Having spent my last few postings whingeing about the weather I feel duty bound to report limited improvement in the drilling situation. We did manage to start again a few days ago - three weeks after we were stopped by rain - and have since completed all planting on the fields currently available. That is to say all except the ones planned to be drilled after sugar beet have been lifted.
I won't claim the seeds all went in well. Seedbeds were too wet in some places and too cloddy in others. But we did manage to cover most of the seed and must now hope that wheat, which is normally resilient to poor drilling conditions, lives up to its reputation. Furthermore the damage done to land carrying sugar beet by the heavy early autumn rains was more serious that I had realised.
The first beet field lifted ploughed up very "livery" and although we normally follow right behind the plough in such situations we had to leave it to weather for a few days before the power harrow was capable of making a seedbed good enough to drill into. We have another hundred acres of beet to lift behind which we are hoping to drill wheat, so I hope they will turn out better than the first.
All in all a difficult autumn and one which does not bode too well for next years harvest yields. And it isn't over yet.