After an extremely wet February which spilled over into the middle of March, I am delighted the weather finally turned around and we have had some long, dry sunny days just when we need them most.

This will have been the first lambing in many years, that I have not worn my wellies – they have been gathering dust since mid-March which is undoubtedly a welcome change!

It has also been refreshing not needing to think about implementing plans for further indoor pens for ewes and lambs due to bad weather. Ewes have all more or less headed outside when their lambs were 24-48 hours-old, marked, ringed and ready to thrive in the sunshine.

We were again very lucky to have a great team of female students who worked well together and on their own initiative. Proactive, they gained a huge amount of experience through their own hard work. As a result of the good weather and a strong team lambing passed by fairly quickly.

We were not only busy with new life in the lambing shed, but also ploughing, with my younger brother, Ally, reprieved from lambing duty, while our tractor man, Jack, was on the grain drill which between the two of them, ensured a speedy result.

Good weather allowed us to complete the ploughing, drilling and rolling process over consecutive days, which is almost unheard of as we nearly always see a day or two of rain halting progress.

The spring calving cows are now all calved. Most of these were in calve to A-A and Simmental bulls to enable us to keep heifer calves as replacement females. They calved over an eight-week block and we were pleased at how regularly they calved.

It certainly kept us busy but allowed us time to tag them and ensure they were strong and suckling well in individual pens before going into the larger, communal pen. They were all out to grass by April 24, which is definitely early as I have seen us still turning them out to graze mid-May.

We have a batch of 72, two-year-old heifers that have just started calving to two of our Angus bulls. They will head out to grass as they calve if this weather continues and be batched in groups together.

They will not join the main herd, however, until they have had their second calf. They were weighed about a month ago and had an average weighed of 654kg, so they had grown well and looked healthy.

We also have two batches of cows due to start calving outside on May 10, so we really do hope this warm weather is set to last.

Our fodder beet was sown on April 24 and turnips just after that, which hopefully will yield good crops and be ready for sheep and cattle to graze this winter.

All silage fields were cleared of sheep by April 20, and put into larger groups on fields on higher ground. With the small amount of rain we had at the weekend and the good weather continuing this hopefully will ensure grass growth takes off.

We’ve already taken advantage of this dry spell by reseeding one of our wetter fields, back into grass – 10 years after the last time it was reseeded. Another of our grass fields has also been turned over and this should give us more good quality young grass to graze lambs on later in the year.

We reseeded a couple of fields last year and saw such a huge improvement in lamb growth rates, that we felt it would be a wasted opportunity not to try to improve more this year when conditions were on our side.

Our daughter, Fallon, has, like all other children in the UK at present, enjoyed an extended April holiday. One which seems set to continue for some time yet! She has thoroughly enjoyed having extra time outside and has a great tan!

Whether it be helping with hands on lambing, moving cows and calves, helping to tag calves and feeding pet lambs, to name but a few of her favourite activities, she truly feels that school work interferes in her ‘real’ learning but accepts it must be done.

She is, however, like the rest of us, missing her friends and family and will be glad when she can play with her friends at school once more.

I feel as farmers we are incredibly lucky to be able to go about our daily business almost as normal at this very taxing time for the whole country. We are grateful to have work that keeps us and our employees from wearying in an area of sanctuary and open space, but most importantly to be able to contribute to helping those here at home by supplying a vital food chain.

As I write this, the fight against coronavirus is still far from over, however we are each day nearer to returning to some sort of normality.