In times long past and pre-agricultural mechanisation, the beginning of harvest was a big event, much more so than it is today.

The field workers were recruited by the feudal lord of the manor and told to sharpen their reaping hooks and await the call.

But there was a unique protocol to be followed on the first harvest day which was always a short one.

By 4pm the reaping hooks were laid down. All the workers would then congregate and elect a lord of the harvest who would be their spokesman over the coming weeks. He’d negotiate pay rates with the boss.

With this important business done, they headed to the pub and got absolutely plastered. Then there’d be a round of fist fighting and a settling of old scores.

Eldred The Eejit might box Simple Simon for looking longingly at his wife wearing a pretty dress in the village church and Giles Halfhead might poleaxe Humpy Henry for over zealously beating his ass (as in donkey).

With the world put to rights, they’d all collapse and fall asleep and awake ready for 12 hour days, six days a week from the morrow onwards. Same as.

The onset of harvest today is positively boring towards this carry on but chances are your ancestors were at it centuries ago. Anyhow, harvest kicked off here on 9 July, the earliest ever.

Integral winter barley was first to fall to the knife and while I thought it looked a pretty decent crop, the yield was disappointing at 3.22 tonnes/acre at around 15% moisture and clouds of dust. But the bushel weight was poor at an average of just 57kg/hl.

Next was more Integral which came off as low as 13.5% moisture and yielded a better 3.52 tonnes/acre but with a low bushel again. Straw yields are back on last year at eight to 10 solid McHale bales/acre.

Next was the variety KWS Joyau, which I like.

The specific weight was much better than Integral, at an average of 62kg/hl and while the yield was similar, it was not grown in good barley land. One tough field (Crooks) which I’d kind of written off last spring came it at a surprising 3.05 tonnes/acre. However, the overall average yield was just 3.32 tonnes/acre – but that’s doable from lower cost spring barley.

Frankly, it’s not a lot of good at today’s prices of around €200/t at low moistures.

A friend who is a first-class farmer with sheep and tillage enterprises made the point to me that a tonne of barley and a lamb were broadly similar in price. However, he could sell a lot more lambs per acre than tonnes of barley and at a fraction of the costs.

If you can tolerate sheep, it’s the way to go and the two enterprises sit well together. As for me, it’s not an option to be a flock owner – as I hate sheep – but we do let out aftergrass to a sheep man, which works very well. To coin a phrase, it seems that mixed farming by (reaping) hook and by (shepherd’s) crook is the biz. Write it down. It’s good.

What is the future for cereal growing, if prices remain stubbornly low even in a world at war? One would assume that highly desirable peace could further erode prices. I can only answer this by telling you what I’m doing.

Less-productive fields like Crooks are being returned to grass which will be less output but much less cost.

Besides it’ll spare me the humiliation of reporting on my low yields. And with these temperatures there will be more of that.

I don’t think there will be any need for going on a pre-wheat harvest bender this year.