The Year Round: The freezing weather makes it so difficult for deliveries

What makes life even more difficult is when the birds are being depleted; they are collected in the early hours of the morning when the roads are frozen and there is no sign of any grit, so the lorries often get stuck on the hills.

Our malting barley has just gone and was the best quality I think we've ever grown. The sad thing is there was virtually no premium over the feed price, which itself is below the cost of production. In fact it has gone out at half of last year's average price and this was before the price collapsed even further.

Whilst on a recent holiday, I had a dream that sense prevailed and all the useless environmental and assured schemes had been withdrawn. Then I woke up, and returned home to face yet another couple of checks.

I said to one of the 'officers', come next Sunday about 11am after a batch of 50,000 birds have gone during the night and we've done our normal weekend work.

He said that he couldn't possibly do that because he could only work 37 hours a week, has every weekend off, and has to fit in five weeks' holiday!