After the exceptional rain over the weekend before last, we had no option but to wait for things to dry out.

Normally after a dry day at this time of the year the combine can get going again, but after more than two inches of rain in this area in the deluge, it was Thursday before I could bite the winter barley without my teeth sinking into it.

The straw was definitely breaking down. A motorist helpfully stopped at the field gate and enquired if it was winter barley. On being told it was, he told us it would want to be harvested soon and drove off.

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In fact we were of the same view, but the delay of almost a week had transformed the crop.

The straw that was so difficult to thrash the week before had matured.

The moisture content of the grain was ideal and with two combines going, we had the 2025 winter barley wrapped up by Friday evening. With moistures between 16% and 20%, the final yield has worked out at 3.75t/acre.

It was a two-row variety in the worst possible place in the rotation from a Take-all point of view — the first after wheat following oilseed rape, and a variety without in-built barley yellow dwarf resistance, so we were fully satisfied with the final outcome, apart from the general cereal price this year which is a much bigger subject.

We didn’t chop any of the straw and it is now fully baled in round 4x4s and some big 8x4x4s and it is all safely sold.

Both the oats and the oilseed rape are coming in rapidly.

I am told that my rule of thumb of waiting four weeks after spraying Roundup on the oilseed rape won’t be valid this year, but we’ll see.

On the cattle side, we have brought in a pen of cattle that we would normally leave out until October.

At present beef prices, all the normal rules are being torn up.

We will probably let them out by day to graze paddocks near the house and then give them supplementary silage and meal in the evening with the aim of having them fit in late November/early December instead of keeping them till late January/February as we would normally.

We are continuing to slowly buy in stores on the basis that it’s hard to see a back-end slump this year, but the potential for a sensible margin looks small as the store beef price ratio has shifted significantly away from beef profitability.