Looking back at last Wednesday, you would think I was a happy farmer getting on with harvest. Alas, as I write this on Sunday – another wet day – that was the only day in the past seven that we have done any combining.

Due to our limited drying capacity and to make combining a bit easier (since I am the driver), we Roundup everything prior to harvest.

We have our own sprayer, so we only do 25-50 acres at a time to make sure it’s not all ready at once if the weather changes.

However, the lack of two dry days in a row mean that if it finally dries up, it will be a rush to harvest the remaining 225 acres before it all brackles down onto the ground.

We cut almost 60 acres from 1pm-10pm on Wednesday with our five straw-walker combine, which I thought was good progress. It’s a Montana combine, so as well as coping with hilly terrain, you can lift the cutter bar up and over gateposts for moving easily from field to field.

Unfortunately, my remaining fields are at seven different farms, so progress will be hindered by transporting between places.

Yields for winter barley have been 3-3.5t/acre and oilseed rape has been just over the 30cwt benchmark.

Spring barley started with a field of Propino doing around 3.25/acre dried to 14%, where we had early sowing, sandy loam and pig slurry.

The next venue was contract farmed, heavier land with loads of meadow grass which barely yielded two tonnes per acre at 18-19% moisture.

Most of the crops look quite good though, so fingers crossed. The wheat looks really well, but I remember in the late ’90s stopping at 23% one night and then salvaging at 40% three plus weeks later.

No chickens are being counted for it just yet.

On the livestock side, the main news is that our abattoir at Brechin went on fire last month. This means that the 4,000 pigs/week slaughtered there by Tulip have been getting transported to Manchester instead.

This has proved to be a logistical nightmare for our co-op, Scottish Pig Producers.

The team based in Huntly has been doing a brilliant job keeping pigs moving off the farm, however, England can no longer cope with our surplus and so Cookstown in Northern Ireland has been an additional destination for the past two weeks.

We are the lucky farm to be picked out of the hat for next week, so 190 pigs will need to get individual tags and be vet-checked before loading on Wednesday morning.

Normally, pigs just need a slap mark tattooed on each shoulder if they are going directly to slaughter in Scotland or England.

Anyway, it’s 4pm and the wind is blowing, so I’m off to check my barley. Here’s hoping we all get a dry spell in the near future.

When you see the weather in the Caribbean and Florida, you soon realise we don’t have much to moan about.