A smell of burning brought Laurence out from the combine cab to investigate and sure enough there was smoke billowing out from a burnt out bearing. This called a halt to the oilseed rape harvest one afternoon until the combine parts were replaced, giving Laurence time to worry!

With such a narrow window of time (literally a few weeks) for harvesting the team must work until the dew starts to fall; at that time the dampness on the crop begins to snarl up in the cutter bar, bringing work to an abrupt halt.

Ideally if the sun shines early in the day, the dew dries off and combining can begin mid morning; and then if the going is good and there aren’t too many break-downs Laurence would probably harvest 80-90 acres per day.   But for one reason or another we haven’t got going until lunchtime and the average is 60-70 acres per day so far.

Laurence has begun harvesting the barley at Cranleigh this afternoon and is pressing on now as the storms rumble in the skies to the east. If the forecast of heavy rain is accurate, this may prevent any combining at all tomorrow.

The trailer is driven parallel to the combine harvester so the grain can be offloaded whilst continuing to harvest.

Laurence checks the grain