Our first harvest for the year started last month with daffodil flower picking and so far it has been a trial, with cool weather resulting in slow progress.

There have been many years when I have wished for conditions such as these to hold back the crop in order to keep on top of the harvesting. This time I find myself wanting it to warm up a little.

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The biggest challenge is matching the available labour with the crop needs. It is not a harvest that can be mechanised and so we are totally at the mercy of the labour supply. In times gone by we were able to source our entire labour requirement locally and paid each of them cash at the end of every day based on what they had individually picked.

It was seen as a boost to the local economy at a quiet time of the year. All we had to do was leave a message on the office answerphone each night saying whether there was picking work on the following day.

Now things are different; changes in society and regulation mean the local workforce is no longer available.For a number of years, we have operated using labour supplied by gangmasters. This supply of labour has become harder to get as the Gangmaster Licensing Authority has, rightly so, cleaned up the industry and reduced the number of operators.

I am not a large-scale flower grower and can’t offer the length of picking season some others can, meaning I am not so interesting to the large labour suppliers.

This year I have attempted to manage the labour supply better by directly employing a number of Romanian workers sourced through an agency. Luckily, there are holiday parks locally that welcome a block booking in a quiet time, solving the accommodation problem. The difficult part is predicting some weeks in advance when picking is going to start and matching that to flights to the UK.

At least they have had a few days holiday in Cornwall!

Jeremy Oatey manages 1,100ha of arable land near Plymouth in Cornwall and is 2013 Farmers Weekly Arable Farmer of the Year. Cropping includes wheat, barley, OSR, oats, beans, potatoes, onions, swedes and daffodils.