My father used to argue that taking an average for any situation told you nothing at all.

He frequently said, “Sure if you put your feet in the oven and your head in the fridge, then your average temperature would be perfect”.

I suppose he was making a point. And equally, if you averaged this spring’s weather conditions and last year at the same time, the result would suggest that the two-year period was about right.

I am tempted to say that we may never see poorer conditions than last spring, with the constant rainfall (after a wet autumn and winter), and, equally, we may never experience any more favourable weather than the period from mid-February to mid-April this year.

As farmers, most of our comments regarding the weather tend to focus on any conditions that make our daily life more difficult. But this year has to be marked out as a rare chance to fully embrace being completely integrated in Mother Nature’s more lenient moments.

Lambing

It probably started with the lambing, and although it is often hard to appreciate a bit of good weather when you’re tired and busy, there may not have been a single day in almost eight weeks when freshly lambed ewes couldn’t be turned out to grass from the lambing shed. Maybe shepherds in other parts of the country would disagree, but I am struggling to recall any of those nights where you were lying in bed, cursing yourself for not keeping those ‘green’ doubles inside a while longer.

Barley

The next indicator that 2025 was turning into a cracker of a year came with the establishment of the spring barley. My heavy, worn field was sown on 25 March, and this was the opposite of last year when we eventually managed to plant on 15 May. I come from an old-fashioned, outdated school of thought that was brought up to value soil structure and its preservation as sanctimony – working a field when it was a bit raw marked you out as some sort of pariah and those ancient lessons are slow to diminish. However, despite the early sowing date, soil conditions were absolutely fine. Actually, by the time the Cambridge roller was run over it, the clouds of dust were following me up the field like a Saharan sandstorm.

Cattle

This incredible spell of perfect weather then continued, and cattle were turned out to grass on 5 April. Fertiliser had been applied nearly a month previously (in, surprise, surprise, good field conditions) and to see them galloping round and round the field without large wet clods being excavated by flying hooves was, once again, a pleasant change.

More importantly, the ongoing dry spell made grazing decisions much easier to control, although at one point I complained that it had created an entirely new set of management rules. Earlier turnout, cutting off meal feeding to ewes, and being able to graze fields right down to the correct height felt like sailing into uncharted waters on this farm. (I can always find something to give off about).

Shelter

Another startling contrast was checking sheep in early April. Last year, it was all about welly boots, and ewes being tucked into the back of the hedge to shelter from the rain. They were back under those same thorns this year, but it was to get out of the sun before midday. And marching across fields in your working boots is an altogether more comfortable experience.

Weeds

Irrespective of how perfect the weather may be, our farming life can always throw up tricky dilemmas. Along with the great growing conditions, my splendid displays of docks began to show themselves much earlier than normal.

And this created one of those great three-way debates inside Derek’s head. The environmental part of me that was trying to protect clover by not using nasty chemicals came up against the pragmatist who thought four years of non-spraying was more than reasonable by anyone’s standards (and the steadily diminishing clover content played a huge part too).

Then the remnants of a dinosaur from the 1980s entered the argument and reckoned those unsightly weeds simply needed to be wiped out as soon as possible before they spread any further.

After walking up and down and across this 13-acre field about three times, the decision to roast them with full-rate Doxstar won the argument.

I don’t feel in any way proud of my actions, but it was a timely reminder that, even in a perfect spring, you sometimes have to make decisions that are a bit unfashionable but perhaps are for the long-term benefit of the farm.