Combining presents for me an unusual occupational hazard. Kidney stones and combines are a bad combination, as the rocking motion of the machine, particularly while unloading, stirs them up like nothing else.

First, I’ll give you a short anatomical lesson to help you understand the problem. Kidney stones are calcium deposits which can build up in your kidney and may be dislodged to be expelled in your pee. So far so good. So what’s the big deal?

You see, a decent-sized stone may be the size of a small pea and as rough as a granule of cheap fertiliser. You’ll have grasped that this is serious stuff and extremely painful, worse than natural childbirth, which isn’t great – or so I’m told.

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Flush it out

Once you sense that a stone has been stirred up, there’s only one option and that’s drink litres of water to try to flush it out.

On one occasion while driving the old Axial Flow, it was kill or cure. I downed six litres of water and the hydraulic pressure in your blocked waterworks rises to about 200bar, which will do one of two things. It’ll either shoot the stone out faster than a cruise missile or blow the top off your you-know-what. On that occasion, I blasted the bugger into the rim of the combine.

But failing that, it’s a visit to hospital where the surgeon will send a miniature jackhammer up your waterworks to smash the stone. I kid you not – been there, done that and not great fun.

Between kidney stones and drum wraps, I had to get rid of the Axial Flow and the New Holland is better all round. It doesn’t shake about as much and the cab is vibration-proofed. So while I still have a few kidney stones, they tend to stay put during the harvest.

But on the one good day this year, I felt a tingle in my jingle and I took to the water. Guinness would work as well, but I’d end up plastered in A&E. I didn’t pass the stone, but it lodged somewhere else and life resumed. You have no idea how relieved I was.

Low yields

However, there is another health hazard to combining this year that’s less amusing – the stress of low yields and prices and spoiling weather. The wheat yields are grim, as I expected, ranging from second wheats at 3.1t/acre to first wheats at 3.8t/acre, all adjusted to 15%.

However, it’s all first wheat remaining and yields may improve, but the wet weather at present is not conducive to improving anything – except perhaps Bill O’Keeffe’s grass…

But harvest aside, we’ve been busy with cultivations, field drainage and having lime spread and incorporated. While granular lime is very useful for a quick-fix situation, it’s expensive and traditional ground limestone offers the best long-term solution. I always see an immediate benefit when we lime, despite the soil’s PH often being reasonably OK.

Political matters

And finally, to political matters. I think Larry Goodman is quite right to ask his farmer customers as to whether they want the EIF levy deducted.

I see a positive in this situation. The IFA has been beholden to the meat factories for too long for this reason and maybe now this cosy relationship will end.

I’ve never paid any IFA levies in my life and my annual sub and yours should be enough for them. The top brass will have to cut their cloth as we mere mortals are having to do at the present time.