Donald is just under half way through the harvest of his mixed crop in Donegal. He had hoped to get it all cut during the recent dry spell but the beans in the crop were slow to ripen.

He says he might leave beans out of the mix next year to allow for an earlier harvest and because the peas have done quite well this year. There has been a lot of rain in the past week in Donegal, so Donald is looking for a few dry days to get going again.

The mixed crop that has been cut yielded 1.5t/ac. He says this is OK but it is back a bit on last year’s crop due to the tough start it got with some very dry weather.

The barley and oats in the mix came in at moisture contents between 14.5% and 18%, while the peas were at 16% and the beans were between 19% and 20% as there was still the odd green bean in the sample. Donald gets the crop dried down to an average of 14%.

If there is a lot more rain, he won’t bother baling the straw. The crop was cut relatively high to avoid the worst of the weeds, and Donald says the straw is every bit as valuable going back into his soil as it is in a bale anyway.

He is starting to dig his potatoes this week for a couple of small orders. A small bit of scab has crept into the crop with the dry weather.

Tuber numbers are back slightly with the dry weather and Donald says the crop could probably have done with more farmyard manure. He says he might try some pelletised chicken manure next year.

The weeding has really helped keep the drills clean this year. Donald says they are the cleanest drills he has had in a long time as he has now got the right weeding system in place.

A dry August gave Brian ideal conditions to finish the harvest and plant winter oilseed rape. The last four crops to be cut were all for seed, so the combine was blown down and cleaned between each crop.

The Champion winter wheat yielded a satisfactory 4.3t/ac. Brian waited for nearly a week to allow the moisture to drop during some dull weather, and the good spell allowed him to do this.

Some of the winter wheat was redrilled with Husky spring oats after damage from storm Éowyn. This crop yielded 3.3t/ac at a KPH of 55.

Brian had some Duncan spring wheat too. It had looked quite good all year and it yielded 3.52t/ac, with a hectolitre weight of between 72 and 75.

The final crop to be cut was the Lynx spring beans. Brian says it can be hard to judge the moisture content of beans, but he thinks they were around 18%.

The crop yielded between 1.9 and 2.6t/ac depending on the soil type of the field, with heavier soils doing better as they had not suffered during the dry weather.

Once the harvest was finished, Brian moved pretty quickly into planting winter oilseed rape.

LG Armada was planted at 49 plants/m2. The fields were grubbed first before being planted with a strip till drill. He says this gives a lovely seedbed.

He remarks that oilseed rape is a super cover crop, soaking up nutrients into a combinable crop.

Some cover crops have also been planted recently.

He is trying to avoid using brassicas and legumes as cover crops so he is using mixes mainly containing phacelia and linseed.

It has been a decent year for Brian, but he says that the grain price along with the importation of Spanish straw and boatloads of grain is disappointing. He says that it makes a mockery of the traceability and quality of Irish grain.

Denis and the Seedtech team got everything harvested in great conditions and now only has some spring oilseed rape left to cut.

He says the weather has really been in their favour so far this harvest. The spring beans were cut last week and yields were averaging 2t/ac and Denis is very happy with that.

The moisture content was as low as 15%, which is a big difference to spring beans last year.

The spring cereal harvest was very easy for Denis with moistures as low as 12% for some early sown spring barley and all crops were below 20%. Yields averaged 3.6t/ac at 15% moisture content which Denis is very happy with.

His focus has already shifted to sowing and he managed to get the winter oilseed rape and cover crops sown on 21 August.

He drilled LG Adapt on the surrounds of the plots at a rate of 45 seeds/m2 and it got two bags per acre of 0-8-21 to help promote growth.

The cover crops were sown as part of a trial. It is looking at ways to reduce the carbon emissions of malting barley crops through cover crops and adjusted nitrogen applications. Currently, results are looking very positive.

Soil sampling is also required on the farm this year, so that job will be done over the next couple of days to get an indication where soil nutrients are at.

Overall, 60% of the farm is in a good status, some of the farm is kept at low fertility, while Denis is working on increasing the remaining part of the land.

With the National Ploughing Championships in Screggan, Co Offaly only around the corner, Denis will be taking some time off to compete there before getting back to the full swing of autumn planting.

He is hoping to get the winter rye planted the week beginning on 20 September and then move on to the winter wheat, barley and oats after that once the weather allows.