What beautiful weather for February. This is the time of year when the fields are bare and all the stock are reliant on being fed every day. The sheep shed is full of ewes for five to six weeks from lambing, all the outdoor ewes are being fed daily and the cattle are all housed. We are feeding silage made last summer, purchased straw, barley, minerals, and soya or rape meal protein. We attended a sale of fodder in Leominster a few weeks ago and were surprised that the price of straw was more reasonable than in the autumn. An NFU member pointed out to me that we should be thanking the arable farmers. They usually chop straw behind the combine at harvest to return organic matter back to the soil, but because of the drought many baled the straw instead for us livestock farmers who were short of feed for this winter.

On Valentine's Day, in glorious sunshine, I sat on the hill watching the birds for 30 minutes for the Big Farmland Bird Count. It took a few minutes to get my eye in, and I am not very good at identifying birds from their song, so was rather frustrated trying to see which birds were making a magnificent chattering in some mature Sitka spruce. I did see buzzards, kites, tits, crows and ravens building nests, blackbirds, chaffinches, a jay, magpies, pigeons, tree sparrows, four yellow hammers and of course a robin, who watched me the whole time singing away on the top of a tree. It was a most enjoyable half hour. It reminded me that our lives are so full of jobs and we are always busy so do not stop and appreciate nature often enough.

I mentioned last autumn that the NFU launched a competition in schools called ‘Farmvention’. I am pleased to say there was a very good response and schools from all over the country have won different categories. In Wales I would like to congratulate Ysgol Bro Idris, Dolgellau for winning ‘A Great British Snack’, Key stage 1.

You may notice I haven’t mentioned Brexit. I am left speechless at how the process is being handled. We are having a Montgomeryshire NFU Cymru meeting on March 7 at the Elephant and Castle in Newtown, at 7.30pm, where there may be more news about March 29 for us to discuss. We have speakers lined up to talk about surface water run-off and pollution, plus potential funding from the Severn Rivers Trust for farmers in the Severn catchment area. I hope to see you all there.