Mrs Down's Diary October 1 2008

Why? Well the land is currently so wet that without this extra help the tractor would just skid and skedaddle on top of our clay soil, churning up the field and making it almost impossible to make a decent job of ploughing.

We appreciate that even though we are considering it grim that we cannot get on and get drilled up, at least our harvest is safely in the grain shed and all the forage we need for the winter is under cover. Many of our neighbours still have many acres to go to finish harvest.

John sold the last field harvested for straw to a neighbour with a dairy herd.

"Leave me an acre or so to make some small bales," he asked him as they shook hands on the deal. Ten days later and not a scrap of straw has been baled. The field closely resembles a rice paddy in parts and we are bringing in a specialist contractor to try to get some of the water away into the main drainage board dike that runs at the end of the field.

It is so frustrating. What a shambles any flood protection has turned out to be. Friends we know whose homes were flooded last year are inches deep in water again. The water we are worrying about from heavy rainfall is in our fields. Theirs is in the kitchen.

When time is heavy on John's hands something has to suffer. In this case, the lambs.

Time to wean them, John decided. Twenty of the lambs were fit for market as they are a good export weight. The lambs we sent in last week were actually too heavy but they got a good price all the same.

Several cull ewes also made the trip. One or two had problems with their bag after summer mastitis and others had made the big mistake of being too independently minded when it came to responding to our sheepdog Nell's directions. Not a good career decision for a ewe.

Actually, it is more logical than that.

After making a management decision last year when lamb prices were so low that we almost went out of sheep altogether, John has been so impressed by the prices we are getting for lambs at market that our flock numbers are to rise again.

He plans to put the tups in with the ewes at an earlier date. Historically, with us, the tups are put to the ewes on Bonfire Night '“ tastefully referred to as the Big Bang Gang.

Last year they went in at the end of October and it worked well this year, with most of our lambs fit for market at a time when there was a good demand. Therefore, any remaining lambs can be weaned at an earlier date to give the ewes a chance to be in good fettle for tupping.

So on Friday I am booked for a big day out at the sheep sale to buy some gimmers to boost flock numbers and rejuvenate the flock.

I can see it all. Every other sheep farmer in the area will have thought the same thing and prices will rocket. Guaranteed a grumbly husband all the way home.