March and into April have been a time of change and challenge here on the farm and within our family.

Easy lambing, fast finished lambs off grass and herbal leys are the priority for Marlborough, Wiltshire-based farm manager Neil Ridgway and shepherd Paul Barnes. Chrissie Long reports.

It was clear as you listened to farmers voices breaking with emotion as they shared the impact of bTB on their farms and families that the mental health impact on every farmer sat in that room was huge.

Using foliar nitrogen is one of the steps farmer Harry Heath has taken to improve the environmental footprint of his familys mixed farm near Newport, Shropshire.

Hamish Evans, 25, a farmer and head grower at Middle Ground Growers, from Bath, Somerset.

After wet weather through March and April caused some significant delays to maincrop planting, Farmers Guardian catches up with two Hutchinsons agronomists to see what this means for agronomy over the coming weeks.

Matt Phelan is co-founder of The Happiness Index and author of Freedom to Be Happy, The business case for Happiness.

Alan Carter farms in partnership with his parents, Paul and Christine, on a 400-acre, 400-cow dairy unit, at Constantine, Cornwall, supplying Suputo. Alan, also a Parish Councillor, and his wife Sarah, have two children, Ross and Dana.

Where crops have been planted into cloddy seedbeds, slug risk will be high and potato producers are urged to protect against the pest as soon as tubers reach golf ball size.