Farmers in the north east of Scotland continue to struggle with wet weather, but elsewhere winter wheat sowing is underway.

Growers in Aberdeenshire had made slow progress over the past week, with 15% of spring barley and 70% of wheat still to cut, according to Bruce Ferguson at Aberdeen Grain.

“We haven’t had a huge amount of success with the weather – the growers have just been snatching what they can, at very high moisture contents.

Spring barley quality in North East Scotland was starting to suffer, said Trevor Harriman at Scotgrain.

About half the spring barley cut over the weekend was still of reasonable malting quality. “Some has started to go, though – you have to test each sample on its own merits.”

In Northern Ireland, Gerald Erwin finished harvest at Nutts Corner, Crumlin, Co. Antrim, yesterday (27 August), and hoped to start drilling winter wheat tomorrow.

“We had a reasonable weekend and worked straight through from Thursday to Monday.

“But before that we had three weeks in which we only did two days’ work, because of the wet weather.”

However, in Shropshire, harvest had gone well for both cereals and potatoes at Richard Solari’s Heath House Farm, Beckbury.

“We’ve had a good year for potatoes – through a bit of luck and judgement we’ve ended up with very good packing quality.

Harvest of maincrop Maris Pipers was 60% complete, he said. “We expect to finish by 15 or 20 October, depending on the weather.”

Further south, Paul Gluyas had hoped to drill wheat today at Pencoose farm, Stithians, Cornwall, but was rained off.

“We put the first field of winter wheat in yesterday, but it started raining as soon as we got up this morning, which was a bit disappointing.”