It's the school holidays and as usual the weather is unsettled - showers and muggy rather than wet and cold. But it is good mushroom growing weather.

Grass is plentiful and all our farm animals are looking well.

It's a pity the prices aren't looking as good.

It was interesting when a fortnight ago all the auction marts in Wales cancelled their weekly lamb sales to highlight the poor farm gate price and cause a shortage, prices locally rose that week by £15 per lamb as buyers bought more to compensate for the Welsh shutdown.

So they will pay more for lamb but they would rather not, a fall of 20 per cent to the farmer is a rise in income for the abattoir and supermarkets.

It's show season and Chris Gibson and myself were asked to be judges for Grayrigg Show for three classes to be judged on farm before the show.

These were for best beef herd, best dairy herd and best general stock.

It would take us two days to visit all the entrants and devote the necessary time to learn how each farm functions.

We were both very impressed by the quality of stock we have seen.

There was an element of road rallying to get to the fields and off roading to find the cattle as we do have such different farming systems within a few miles of Kendal.

We saw Galloways in a valley I have never seen before near Selside and there were pure Limousins in Endmoor.

They were all fantastic animals suited to their environment.

The dairy herds were just as impressive. We were both impressed by the herdman's knowledge and how each herd has tackled the problems of low milk prices.

Now all we have to do is make the decision of 1st, 2nd and 3rd, not and easy task when all the farms we visited were so outstanding.