Work has just begun on this summer's cereal harvest. The number of fields being cut is increasing daily and soon I expect the road will be alive [albeit slowly] with tractors and trailors taking straw and grain from field to barn.
But while farmers are able to get on the land hereabouts, it is not the same everywhere.
Last night I was listening to the markets programme on RTE radio and it painted a completely different picture of the harvest in Ireland.
Rain has brought a real dampener to the countryside there.
Continual rain has meant that many farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to take heavy machinery on to the land, with serious consequences.
Farmer Sam Houlihan was interviewed and spoke about life on his farm at present, where rain means he cannot start cutting his corn. If he took his machinery on, it would simply bog down.
This meant that his workers were having to stand idle, or do unnecessary jobs. "We're sweeping the same yard twice," was his wry comment.
The ground was drying out a little but the topmost layer was still damp. Walk on to it and your boots were soon caked in mud. Imagine taking a combine or baler on to that.
Some farmers were managing to get on, but at a price, said Sam. Those farmers with straw choppers were able to work, running their combines over chopped straw. But this would present a premium in the future. The price of straw would rise in the winter as supplies shortened as so little was being brought into the farmyard because it was being used for this unusual purpose.
Grain was also posing a problem. Moisture content had gone down to 21% but heavy rain on Saturday had seen it shooting up again, meaning more work for the dryer if it was harvested.
Listening to Sam, you felt he was not complaining just for complaining's sake. Hopefully things will improve and we'll be able to get our harvest in without the same troubles on this side of the Irish Sea.
Music On The Moss: Not everyone likes cover versions. In the early days they were a way of English artists getting a quick hit with an insipid version of an American rock-n-roll original. But the attitude of the singer recording the cover makes a difference.
I bought the last of the Johnny Cash American series of recordings recently, chosing from the five in the series mainly to see how he handled two non-original songs on V, the fifth in the series.
I first heard Gordon Lightfoot's If you could read my mind when it was released in 1972, light and optimistic, realistic in the belief that if love doesn't work out there is time for a young man's heart to heal in the future. Cash's version, though, is the aching of a much older man, who knows that he's said farewell to his last taste of love, the heartache in his voice real and compelling. Rick Rubin's production lays Cash's vocals and his feelings bare in an intimate fashion that borders on the insensitive yet it is this quality which both men have been aiming for; you could call it truth, an honesty that a younger singer could never summon. It's certainly compelling.
Cash has a more optimistic view of Rod McKuen's Love's been good to me. He's looking back at a life that has seen happiness and fulfilment, content to have tasted his chances rather than wasted them.
McKuen originally wrote the song for Sinatra [Cash sings Sinatra - a rare thought there!] but I saw him sing too many years ago when he toured England. He, too, took an optimistic, grateful view of the song with its lyrics about loves long gone in happier times.
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