Harvest is in full swing at Mike Cumming’s Lour Farms, Ladenford, Angus, in sharp contrast to a week ago.

“We are delighted to be busy – a week ago we were in the depths of despair after a massive amount of rain.

“There was a lot of localised flooding, and the fields couldn’t take any more. It looked like we were heading for a salvage operation.”

However, conditions had dried out extremely quickly, and Mr Cumming had cut almost 200ha (500 acres) over the past five days.

“I can’t believe the difference – on Wednesday (9 September) we were sinking in the last field of spring barley – by Saturday we didn’t leave a mark.”

Mr Cumming now had just 7ha (19 acres) of Viscount winter wheat to finish, which was coming in at 16% moisture.

So far the wheat had averaged about 10t/ha (4t/acre), although the later cut wheat had sprouted slightly so bushelweights had dropped to about 72kg/hl. “There has also been a bit of shedding.”

Spring barley was a disaster, yielding just 5.6t/ha (2.25t/acre). “It was brackled right down and we lost a lot of heads.”

Although farmers had made great progress over the weekend, there was still a lot of spring barley and wheat to cut in the area, said Mr Cumming.

“There’s still about 15% to do – most should be finished by the end of the week.”

Crop: Winter wheat
Varieties: Alchemy, Consort, Viscount and Istrabraq
Area: 133ha (330 acres)
Yield: 10t/ha (4t/acre)

Crop: Spring barley
Varieties: Optic and Oxbridge
Area: 238ha (500 acres)
Yield: 5.6t/ha (2.25t/acre)