That sense of relief when the combine was finally parked into the shed was strong this season.

Summer and harvest have been relentless this year. We have had 580mm of rain since mid-December, which is peak flowering for us.

We had 460mm from the time the combine came out for the first time to the week we finished.

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About the author

David Clark

Farmer Focus writer

David Clark runs a 463ha fully irrigated mixed farm with his wife Jayne at Valetta, on the Canterbury Plains of New Zealand’s south island. He grows 400ha of cereals, pulses, forage and vegetable seed crops, runs 1,000 Romney breeding ewes and finishes 8,000 lambs annually.

Read more articles by David Clark

At every point in the harvest, we seemed to be backed up against the wall because of cloudy weather.

There was a tiny window to get a crop, with the deadline of yet another week of wet or overcast weather due.

When I look back at the harvest, we only lost a couple of hours one afternoon with a minor breakdown.

We otherwise had a great run with gear, never missed an opportunity and importantly we didn’t have any crop damaged due to delays.

In a difficult harvest, that is an important check sheet to tick off.

Our last crop, and the single most important of the season, was our carrots.

In the lead up to maturity we were very concerned if we would even have a chance to get them.

Cutting time is critical on hybrid carrots and luckily, just at the point we got the nod to windrow the field, a forecast of 3-4 days of harvest weather appeared.

The 25.5ha field was expected to take four days to combine, picking the windrows up running one direction.

We started on the Friday and by Saturday night the forecast closed in to rain from mid-afternoon Monday.

Close friends of ours offered to help with their combine. We ran both machines Sunday, and I finished the last rows on Monday.

We finished at 3pm and the southerly blew in at 3.30pm.

A total of 100mm of rain followed over the next two days. For us, those few hours of a friend helping ensured we got our crop in.

It has been a season of friends and neighbours helping each other this year, but that typifies one of the wonderful parts of families farming together in rural communities the world over.