New Year has brought some good news, but plenty of concerns and challenges as well, writes Hugh Besent.

Thankfully, we have an agreement with the EU, though only time will tell how well we will be able to trade efficiently with our neighbours.

There are clearly signs from Northern Ireland of problems and delays when it comes to food imports/exports, which we can but hope are only teething issues.

The roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccines is obviously a challenge to our governments and this creates concerns and criticism.

I know only of one person who has had the jab so far, but the promise to give it to thousands and millions of people in the next few weeks seems to be very ambitious.

Our governments have had many months to plan this and they must get this right, given the resurgence of the virus as well as the lockdown.

One cannot but make an analogy between this situation; people queuing for jabs, doctors complaining that they have not received any vaccine, pharmacists refused when volunteering and farmers’ ability to jab hundreds of sheep in a day.

At least people turning up are compliant, sheep tends to kick and wriggle.

The UK is under a ‘war footing’ and this epidemic needs to be treated as such. Lay people could be trained to help in the roll out so that the virus can be brought under some control.

How could a small country like Israel get over a million people vaccinated by the beginning of 2021?

On the farm, a few dry days have been very welcome and has allowed us to take out some slurry onto some of our dry grazing fields.

We hope that by the time the cows go out all signs of it will have gone and the nutrients will help get the grass growing. Up until now the grass has been growing, and we have some daffodils out in flowers, which definitely cheer up the winter gloom