ALL MY life, in October, the sheepie men seem to lose all sense of reality when they see a Blackie tup in the ring with a good head, lugs and horns in the right place with four legs to match!

After they slaughter the lambs, what is discarded first? Yeah, you've guessed it - the head and the legs! The remainder is worth between £50 and £80, or maybe a £100 on a good year.

I have never been able to work out how a tup lamb can make so much money, but then I am reliably informed that the cash just goes round in a wee circle every year, apparently fuelled in more recent times, by turbine money. Even I can understand that, because most turbines are sited on hill farms!

This has obviously injected some extra finance into these less favoured area farms, which means that some are very lucky, while others have to survive on their support payments and around £ 50 to £100 quid for their sheep.

I was in a non-farming company the other night where this high value for sheep was raised and I can tell you the £160,000 for a sheep does not leave a good impression in the eyes of the general public, especially towards sheep farming. In fact, one person said it would be the last time they would eat lamb if that was the kind of money sloshing around in the sheep industry!

Now we seem to be having daily updates on the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) situation regarding when it is likely to be paid. Incidentally, I can tell you that Ireland started paying out 70% of its equivalent on the October 16. By all accounts, we might be lucky to receive it by January 16.

This begs the question, who is to blame? No doubt everyone will be saying 'it wisnae me'! Is it ScotGov's, or is it the NFUS', because the latter went for the most complicated sliding-scale route instead of going for one straight change.

From what I am hearing the union was well warned about the difficulties and delays that were likely by going for the tapered transition, so the reality is that we are where we are now with some inevitable delays.

Mistakes and decisions have been made that, with hindsight, might have been different. For now, we need to forget recriminations and get on with the lessons that should have been learnt in order that they do not happen again next year.

At least Richard Lochhead will not need to do what Mrs Beckett did when Defra got it wrong - she went off in a caravan to a secluded cove in Cornwall for a month in order to miss the furore.

I can also tell you that a farm in Ireland, of the same size as ours, will receive around double the BSP as this one!

Another piece of information that came my way was a chart, showing that, due to the refusal by Westminster to give Scotland it's rightful convergence cash, on a per hectare basis we are now at the bottom of the list of 28 members of the EU.

The two just above us are Latvia and Lithuania, with the top three being Slovenia, Italy and Greece, in descending order.

Another interesting statistic that came to hand was that France paid £138 per suckler cow. The sad reality about the EU information I have is that any hope of a level playing field is a long way off and, to make matters worse, Westminster still has the desire to terminate farming support, full stop!

Last month, I asked the question - could you survive without some form of food production support? I have had many varying views on the subject.

The main one from the financial sector was that 30% of farms would be in a loss-making situation, 65% no more than paying their bills with no surplus for investing in the business and 5% would maybe be in a profitable enough position to maybe even pay tax!

Next, we are to have another referendum, this time on whether or not we should stay in the EU. I will bet that, with UKIP and Labour now a spent force, David Cameron will be wishing he had never made the commitment that if he won the election he would ask the population to decide!

There is little doubt that, no matter how successful or otherwise he is with negotiations with Angela Merkle, they are going to be dressed up as having been successful beyond anything he had dreamed up for GB to allow us to stay within the EU!

As usual, I am going to put my head above the parapet and vote the same way as I did on the first referendum, which is to stay a European farmer.

Yes, I have many reservations, especially about the vast number of NPPs (non productive people) we have to pay in Brussels, who seem to be pyramid builders creating jobs just for the sake of it, making rules often detrimental to the farming population and earning good salaries.

The red tape and ever increasing regulations, which they keep turning out is certainly a bone of contention so, Mr Cameron, reducing that would be a big plus for everyone.

A simpler CAP would obviously be welcomed by farmers which, in reality, is not likely to materialise - so that means we are little nearer a common market that when we joined all those years ago. That is the disappointing aspect.

On the more mundane matters of farming and how things change, especially when September and October's rainfall looks likely to be no more than about 2 inches. We housed the last of our beef finishing cattle on October 22, though the ground conditions were as dry as I can recall for mid-October. The remaining grass is being enjoyed by sheep.

Our last fiscal year finished at the end of August and the figures certainly do not look as clever as they did the previous two years, which reflects the tighter margins that are being experienced in almost every sector in our industry.

This also seems to be reflected in the four auction markets I attend weekly which, since August, have fewer people around sale rings. I know that harvest time always reduces numbers at markets but, even now, with harvest gathered in, there are some historically regular faces missing this year.

One theory is that, like other sectors, the larger businesses are continuing to grow, while smaller farmers are disappearing. I have even had one semi-retired auctioneer predict that in 10 years time the vast majority of cattle being finished will be on 20 or 30 large units in Scotland.

There is one thing for sure, as cow numbers continue to decline, even just by 1% per year, there will be no more animals around to be finished and any hope of more coming from the dairy herd is a forlorn dream.

At least we can look forward in November to the various fat-stock shows - from Carlisle, which is actually on October 30, to Thainstone in the north and, of course, Agri-scot at Ingliston and LiveScot event at its new venue in Lanark.

It looks as if these events are going to take place when beef values are lower than at this time last year, which is the reverse of what historically happens in the run up to the Christmas period when sales are normally buoyant with cattle on rising values.

For the first time since horse-gate, I detected a slight easing of store values this past week. This may be a temporary blip or reality kicking in - time will tell!

Finisher margins in 2014 and 2015, especially in the spring of this year, took quite a hammering, which is maybe the reason why I am seeing fewer people in store markets this past few months.

Last Saturday, a near neighbour tried a dozen restaurants for a table for four and not one could accommodate them, which goes to show that there is no shortage of cash around for evening dining out.

I got a whisper that the WHO report was coming out this week, calling for a reduction in the consumption of all red meat, (pork, beef, lamb,) and wine. A lady remarked that there would not be much pleasure left at her stage in life, but like a true lady, she did not divulge her age!