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Last July, Isobel and I sold eight hectares of hay to a man who contacted us through Facebook.

False spring or not, it has provided an opportunity to set spring work off to a blistering start.

It’s hard to believe 2023 has arrived already. Last year rolled by quickly from month to month and season to season.

Since October, I have embarked on the most stressful experience of my 26 years to date. "What’s that?" you may ask. Well, completely renovating a house solo during a cost-of-living crisis, of course.

In a new series for ²ÝÁñÉçÇø Guardian, the 11 new recruits on the McDonald’s Progressive Young Farmer (PYF) programme. Each month we follow one of the PYF’s to see what they are doing.

March definitely proved to be the month for on-farm maintenance. Whether it was repairing silage clamps, fixing broken cubicles or maintaining machinery, it was all tackled last month.

In the words of Bon Jovi, we’re half way there. In previous years we have lambed over four months, but thankfully this year, for multifactorial reasons, lambing season is only two months.

Spring is still stuttering and stumbling its way into the year, a nice couple of days over the Easter weekend has been followed by a wet and cold Monday, when thoughts of turning a few groups of youngstock have been banished for the time being.

The search continues for a farm weve viewed a few small farms, however weve found that agricultural value and output is completely disjointed from the asking price.

Im writing this in the lull between the indoor lambing of the park ewes and the outdoor lambing of the hill flock which lasts approximately a week and is never long enough.