Monday 6 October 2008

Harvesting a Nightmare

Firstly apologies for it being nearly 2 months since I last sat down to write a blog, actually it feels like two months since I last sat down!! We have had a really hard time harvesting this year, not another moaning farmer story but one of an expensive, morale breaking, grinding, painful and traumatic time. This was one of the last fields cut on Bredon Hill, the wheat battered down by heavy rain and winds all through August. You all can remember August? We only had 10 dry days in the month with no rain. The crops would dry a little and just as we were about to cut it, rain would be upon us. We only managed to harvest half of this field, the crops on the ground looked like this.... We started on the 25th July and finally wrapped the job up on the 21st of September. In a normal year we would like to be completed by the 1st week in September ready to start drilling the wheat crops. The knock of effect will be felt this year and well into the coming years. We only managed to plant 2/5ths of the Oilseed Rape, and 1/2 of that has succumb to water logging and bird damage.