The Year Round: Our old faithful tractor will have to keep going

Some of the wheat looks very brown with the continual frosts but will no doubt spring into life soon. The rape established very well last autumn and looks pleasing to the eye with virtually no pigeon damage, mainly due to these particular fields not being surrounded by trees.

It will soon be getting a dose of liquid nitrogen plus sulphur.

I looked at changing our 21 year old MB Trac with demount sprayer. As I can't afford a new one, it would have to be secondhand. Those I looked at weren't a patch on our old girl. So a little more TLC will be required.

When I changed chicken processors a couple of years ago, I was hoping to go to higher welfare birds, reducing numbers in the sheds and growing them slower. I don't like it, but the opposite has happened and we are being forced to do younger, lighter birds, which entails putting more birds in and doing more crops per year to stay viable. We will, of course, be within the assured scheme requirements.

This is the total opposite to what I was aiming for, but it appears the consumer wants the cheapest bird possible. It's no good us producing something the consumer doesn't want.

Partly because of this regime, I have invested in a mini tractor and orchard sprayer to disinfect the chicken sheds. We've been using a contractor to do the job recently, but it will be more convenient to do our own.

It seems an unusual way to do the job, but it is extremely thorough and the results show.