Cut the rubbish and save the jewels

New growth on many of the plants, shrubs and young trees has been damaged, and with temperatures of minus two degrees in the morning, it's no wonder. The windscreen needs scraping, and it is very cold for the hands until the sun gets up.

With courage in both hands, I took the plunge and cut the grass silage, clamping it in very good sunny conditions. It is of very high quality, but the quantity is shocking, in fact it was the lack of bulk that made me decide to start.

If within a week we would have had a decent first cut, I would have waited, but a decent tonnage was a good two weeks away, by which time the quality would be gone and second cut pushed back to late July, and no fresh grazing for the cows either.

The whole farm is now set to take full advantage of the warmer weather to come, hopefully a late spring flush, and with rain on Sunday night; we've had a good start.

We have been spreading our 'hot' dirty water over the weekend, and will continue to do so for the next two weeks, using a vacuum tanker to reach the fields outside our umbilical system's reach.

We will fertilize for second cut and wash it in with dirty water on the main bulk of the acreage; in fact we will now empty both lagoons on the silage ground in the coming three weeks.

This will give the grass every chance to capitalise on the fact that it has produced little to date, and hopefully make up for it.

This is new territory, and time will tell if I got it right or not.

Luckily last year was the best year ever for grass growth and we have a huge carry over, which allows me to do this.

Having struggled last weekend with the feeding system for the bio-digester, on Monday it was dismantled for inspection, nothing found wrong with it, but since being put back together it has not missed a beat.

We cannot understand this, but the gas was back up to full production by Wednesday, only for the engine to stop unexpectedly.

It was stopped by one of its many protection systems, and all sorts of flashing lights and alarms went off, which meant that Chris was up all night trying to coax it back into life.

When a big engine stops from full power in under two seconds, it is not a good thing (!), but there are mechanisms in place which protect it; however, a surge of oil floods the turbocharger, and when we eventually got it going, the smoke created by this oil set off one of the smoke alarms, which stopped the engine once again.

Having turned that off temporarily, we got it going, and it has run with no problem until it got me out of bed at 2.30am on Saturday morning.

The engine had stopped once again, but this time for another reason, which we have yet to solve.

It stopped again on Sunday due to another very different fault, the cooling fans in the engine room had failed; we have no idea why.

The text messages in the middle of the night are not welcome to say the least, but it does mean that someone gets up and sorts out the problem.

After such a successful start to the plant, it was inevitable that we would have some problems sooner or later, but I could do without them just now!

It has not been the best week for me to be honest, and some of you might have noticed some unwanted headlines in the farming press.

Fifty to 60 dairy farmers have found themselves in trouble with the authorities due to the agent supplying dairy farm workers and managers not being properly licensed.

This in turn meant that the dairy farmers concerned found themselves on the wrong side of the law, including myself. Once it has all been sorted out, which I hope will be sooner rather than later, I will be in a position to explain fully this extraordinary tale, which reflects the mad, mad world we live in.

We now have a stable government, although quite a few people think that this is going to be a very short honeymoon indeed! I'm not so sure, I have this feeling that Cameron and Clegg mean business, and they will stand up to their own parties, and the potential dissidents within.

It will certainly not be easy, and many MPs and especially supporters of both Conservative and Liberal Democrats absolutely hate what is happening.

Many would rather be in opposition, than compromise on very important political principles, but pragmatism has ruled this time and it will be very interesting to see if the duo can pull it off. Failure is not an option for them, they have staked their personal political future on this coalition, and if it fails, they are absolutely finished. The stakes could not be higher.

We have Caroline Spelman as our Secretary of State, and not Nick Herbert (who might have been another casualty of the coalition?) as expected.

Caroline Spelman certainly knows the industry, and many years ago used to work for the NFU as one of our advisers. She will be ably assisted by Jim Pace, who as Agriculture Minister is very well known to us and extremely experienced.

It is a sound team, but with massive Government cuts in the offing, we are under no illusion that things are going to be very tough indeed.

It's going to be cuts all round, and Defra will not be spared. Defra's total budget is around 3bn, and when one looks at the total savings needed of around 71bn, then it is small beer, but could, nevertheless be cut substantially.

The important thing is to cut the rubbish and preserve the jewels! There is a long list of Defra activity that is a waste of money due to duplication and sheer beurocracy.

However, the sort of cuts that one fears are in the offing, will undoubtedly cut at some core activities, which will inevitably mean that they will come looking for money.

I worry about the scale of this, but the most important element which needs to be tackled is the sheer inefficiency of operation.

Before they even think of charging, they must demonstrate competence and efficiency; that will not be easy given where they are starting from!