In your field

It’s May 1 already. How this strange and troubled year is flying by, which is amazing given all the events and shows we had planned to visit are now just a passing thought as the dates get closer on the calendar. Very disappointing.

Why do we farm? Honestly, what’s in it for us? My sense is that only a minority of farmers farm because they chose to.

My goodness, even my relentless cheerfulness is struggling as wave after wave of bad news on Covid-19 is broadcast each hour.

Well, this is a funny one. We live in very strange times and now we are nearing the end of lambing time there is time to reflect.

We have now almost completed the spring work, with spring barley coming through the ground fairly evenly and its top dressing of fertiliser being applied at the end of last week.

Thomas Carrick is part of a family-run upland beef and sheep farm in the North Pennines, near Alston. With pure-bred Swaledales to produce Mule lambs, they also run Salers cross cattle with Aberdeen-Angus calves which they finish at home.

None of us could anticipate just how altered the world has become in a matter of weeks. We are all affected by Covid-19, in so many ways, and it has never felt more important to reach out and communicate, both in our rural communities and more widely.

The roads are so quiet and the air is only broken by birdsong and young lambs and their mothers calling to each other.

Sadly, the world has certainly changed beyond recognition from a month ago and, with coronavirus restrictions looking set to continue over summer, we seem to be living a very different life.

In theory, it should be fairly easy to farm while staying two metres away from every other human being. Open fields and solitary tractor cabs mean arable farming is fairly self-isolating at the best of times. There are clearly fewer face-to-face meetings than, say, being Prime Minister.