How's everyone holding up?

Hot weather, water shortages, bog fires, slow grass growth ....

How is everyone doing ?

I'm in full hot weather mode ; rehydration salts, shorts and straw hat are on the daily menu and it's hard going.
3 months ago we had 8 foot snow banks, and it's bog fires and a dwindling water supply we have to worry about these days. Did I mention somewhere on this forum that I wouldn't be complaining about how warm it would be this summer ??? ;-)

Hi Carlarua. I was wondering how much you was enjoying the summer. I have just got back from the UK and now we have a lot of work to do to try and save crops etc. The fields have very little in them to sustain stock. I guess there will be a glut of cheap Beef this fall. Still, like a cold, wet winter. It has to be dealt with and then onward My stream is still running and the early spuds in the poly are dry but a crop is waiting to be dug up. I am wondering if I should just leave them there or dig them up. Good luck.

WE NEED RAIN, I know I shouldn't say it cos once it starts it doesn't stop here but this is getting desperate. The ground has big cracks and plants are wilting. The only good thing is the hay is good and dry but there will be a shortage if we don't get wet stuff from the sky soon. Its hard to believe how long the winter was at this point.

I dug my Red Duke o' Yorks yesterday. Steamed and anointed with salt and lashings of butter, they were !!!!!

I am now in philosophical mode . Whatever the weather, it will be dealt with. What else can we do? The Duke of yorks are a distant memory (nice). The sharps are nearly gone (not so nice). The Charlotte are next and a particular favourite. The maincrop, Sarpo Mira and Blue Danube are looking powerful so fingers crossed with them. Some rain forecasted for later today, but serious rain towards next weekend. Apparently hurricane Chris has pushed the jet stream back to where it should be. Well, we shall see lads.

I hope you have all had at least a drop of water by now. Plenty more needed but at least the ground had a sprinkling here

We had a couple of light showers today but, to be honest, they had no effect on the ground. It's still bone dry. To make any difference at all, it's going to need a full day of heavy rain - at the very least - and I don't see that happening any time soon. Cattle farmers hereabouts are feeding hay - and even rushes - to their stock just to keep them alive. It's a far more serious problem than the government's letting on.

It will be a worrying time for the farmers, but they have time to plan. If there is not enough forage for over wintering there stock then they should either buy in feed or carry less stock. Dairy farmers really have only one of these options unless they carry less followers. The tillage farmers over here had a good clean harvest of the winter corn. Not so the spring sown stuff. We have spring Barley locally about 9 inches high and earing. Bad news this is. The main crop spuds will also be in short supply as I dont know of any local farmers who have an irrigation  set up. Spuds need alot of water. My neighbour grows veg commercially. There will be without doubt losses in the local farming economy which will knock on to next year. So should farmers get assistance in times like described?. I have heard talk at the local mart saying "They should not"!. They are running a business like a factory boss. Yet a factory boss would not get government help if his business is going to the wall, perhaps through no fault of his own. What do you think?

That is an interesting point of view. Guess the answer depends on which side of the fence one is

The whole cause of the problem is arseholes in collars and ties who went to college, got some kind of a kiss-my-arse qualification and then a job with the government or (worse again) the eu. That gave them the neck to start preaching to stupid, gullible farmers as to how to run their farms. 99.9% of these jokers, put a cow in front of them and invite them to milk her - or hand them a sheep and a pair of shears... good luck! It's all a racket. When I was sheep farming, this fellow from the department came out to see me and advised me to borrow from the bank and put up a massive shed to house my flock during the winter. I asked him how many ewes he ran himself and he told me that he didn't actually farm himself, but he had all his information from the top experts. I showed him the gate and explained to him how to operate it. There's fellows now running a hundred cows on the same land that their fathers ran twenty. Greed and stupidity.

That just about sums it up. Well said Sean

Ok. Thank you. Enough already. You can stop now!! I am talking about the rain!

Sean, you're spot on.
We were in Belgium a few weeks ago, driving through Wales, England and France. The story is the same everywhere : yellow grass (yes, even in Wales !) withered, stunted crops and empty streams. We had to fork out to get the airco in the car fixed when away, but driving back we hit 37,5°C near Heathrow was worth it. Then you pass the sign for Wales and within 20 seconds, pouring rain and 16°C ... Considering that was the first rain we saw in many, many weeks we contemplated getting out and dancing at the side of the road ;-)
I'm dreading the winter, the price of hay and straw is going to be astronomical. There are alternatives out there for bedding (like rapeseed straw and straw from rushes), but not too many.
You'd wonder why, when living on an island, no one came up with the installation of de-salination plants. Or with all the open spaces, gigantic reservoirs for water.... There is no forward thinking or planning here in Ireland,it's so incredibly frustrating... A minimal token amount of energy generating wind Mills, solar panel installations get no permission, and the Irish government rejected the offer of an Irish inventor for a workable and cheap wave power generator (the Spanish government snapped it up in the blink of an eye, and it's now in use off the coast of Spain).
Anyways, it's going to be an expensive winter and I'm dreading it. Fodder can't be gotten in the usual places, since they are in the same boat as us. Even if the price of the product is cheap, shipping it is going to be woefully expensive.

Carlarua. You are an angel of doom! Positive things to positive thoughts. Whatever happens we shall deal with it and move on. Good luck.

Yes, I've been called The Oracle of Doom before, mainly by my boss when I read him the weather forecast during lunch :-))
We've just had a really tough winter with worries on how to feed a multitude on a tiny budget. I'm a worrier, with sleepless nights as a result. It doesn't do anything to change a situation, which is what I'm trying to tell myself when it's 2 am, but there you go.
That's not even taking into account that the price of food is going to go up and I have to feed a family of 5, and whilst I'm creative in the kitchen, there's only so much venison/pigeon/rabbit/duck you can eat until you're fed up with it. We'd be tucking into venison steak, with only a few sheckles in the bank account til pay day, and having a good chuckle about the fact that we're eating something that would cost an awful lot of money in a restaurant