It’s hard to believe the end of 2023 is only three weeks away – this time of year always seems to fly.

We have almost finished strawing down carrots after a very challenging season. Getting straw into the field in September and October was a real struggle. We made several attempts to start spreading in October and early-mid November, all of which were futile and resulted in boggings.

Ground conditions have only improved enough in the last 10 days or so to allow travel and let Dad get on with the job, although he is still intermittently getting stuck with the straw cart in ‘hot spots’. Everyone will be so glad when it is over, which will hopefully be by the end of this week.

Winter wheat crops appear very mixed, with two fields looking surprisingly well while another two fields are unsurprisingly patchy and waterlogged.

I think this is a pretty typical picture across the UK with lots of crops written off already, and a fair bit of wheat seed still sitting in the bag waiting to be drilled.

Oilseed rape was looking extremely hungry over the past few weeks, an after effect of the incorporation of straw post carrots as microbes use nitrogen to break the straw down reducing the accessibility of nutrients to the OSR.

It did get a fairly hefty dose of liquid fertiliser in the early autumn, but it could’ve done with more in October when unfortunately it was far too wet to travel with the sprayer.

Our plan is to get on as early as we possibly can in the spring with fertiliser to try and get it off to a good start once it breaks its winter hibernation.

I have decided to join Scottish Agronomy for the coming growing season, moving away from the serviced agronomy model we have always used. I hope this will give me a better handle on how crops are performing and on costs.

On the livestock front, tups were removed on December 4, after a 34-day tupping period, most of which was horrendously wet.

I am apprehensive about what impact this poor mating season weather will have on scannings but there is nothing anyone can do about the weather and ewes were in good nick going into tupping.

As usual, tups had various hurts and foot issues during tupping so I was glad we had kept two spare older rams to assist for a short period when younger, more expensive tups were out of action.

Dot, the uncastrated pet lamb from 2019 was delighted to get out with the ewes for a couple of days of action after one of the main Texel tups hurt his back and needed four days of rest.

We’ve started feeding hay and Rumenco Maxx high energy buckets to the ewes when the grass has all but completely disappeared following several days of hard frost.

We also went through our remaining lambs a few weeks ago and put anything over 36kg onto swedes and hoppers with the aim of getting them away before Christmas. We’ll then move the remaining lambs which have been ticking along roaming on stubbles onto the swedes to finish, with the aim to have them all away by the end of February.