It seems like weeks since I last posted anything about the village and, truth to tell, it has been quite some time but ask any farmer or contractor and they will tell you that after the brief which follows silage and haymaking we’re into harvest.

Barley, wheat, Oilseed rape beans and of course maize silage, everything has taken twice as long as it should, not because it’s been a heavy crop, far from it, there have been some poor crops around this year and to make the matter worse the quality has been changeable too. No, what’s stopped us has been the weather. It seemed that every time we got a few dry days and the moisture content was approaching something we could cut there would be a brief downpour and we’re back to square one again.

We finally got the beans, the last crop we were cutting, off in mid September but some farmers haven’t been so lucky. I read of a farmer in Aberdeenshire who only finished on the 6th of October. More than seventy, yes Seventy days after he started!

Once it is all of the field of course it’s a race to get the ground ready for the next crop. We have sub-soiled about sixty acres this year which meant an extra machinery pass but generally it was all drilled in time and both the rape and wheat are looking okay, the rapes is a bit patchy but I hope it will fill in.

If we can have a few more warm days, say till the middle of November, then everything will have enough growth and ground cover to go through the winter months without loosing condition. We always have a bit of yellow at the tip of the wheat leaves in the spring. It’s where the frost has got them, but if the plant is big and healthy it will weather this without too much trouble.

Okay, the next crop is in the ground, tomorrow the clocks go bake an hour and the fire in the house is lit; I’m off to watch strictly.

Hubert Belcher.