Charles Martin has finished combining winter wheat at Mill House Farm, Abbotts Langley, Hertfordshire, and hopes to put the combine away tonight (8 August).

“We finished cutting wheat last night at 10pm – and we’ve just got 4ha of dodgy looking oilseed rape to finish off today,” he said.

“We had a rain shower this morning which didn’t stop us – I had sprayed it off so it’s running through the combine fairly easily.”

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Winter wheat harvest was better than average; but not barn-busting, with Panorama yielding just over 7.4t/ha, said Mr Martin.

“It’s an alright sample, and certainly better than the past couple of years.”

Prophet peas had also done reasonably well, at 3.6t/ha. “We can’t really complain at that. And it’s the earliest we’ve ever been able to harvest them, which is nice.”

Cabernet oilseed rape had yielded 3.6t/ha in the main, excepting the final fields which looked awful, he added.

“We had a lot of pigeon damage over the winter, so it’s full of weeds. It wasn’t ready earlier, so we just left it until the end.”