I'VE just come in and got cleaned up after doing the Jim Herriot bit on a very wild and fractious heifer, four laps around the field up to your armpit inside a heifer trying to sort out tangled legs of the unborn calf can be a bit hair raising. I don't know why but this last bunch of calves have tended to need more help than usual so perhaps the good spring growth of grass has left them a bit too fat.

Our herd calves all year round with around 30 calving a month on average. The calves born at this time of year outside in the field always seem to thrive and do well and as a bonus its quite nice to take the wife for a romantic stroll around the maternity field on a lovely summer's evening. The 3.30am shift I have to do on my own I'm afraid.

The cereal harvest is about to start and crops look really well this year. It's a pity the grain market is so dismal with £53/54 a ton for wheat being quoted off combine, lean pickings indeed for the arable men I'm afraid. All of our cereals will be kept and fed to the dairy herd, at these prices there's not much of better value to feed them.

On the NFU front we are still wading through tons of stupid legislation to try and find something workable in practice, the latest wondrous idea is to link environment schemes to our farm assurance schemes, suggestions of mapping every tree and bush on farm seems a bit onerous to me, they'll have us sitting outside a rabbit hole reading Brer Rabbit bedtime stories next. Again and again I ask who the hell dreams this stuff up? We have embraced all the assurance schemes as an industry and I am proud of the achievements of the British farmer in this theatre, but does it earn us any premiums on our produce for the extra cost and effort? Does it hell, still it does keep thousands of those who audit us in a job I suppose so we are doing our bit for the general economy.

Farmers for Action are having a crack at the big dairy companies again over the further milk price cuts received on July 1 and all power to their elbow. Someone needs to ram home the fact that if producers go down then the dairies will come with us, without the raw material they've no business. There's no harm in a bit of carrot and stick but they have all the carrot, we get all the stick.

I turned a young bull out with a bunch of heifers a few days ago, he was very nave at first, if somewhat enthusiastic (nat-ure's a wonderful thing) but in a few hours he was strutting his stuff up and down the hed-gerow. The little chap thought he'd invented it, those were the days, eh?

By Paul Thomas

vice-chairman, NFU Herefordshire