He said: “It looks good – we‘re pretty happy with it.”

He was unable to tell us specific yields or quality of the Pearl malting barley but guessed that the yield was around about 7.4 t/ha (3 t/acre).

“We think this year is slightly up on our 5 year average.”

Mr Coleman intends to start harvesting his oilseed rape after the weekend if the weather stays dry.

“It wouldn’t be overly helpful if we got a storm in the next couple of days,” he said.

He said that his oilseed rape “is lodged but not completely down”.

Unlike many other farmers across the country, Mr Coleman has no establishment problems.

“We were pretty lucky. The day after we were worried that we were drilling the rape in such dry and dusty conditions, but then we got a heavy shower the next day, which put 10ml over our farm.”