Farmer Focus: Neighbour’s harvest prompts envy
John Pawsey © Phil Weedon There are many things that can stress a farmer over the harvest period, the obvious one being the weather.
Hearing how your neighbour’s yields have been so much better than yours is particularly testing.
A very close third is hearing that not only is your neighbour’s barn bursting with grain, but they have also finished harvest when you still have a fortnight to go.
See also: Farmer Focus: Focusing on the science behind the soil
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While people with better weather and yields can be annoying, I have a retort for anyone finishing harvest before us.
This year, no one in the Shimpling environs should have finished harvest before 19 August, the day that our grain was safely gathered in.
I tell anyone finishing before that date (or any date other than our finishing date, both past and in the future) that they are clearly over-combined with spiralling fixed costs.
I tell people finishing after that date that they have obviously not been working hard enough and need to try harder. It usually goes down well.
Harvest 2025 has by no means been a disaster at Shimpling Park Farm.
Although the final tally still has to be computed, I am hoping for an average result.
Organic prices have faired better than non-organic, which will help the situation. Being my 40th harvest, I was keen for a positive result.
Another significant change here is a switch from our old organic certifiers of 25 years to the Soil Association.
The Soil Association’s origins are in our great county of Suffolk, at Haughley, just 15 miles from Shimpling.
In 1939, Lady Eve Balfour and Alice Debenham began the world’s first long-term, side-by-side scientific comparison of organic and non-organic farming systems.
Their findings were later published in The Living Soil, which in turn led to the creation of the Soil Association in 1946.
As we’ve now not had a third poor harvest in a row (see my last month’s report), our own organic experiment continues in Shimpling.
