A preoccupation with the weather is an Olympic sport for farmers, although most have an abnormally high tolerance for rain.

This summer, the fleeting periods of sunshine and often chilly temperatures had everyone at it. The sun would appear for long enough to remind us of its existence before disappearing behind another grey cloud swollen with rain.

We entered the autumn without that full charge of sunshine and now the daylight hours are shorter too.

Since Sunday darkness has fallen an hour earlier after the clocks were turned back and we reverted to Greenwich Mean Time, and that means winter is on its way.

The UK goes into its traditional five-month hibernation, but work in the countryside continues.
Although harvest is a distant memory, many farmers are still busy cultivating, drilling and rolling after some very wet conditions in September delayed those jobs.

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For dairy and livestock farmers the workload continues all year round, come rain or shine, daylight or darkness.

Farming can be a relentless and high pressure occupation, exacerbated by the environment in which the job occurs, including longer hours of darkness accompanied by colder and wetter weather in the winter.

As the season shifts and the days shorten, increased hours of darkness can create both physical and mental hazards for farmers.

The physical challenges need no explaining but working long hours and in dark conditions can impact on mental health too.

But does it have to be like this? Why don’t be maintain British Summer Time and have a little less light at the start of the day in the winter and a little more in the early evening?

The last time the NFU tested opinion among its farming membership a narrow majority favoured lighter evenings.
But the system looks set to stay, for now at least, so spare a thought for our dairy cows and their confusion now milking times are an hour later as, in my experience, cows always ignore clocks.