Spring song that has me feeling chirpy

IF IT is the little things in life that make the difference then this past week I give due credit to a little bird singing in a tree. This small blackbird was there one morning when I went out for the paper and he was giving it full blast.

It was still the half light of the morning but it was distant from the overpowering darkness of winter and there to welcome the change was this blackbird trilling and chirping away and rattling up and down the scales to his heart's content.

The messages he was sending out were not those of a street corner paper seller highlighting the big issues of the day; for example, "Union responds to Pack report" or "Scottish livestock numbers down again".

If it had been singing about the Pack report, I might have been tempted to tell it that I increasingly feel that while the whole exercise may have been fully embraced by the Scottish industry, it will all turn out to have been a pretty academic exercise.

The bureaucratic and political machines in Brussels are neither going to go for anything simple nor for anything which will ensure food production is maintained. I cannot see anything emerging from Brussels other than a good old last-minute fudge. It was ever thus in euro-politics.

In fact, what might have been a better use of Pack and his team's time would have been a look into where Scottish agriculture should go, ignoring the current restraints and restrictions. Having identified these, they would then give the politicians a target for the future.

If the blackbird had been passing on the message of further reductions in Scottish livestock numbers, I might have started worrying that the rate of decline may have reduced but, when the past decade is looked at, the fall in sheep numbers in Scotland in particular has been pretty dramatic. But then I would be thinking that the market price is the message and all the price complaints of a decade ago may have related more to the fact there were just too many sheep in this country at that time.

Thankfully the wee bird had none of these messages. It was just pointing out that spring was coming and that, as any countryman will agree, is one of the best bits of news there can be.

It may be mid March and the snow is still lying behind many a dyke and in many a corrie. As I look across the river to the hills of Angus, the peaks still look like iced cakes with their snowy mantles.

All around there are reasons to be gloomy. Sheep breeders who have suffered badly in the severe winter may well be concerned over the coming lambing as there is no doubt the cold winter has taken a toll on the pregnant ewes.

The arable men are also gloomy. There are still far too many potato stores full of last year's crop and prices are well below costs of production. Growers and merchants are taking a big financial hit this year and the wonder is that potato rents remain as high as they do.

Grain seeders are already out on some of the lighter land putting in this year's spring barley crop. But as one farmer mentioned to me, with the knowledge of a large overhang of grain in the market, part of this is under contract and part is done in hope.

As I listened to the wee bird sing his heart out, the tendency was to forget these issues because this is the annual opportunity to do everything correctly with no mistakes or errors.

I am sure every farmer starts the year with the unspoken aim of "getting it right". No mistakes in the drilling of the grain. No mistakes in the sowing of the fertiliser leaving fields like striped football strips. I know that satellite technology is taking a lot of this type of fun out of agriculture with its unerring precision but there are still some good examples for the rural traveller.

So, while we will remember the winter of 2010 as one of the worst in our living memory, heads are now turned to the coming season.

Funny that mood of optimism and all because a wee bird sang.