We are just finishing the winter wheat harvest, the latest I recall at Low Fields Farm. It has been terribly hard work though we feel grateful that our houses were dry and sound.
Our hearts go out to those farmers further north who have had such floods with livestock swept away. Here we farm low-lying warpland, near the banks of the Ouse. Wheat variety Humber stood well compared with Rubigus which was losing a few heads batte
red to the ground.
All oilseed rape was combined in July. We left it uncut until combining and the standing crops dried out well. Our crop was the result of three different drilling techniques. Conventional drilling was followed by seed broadcast by the fertiliser spreader and by a 30-year-old pneumatic spreader. The tractor hauling it was 20-years-old and I was the driver, aged 40. Not bad for such an ancient team!
One flat of wheat was in the field for 51 weeks. That typified the harvest which turned into a very ordinary one after such a promising start. Some wheat was forward sold at a useful premium, but later combining cost £20-£30 a tonne for drying.
Our drying techniques are limited to air being passed through vents in the corn stores. This is a reliable but slow method which will still be working at Christmas.
Potatoes appear to be growing quite well despite the wet.
Kestrel have been more in evidence than for several seasons and the hen harrier is still with us. This system of intensive arable farming is not greatly favoured by some conservation bodies, but they cannot claim we have low levels of wilder life. The arable in this wet year was an absolute hotbed of frogs and snails.
I am speaking from a combine cab in mid evening that has covered 70 acres today. Last year it was our first with tracks instead of wheels, which at the time looked a bit extravagant. It has certainly come into its own on these sodden, 2008 stumbles.
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