The weather threw everything it could at the Royal Manx Agricultural Show on Friday morning and Fiona Moore, show president for the first time, had a bit of a baptism of fire trying to do what was best under the circumstances.

In the end, the decision to cancel on the Friday was taken because ground conditions meant they could only run one day and the obvious one to save was the Saturday.

In the event the weather was probably rather better than forecast and, just walking around the show, there seemed to be a lot more people there than you might expect considering the conditions.

The decision to bring the grand parade and supreme champion judging forward by half an hour was definitely the right one: as many of us were queuing in our cars to leave the ground less than an hour after it all finished there was a downpour of biblical proportions.

And for those of us who were there to watch the grand parade there was the joy of seeing a line-up of animals whose quality shone out, not just in their breeding and conformation but in the way they had been produced and turned out.

It spoke more clearly than words about the dedication of their owners because this is not just about a bit of a brush and a shampoo the morning of the show: it takes months of hard work and dedication to bring an animal to such a peak of perfection.

Being a farmer is not a job: it is a vocation, a way of life and a continual striving. It’s the 24/7 routine of care that goes on every day of the year.

And, yes, we know that there are certain intensive farming practices that we rightly disapprove of but here in the island we have a farming story to tell that we can be proud of. And we should.

We mustn’t let so-called ’animal welfare supporters’ try and take the narrative from us.

We cannot have respect for these people and their views until we have seen them trudging knee deep through muddy fields, lugging hay and feed in a downpour, cleaning out stables and cattle sheds, or up at night bottle feeding meg lambs.

They are welcome to eat or not eat what they wish but maybe they should keep their opinions to themselves until they too have put the hours in and actually know what they are talking about when they use the words ’animal welfare’.

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