Scottish farmers have been busy catching up with their spring work in the recent spell of dry, cold weather, interspersed with wintry showers.

On a recent trip to Aberdeen I saw ploughs, cultivators and seeders in action as growers worked flat out to get spring crops sown. Sadly, several in the North have decided not to plough their fields but to leave them fallow instead. They have calculated that sowing barley this late into cold seed beds will lead to a late harvest with the prospect of lower yields. With grain prices in the doldrums, they have worked out that such late-sown crops will lose money.

Mind you, that's not the disaster that you might think. During the summer months blocked drains in those fallow fields can be sorted and persistent weeds eradicated, so that succeeding crops give better yields.

Elsewhere in Scotland most sheep farmers have finished lambing, but the cold weather has held back grass growth leading to hungry ewes continuing to require expensive concentrated feed. Higher up in the hills shepherds have been complaining that a lot of their ewes are giving birth to big lambs and needing assistance.

Big lambs often get "hung". In a normal birth the lamb's forelegs are extended, followed by the head, but hung lambs are either coming head first with the forelegs lying backwards, or they get stuck at the ewe's vagina with their foreleg hooves showing in line with the tip of the lamb's nose. That can lead to the lamb suffocating as the blood flow through their naval is constricted by the lamb's chest compressing it against the ewe's pelvis, and that constriction also prevents it from breathing.

The way to sort out the problem is to extend the forelegs before pulling the lamb out. Sadly there are losses and those that do survive such a difficult birth often have swollen heads for the first day or two of their life.

Those ewes that lose their lambs can be sore for a while and also need to have a "spare" or pet lamb fostered on. It all makes for extra work at a busy time of the year when there simply aren't enough hours of daylight.

While ewes have been busy lambing, much of Scotland's beef herd has been calving and needing 24-hour supervision. I remember when I was farming my cows seemed to prefer to calve during the night. The end result was that I often lost sleep calving a cow after a long day of hard work. I even resorted to feeding my cows in the evening in a bid to encourage them to calve during the day - but to little avail.

Apart from assisting cows to calve, there were often calves that needed to be trained to suckle their mothers or had to be nursed through an illness like diarrhoea, or scour as we call it.

Fortunately this year's calving appears to be going reasonably well, although there is a big question mark over how much those calves will be worth in 15-month's time. Many are becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility of the EU importing cheap beef from South American countries like Brazil as a consequence of a trade deal being struck that will reduce import tariffs.

Perhaps the worst hit sector of Scottish agriculture is dairying where farm-gate prices for milk keep falling to serious, loss-making levels. Many of Scotland's dairy farmers are literally hanging on by their finger nails.

Farmers have rightly been accused of being "moaning Minnies" and crying wolf too often, but most now have genuinely good grounds for griping over depressed prices and continually reducing subsidy payments from the EU.

Substantial subsidy payments that normally land in farm bank accounts in December hadn't been made until recently following First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's intervention. The reason for the holdup was the failure of a new IT delivery system.

Late subsidy payments have put many farming businesses under extreme financial pressure, and prevented them from paying their suppliers on time. That has also had the knock-on effect of putting those suppliers and contractors under severe financial pressure. The rural economy had literally run out of cash until the First Minister intervened with an emergency payment system that circumvented the flawed computer system.

I have never seen the farming community so down in the dumps, and for some the pressure has become so great that they are seriously considering selling up.