For a year that promised so much it may be like a pre-election politician and deliver shag all. The weather has not only broken but it has gone into destruct mode as well. And certainly, the spring barley is a case in point. Sown with promise in March dust, it had everything going for it, but for all of that it’s not half the crop of last year.

But that’s fine. We needed it last year, whereas it’s irrelevant this year as we have just a sorrowful 8ha of the crop.

However, the wheat is now flowering and the weather is lousy for that. Frequent showers and high humidity usually lead to ear diseases which are detrimental to yield and quality.

Obviously, I hope this may not be the case, but I’m nervous. There’s still huge potential out there but we’ve been here many times before.

And all that is without even mentioning grain prices which are too low for today’s costs. Nor am I looking for a full €300/t, but we need dried prices to be well north of €250 for cereal growing to be viable.

Grain prices

It’s also particularly tough to have to take the current grain prices when every other sector is flying.

Could cereal growing fall into the void where the unfortunate suckler man has been for years? Well, it’s certainly heading that way and we all know what Government inaction and low beef prices did to the important suckler cow sector.

We need serious no-nonsense help from both Brussels and Dublin if tillage farming is to remain viable in this country. And grain traders like Halls and all the rest of them need to get their finger out and value Irish grain.

Mrs P has now moved into full-on wedding planning mode and it’d be easier to get Pope Leo on the phone than her. Now I don’t know if Leo is into gardening but Mrs P eats, sleeps and drinks gardening. Since the event is at our home, I suggest that she’s a little off message on this one – as long as people have enough (food) to eat and to drink, that’s all that really matters. Get this wrong and yes, certainly, we’ll have to go into hiding.

Now you may recall that we had a lot of big evergreen garden trees blown down in storm Éowyn. Extraction of these left the lawn looking like a clearfell in a Mayo bog so that had to be remedied, which we did.

But it matters little to me whether there’s hostas or hellebores on the patio or if the edging’s done around the gazebo and the pond etc.

Matter of fact there’s an awful lot of edging going on and Mrs P would take gold in Bloom for edging but will she lift the heaps after her?

Frankly, no. She asks me will the JCB be here for the heaps? Likely it wouldn’t be, so in order to be seen to help, I bought a skid steer loader to whizz around collecting stuff which I do in the evening. The plan was that Mrs P would be able do this herself but it’s an unruly little brute and she’d demolish the place.

I also had to buy a generator. Seems to me like there’s a lot of messers in generator hire and no one that I spoke to could guarantee me a generator for the day.

Anyhow, it’ll be handy to have and no, it’s not in for a TAMS grant.

Finally, if nothing else, a spell of settled weather for early July would be nice. Do you think Pope Leo would be any good for a prod with that?