Having finished wheat drilling in Berks, Nigel Horne took a half-day break yesterday, planning to start on beans next week.
Meanwhile his agronomist Steve Cook of Hampshire Arable Systems checked out his crops for autumn treatments at Catmore Farm, West Ilsley.
"Unfortunately he didn't have a very good day," said Mr Horne.
His car broke down and to make matters worse he was a mile off-road and his mobile phone packed up, he explained.
"So he wasn't recovered by the AA until after dark. In fact he had a very bad day."
On the plus side, there is no spraying urgency apart from the need to tackle phoma soon in the oilseed rape, and no wheat pre-em herbicides have been required this autumn.
"All the blackgrass fields are in spring beans this season," explained Mr Cook.
"We're not early drillers," added Mr Horne. "So although we used nothing other than single-purpose seed dressing, I'm not worried about BYDV. We generally get the aphids with one well-timed spray.
"There's nothing to worry about in the wheat - it's all emerging well, though we had to use some Carakol Plus metaldehyde pellets on about 40ha, all after oilseed rape, and it's now looking a bit better.
"But the rape's very patchy and I expect we'll be re-drilling some with spring rape as I don't want to disrupt the rotation."
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