At last I think I can safely say that spring is here it had a bit of a false start last month when we did all of our spring crop planting then the heavens opened for a few weeks. I thought it would never end for a while. But it did. I planted the spring linseed before the rain which was a bit of as gamble because the soil temperature had only just started to get warm enough, and the seed could have rotted with all the rain if the plant didn't get away. Luckily it has survived and it is now 3 weeks ahead of our neighbours who waited for the rain to pass by before they planted their crop. We'll have to wait and see who was right. With no serious rain forecast for a while it could be the the stuff just planted will dry out too much!

Working the woods has finally started we have one harvesting machine working keeping two other machines called forwarders busy moving the cut timber out of the woods to the road sides ready for collection. It is quite an impressive sight when its all going right! I can see the benefits to the woodlands already the trees have now got enough room to grow again, and the operator of the harvesting machine has carefully selected which trees to leave standing so that we will have a healthy crop in a few years time. It is a real shame that there is little money in  the timber business because the woods are really benefiting from this work which we are carrying out at around break-even. 

I have been busy working out a tender for farming a piece of ground near to us. This has been really interesting as I have had to have a good look through all of my operating costs and work out which equipment is working at full capacity and which has the ability to do more work. I will submit the tender on Wednesday, and find out how well I have fared against the other bidders. When we went for a look around the estate there were loads of farmers all having a look seeing how well the opportunity would complement their business. The biggest lesson I learned was about the cost of grain-storage, and how it affects the cost of crop production. It sounds obvious now but I was interested to see how much difference there is between lower yielding but higher value crops, and higher yielding lower value crops on the bottom line, when a price per tonne is charged for storage. I was also interested when I worked out the opportunity costs of grain storage. These big buildings also have a potential rental value, when that is figured in it really does raise some questions!

Toby is getting more fun all the time he now looks around to see where the noise is coming from when I walk in the door And he greats me with a massive smile. He hasn't quite perfected the art of rolling over but I don't think its far off. He goes swimming at least once a week and he's starting to be a lot of fun in the pool. Before he would be a bit bewildered by all the noise of the other kids laughing and screaming about, but now he's started to relax and play with the toys.