SEVERAL decades ago a friend who farmed near Gretna and also near Duns told me that grass production was higher in the west, but however good his grain looked, it never weighed like the grain from his farm in Berwickshire.

There's nothing new in this. Nevertheless, he was always amazed at the extent of the difference. This year's summer here probably approximates more to summers in the west than the east.

For all that the farm looks well. The extra rainfall and low evaporation have resulted in huge amounts of grass which we have struggled to use.

Twice, our efforts to make hay have failed. At least we now have the option to wrap the grass instead of endlessly turning it and watching it get blacker.

The grain crops too look well, remain standing and have not interested an epidemic of crows. I suspect that bushel weights will be low. Most of our grain gets fed to cattle or sheep so we will need to remember that a bag will weigh less than normal.

This summer won't be remembered here for having anything like the economic impact of summer 2012 when rivers ran through our fields and cows waded in mud.

Six weeks ago, we reseeded a field which is too stony to plough using heavy discs and an Opico drill. We reseeded the field about five years ago intending to leave the grass down long term.

A heavy infestation of chickweed spoiled the reseed so we took it out after a year and sowed kale which we grazed with cows. An unforeseen side effect was that kale roots choked some of the tile drains so the 2012 deluge had an even greater effect than elsewhere on the farm.

In 2013, we sowed a short term mixture without clover so we could nail the chickweed. This year's reseeding, no doubt helped by the unending rain, has been successful.

We sprayed the remaining chickweed with a clover safe chemical which has worked. Since then, sheep have been unable to keep on top of the grass so now 40 or so cows and calves are grazing it. I often read that grazed grass is a cheap feed. I am not so sure.

It doesn't come for nothing.

We have sprayed the next door field with Roundup. The field's name 'Purgatory' more than hints at a wealth of stone although we haven't yet come across the boulder which an old rabbit trapper told me took a ploughman in the horse era three days to get from one side of it to the other.

This time we will sow a silage mix without clover directly into the turf using an Aitchison drill. We will try to get rid of the weeds, mainly annual meadowgrass, over the next two years and after that sow it out with a long term grazing mix including clover.

I was interested in reading in the chairman of the SNFU livestock committee's blog that 'teaming up with the SRUC and other stakeholders' they are looking at how to improve the genetics of the national sheep flock.

They had better be quick as, unlike dairy producers who are addressing over production by producing more, ewe numbers are falling fast. The aim of this committee is 'to provide farmers with tools to breed better sheep'.

There are plenty tools already there. The challenge is to make their operation simple and easy so that flockmasters use them.

To date, most recording has been done in flocks of terminal breeds which are generally small in number and the objectives are easier to quantify. The recording work at the terminal end undoubtedly raises the quality of the end product. However, the main reason for declining sheep production may be its high labour requirement.

Some of the most successful and advanced sheep recording schemes on the planet are in New Zealand and Australia. Actually, their main advantage over us in managing large scale commercial flocks is their long history of ruthlessly culling passengers.

Without weight recording and in the absence of the best old style shepherds who knew the ewes with the best lambs, simplicity dictates that the primary focus in sheep improvement in the UK must be on eliminating the troublemakers.

Any ewe which has caused problems lambing, has prolapsed, been short of milk, had bad feet or couped repeatedly should be marked at the time by lugmark and culled at weaning.

Of course, there are breeds of sheep in the UK now which, in different ways, require less management. Some shed their wool, which reduces flystrike, shearing and dagging.

A breeder told me recently that a New Zealander told him that whatever a sheep looks like, if it makes a profit, you get used to it.

Well ... maybe!

I remember hearing something similar in my youth when composite sheep breeds were created using the Finnish Landrace. They were so awful looking that they never took off.

At the other end of the wool spectrum, various new breeds with a strong Kiwi influence are being tried. I used NZ Romney's for some years and liked them very much.

Their lambs at slaughter wouldn't compare with a Texel or Suffolk and their heavy fleeces required shearing twice a year or at least crutching before lambing.

Their mothering ability at lambing was way beyond any of the other 10 breeds or cross-breeds I have been involved with over my lifetime.

Outstanding among these other breeds was the Colbred, which I crossed with the North Country Cheviot around 30 years ago.

The cross-bred daughters were exceptional. When I brought my first Colbred ram home my lamber told me that I had lost my pride and refused to lamb them. I lambed them myself. It was a pleasure.

In a topsy turvy world, I often wonder at the prolonged effect of reducing output on our farms. The long-term decline in sheep production and in our national suckler herd has been dramatic.

Roxburgh Mains is off the best grain growing land. With grain prices stuck between £100 and £120, I have few regrets about having more land in fallow than I need have.

No doubt, other farmers are thinking the same. Potato growers, too, are having a tough time and dairymen are protesting.

A decade ago, when subsidies were decoupled from production, farmers were encouraged to stop producing at a loss. At last they are paying attention!