Many farmers got caught up on work over the past week, finishing baling and clearing straw from fields and are now facing into the winter oilseed rape, winter wheat and spring barley harvests earlier than usual.

A nice bit of winter oilseed rape has been harvested at low moisture contents of 5-9%.

Yield ranges have been reported at 1.8-2.2t/ha, with a good few reports around the 2t/ac mark.

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Winter wheat has been harvested and will likely be harvested in significant amounts over the weekend. A number of farmers began to cut early in the week, but moisture contents were too high, so they had to exit crops again, but more crops were coming ready from the middle of the week. KPH levels so far have been reported in the high 70s.

Spring barley has been harvested in limited amounts, but will kick off properly in the coming days. It is extremely early for spring barley to be harvested with some crops harvested at the end of last week and a number starting early this week.

These were generally March-sown crops. Crops were not threshing well in some cases and moisture contents were very low. Even though crops were not fully ripe, farmers were trying to cut before moisture levels dropped too far.