us but also rewarding us when we least expect it.

With the field work all but tidied up, focus moves not to long lie-ins or days off, but instead into the office to mull over the year that was and prepare for the one ahead.

The truth is the adverse weather didn’t just have a huge impact on the day-to-day running of agricultural businesses across Scotland but also brought massive consequences for our financial situations especially for those of us who keep livestock.

It’s with some relief then that many of us have received or are due to receive our Scottish BPS loan payments.

This year especially, this support will be a lifeline for Scottish agriculture, albeit one that we may not have the luxury of for many more years.

Our newsfeeds are full of speculative reports of what to expect after we leave the EU with many politicians determined that agriculture should stand on its own feet and release itself from its unhealthy reliance on subsides, but no one has come up with a concrete plan of what we are to expect as an industry in a post-Brexit world.

As always we will continue to do our best with what we have.

In my case I’ll enjoy this late October sunshine while using some of the BPS money to buy a new space heater for the parlour – just in case the Beast decides on a return visit in February.