Archived News

31st August 2012

Laurence managed to combine wheat at Comb Farm for just two hours on Wednesday before the rain swept in horizontally from the west.

The moisture content had been about 18% until Sunday, but the rain that night raised the moisture to 24% where it’s remained all week. The crops were too wet to cut anything yesterday and then we ran out of diesel as so much has been used in the drier which has been going constantly throughout harvest.  Even though the wheat at Shalford didn’t need drying, the drier was still playing catch up with tonnes of grain from Wotton.

This years’ yield is down by approximately 15-20% but we won’t know for sure until all the crops are in; Laurence says this is by far the worst harvest in memory.  We still have 100 acres of wheat to harvest, 50 of oats and 50 acres of triticale (rye x wheat).

Ed has been cultivating the stubble fields in preparation for drilling the winter crops.