Anne Marie Hamilton brings us her monthly update about life on the farm.

After the extremely soggy start to the new year, a few frosty days have proved a welcome relief, making the ground dry underfoot, with some sunshine too, to cheer us all up.

However, British weather is unpredictable, and we cannot bank on it continuing.

Rob has certainly been doing just that and has been off at first light with the hedge cutter, trimming the hedges back whist the ground is hard enough to carry the tractor.

It is a race against time as we are only allowed to cut the hedges between September 1 and the end of February, so as not to disturb nesting birds.

Incessant rain has been a torture for Rob as he is constantly teased by the rest of the family for being a drainage fanatic.

He tends to regard any wet spots on the farm as a personal insult and, in truth, good land drainage is fundamental to producing good crops.

On New Year’s Day, he was out with the digger, trying to dig out a narrow channel to remove a rather large puddle in a field of wheat, that had arrived courtesy of Storm Henk.

Much to his annoyance, Rob then found more puddles on one of the fields beside the main road.

Upon investigating further, he discovered that the problem went back 60 years or more, when the road layout was changed, and the drain installed to deal with the run-off was not put in deep enough.

Normally, our own field drainage can manage to get round this problem, but the exceptionally heavy rainfall caused by Storm Henk onto what was already totally saturated ground, meant some large puddles had formed and needed to be dealt with quickly.

He managed to carry out a temporary repair to get the water away, but a full remedial job will be needed.

Despite this, compared with many others who have suffered real hardship with recent flooding, we have been very lucky!