Still waiting at Blakemere

Philip Gorringe still hasn’t made a start to harvest Blakemere Farm, Blakemere, Herefordshire, with wet weather to blame.

“It’s forecast to rain today (8 Aug) but hopefully we should get a start tomorrow if it dries out,” he said.

“We’ve got 80ha of grass seed to cut and then 80ha of winter barley too. Luckily they’ve only just come fit now and aren’t over ripe.”

So far Mr Gorringe had only managed to cut 24ha of hay, which was also wet.

“We plan to cut some of the grass seed tomorrow – probably about 60ha – and then go into the barley and wheat as some of the later drilled grass seed will wait for now.

“I think quality is going to be variable,” he added. “Our crops which were later drilled have some pinched, horrible grains and then some well filled, good grains.

“I think it’s more of a pollination, rather than a disease, problem.”

However, he was still reasonably optimistic about harvest. “The lack of progress is quite frightening; we’d have had all the barley cut at this time last year.

“It’s certainly not going to be a record breaking year but, disease wise, I’ve seen worse.”

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