The sun showed its face throughout most of the UK over the weekend allowing farmers to make much needed progress on their harvests.

Some early farmers have started to get the combines rolling through their wheat to catch early markets while others are still concentrating on the barley harvest with good results.

Alan Willett told FARMERS WEEKLY Harvest Highlights that he’s harvested 18 ha (45 acres) of Soissons and has only got another 6 ha (15 acres) still to do.

Gary Clarke in Notts also made a start on his wheat harvest having managed to harvest 7 ha (18 acres) and intends to harvest another 24 ah (60 acres) in the next couple of days.

“It‘s a bit thin but it’s not bad.”

“It’s a very boring average kind of year – usually you expect to have some good crops and some bad, but this year they’re just all average.”

“In March and April people said it would be a real monster of a harvest, but then we got a dry spell followed by a wet spell and now people have become disappointed.”

Unlike many farmers across the country, Jiles Ball said “things are going quite well” when in the middle of his oilseed rape harvest on his farm in Chichester, West Sussex.

Nick Harding is also not having any problems with the establishment of his oilseed rape.

“If you just do the job properly then you don’t get these problems.”

Les Anderson is having an “excellent” barley harvest so far.
 
“I‘m extremely happy,” he said.

According to FWi weather services it will be mostly sunny with some chance of storms starting to come in by late afternoon from the south and west.