The last few days have seen a return to a more “normal” Dumfriesshire summer. Periods of welcome rain and some heavy dew in the morning and temperatures back down to around 20 °c have replaced the extraordinary spell of dry, hot weather of the previous three weeks.

Drier, gravelly fields have been burning but the rain has allowed the grass to at least start turning a bit greener rather than the brown “sahara” look of recent weeks. Michael has also reseeded 35 acres that lay untouched for three weeks after it was ploughed waiting for the rain. There is another 15 acres to plough but it is a heavy clay field and it is so hard the plough would hardly mark the surface, so hopefully it can be dealt with shortly.

We’ve started killing Texel cross lambs out of the Scotch Mule Ewes in the last week as well. Weights over 20 Kilos are pretty good and they have been well fleshed. They are coming to between eighty and ninety quid which is no more than ok. Apparently there are far too many under finished lambs on the market right now as folk with no grass in drier areas off load them when they are really only in store condition. But I can understand why.

A shortage of keep and a shortage of cash is not a great combination. Just think of the cost of getting these ewes from scanning in January/ February until lambing time. And then the cost of feeding them in the hellish weather conditions of April and May post lambing. Now they are under pressure again as burnt grazing fields offer them little nutritional benefit. So all in all a tough time for a nursing ewe as well as their hard pressed owners. And these are the ones that had live lambs, or indeed survived the spring themselves never mind the casualties. Once you start counting all this up is £4/kg or £80 -£90/head enough to cover the cost of the spring of 2018??

We used an extra £7000 of bought feeding for the ewes never mind the additional haylage and silage that the flocks munched their way through. So the finished price of around £4/kg doesn’t need to drop any further or the numbers just don’t add up.

Mind you all is not lost. The Scottish Government sent us a very welcome donation last week for our fallen stock losses during the spring. That’s going to make such a massive difference to our P&L I can’t thank Fergus Ewing enough. His contribution to the most difficult spring in my farming life was the princely total of £7.66 – yes folks not even half the cost of disposing of a dead ewe. Marvellous isn’t it, dead ewes under snow drifts and drowned in ditches eaten by vermin before they could be recovered; ewes reabsorbing or throwing lambs under stress with the conditions; add a whacking great field bill into the bargain and we don’t even get the price of a round of drinks to help forget. I bet the seven quid is less than the cost of the admin to process this ridiculous embarrassing nonsense. I know Tesco are famous for the strap line “every little helps” but believe me this doesn’t. It’s so pathetic and so out of touch with the reality of livestock farming in Scotland this year it would have been better doing nothing.

And in the midst of counting the cost of this carnage we’ve been informed that Scot Gov have come up with a fantastic plan to cut LFA support by 20% and everyone seems to have welcomed it. I don’t bet very often, but if I did I would bet the 20% of LFASS that we are losing that this cut will represent more than the profit on many hill farms this year. I am well aware that LFASS had to change because the EU Commission said so. But we are leaving the EU, at least I think we are, so is this really the most creative Scot Gov can be in such dire circumstances for Scotland’s hill and upland farmers??

A year or two ago I was asked to go along to what was described at the time as an “informal brain storming session” to discuss the alternatives to LFASS. I can honestly say I’ve attended hundreds of desperate meetings in my life that achieved absolutely nothing but this one was right up there – it was appalling. The usual suspects churning out the usual painful rhetoric and officials saying pretty much “no” to anyone who did have the audacity to offer a novel or creative proposal as an alternative to this “lifeline payment”, apparently because the EU wouldn’t like it.

All I can say is if this is what we can expect in the future when a lifeline payment is cut by 20% and no one raises a murmur then god help us when the negotiations start for real for any other potential support payments in the future post Brexit. That is if the UK Government can ever actually agree a negotiation position amongst themselves to deliver Brexit??!!

We’ve heard a lot in recent months about a “transition period” being needed between the present framework for support payments and any future schemes. I fear the truth is it’s not a “transition” we are facing but simply cuts or reductions in every kind of support payment if LFASS is anything to go by. What happened to political support for the living wage never mind the minimum wage as far as hill farming is concerned??? I wonder what the average hourly rate for a hill or upland livestock farmer will be this year and that’s before the 20% cut in LFASS kicks in!!

If that’s what is going to happen, so be it that is of course a political decision that those that make can answer for at the ballot box someday. But make no mistake it sure doesn’t feel as if we are heading for the promised land. Actually I’m not sure if we are heading anywhere at the moment with Theresa May staggering from one Tory party drama to another!! But we need to think the unthinkable, because did anyone ever really believe when voting to leave the EU that in one of the best summers for fruit growing and picking Scotland has ever seen, perfectly good berries would be left to rot in fields because of the ignorance and intransigence of politicians – but as we read in the SF last week it has happened because there aren’t enough pickers.

That same ignorance will manifest itself time and time again in the next year as political self-preservation and self-interest takes precedence over what’s best for businesses or individuals around the country. Witness the unedifying pantomime being played out at Westminster over the last few days as proof of this. And don’t think just because Scotland’s hills are beautiful its hill farmers will be immune, they won’t as the last few weeks has made abundantly clear.