Last month my daughters were given lots of column inches, so I was given flack for not mentioning my “wee” boy.

Now 16 and 6ft 2in, Angus has just passed his tractor driving test and is an enormous help with the grain cart. 

As I write on the first day of autumn, we have completed the spring barley with most of it with yields that have been very satisfactory and so far, all of it has met malting standards.

Today, we have cut the Cordiale wheat with excellent results, so let us hope the rest of the wheat runs as well as that.

See also: Read more from our arable Farmer Focus writers

I know exactly what our yields are because every load for the past 45 years has gone over our ancient, yet accurate weighbridge.

The downside to this routine is that only the trailers fit on it so we laboriously drop them on to a block before weighing.

Needless to say it is important, as Angus has discovered, to remember to pick it up again before driving off.

The only pipe that does not pop off is the brake pipe and the fountain of oil that then comes out of the back of the tractor is very alarming for the young driver.

It is a rite of passage to do this here, as I can testify, and he should not worry, because someone managed to stick the prongs of the muck fork into the front tyres of the forklift while making silage.

Who would that someone be? Well, me of course.

I woke very early one morning last week and couldn’t get back to sleep worrying that the new team for this year’s vegetable harvest had not and would not turn up as promised.

Only a few garbled messages had come through to say that they would be there at 2am. How was this going to be possible?

We live in the middle of nowhere.

So at 4am having heard nothing I fired off an anxious email to Lithuania, and then decided to go outside and do something constructive.

Only then, through the Scotch mist, did I spy a minibus that had come all the way from eastern Europe.

It felt like Christmas Day.

Neil Thomson farms 607ha in partnership with his father and brother from Caverton Mill, Kelso, on the Scottish Borders, growing combinable crops and brassicas. Some of the mainly medium loam is let for potatoes, and the farm also has cattle and sheep.