We are drilling the final field of winter wheat behind forage maize. It marks the end of a benign and usable autumn season.

New plantings have emerged well with regular doses of rain, although nearly all the wheat planted after oilseed rape has had to be treated for slugs yet again.

Following another challenging wet August, which knocked back much of the wheat quality, we have responded by tweaking our rotations still further to grow more winter barley and oilseed rape in order to front-load next year’s harvest as much as possible into July.

With more than one-quarter of our arable ground now planted to rapeseed, I’m relieved to say 95% of it is looking really strong in a year when many have dropped this crop entirely from the rotation. Whether our wheat plantings have been delayed enough to eliminate the blackgrass threat remains to be seen.

On a personal note, recent weeks have been frustrating for me. Early in October, late one evening I fell badly from the platform of our self-propelled sprayer in the dark and managed a complete rupture of the Achilles tendon in my right foot.

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An operation followed to sew this back a fortnight later, but I still face a number of weeks in a cast to allow the tendon to recover.

As someone who considered myself fairly indestructible and very active, this has come as a bit of a shock.

Fortunately I have a very understanding farm team that have managed to cover the work I should be doing, leaving me to do those office jobs I had been avoiding.

Everyone knows farming is the second most dangerous industry after construction and accidents will happen, but with a bit of thought and care this accident could have been avoided.

When you next have one of those “Cor, that was lucky” moments on the farm, please stop and think about it for a second. Next time it happens you or someone else might not have the same get-out.

David Butler farms south of Marlborough in Wiltshire in partnership with his parents and also runs a contracting company. He farms around 870 ha of combinable crops alongside a 280-cow dairy herd.