Harvest is set to finish more than a month earlier than usual for a West Sussex estate, spurred on by the lack of rain this growing season.

Farm manager Mark Heritage from Sompting Estate’s Titch Hill Farm, on the outskirts of Worthing, explains how limited rain from February to July has impacted harvest.

“Given the drought conditions, I’ve been fairly happy with the yields and qualities produced this season,” he says.

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The farm lies on a mixture of heavy clay, chalky loam and lowland land in the South Downs, which tend to change from very wet to very dry depending on the season.

Mark has seen some good qualities on his milling wheat Extase. However, yields have averaged 7.5t/ha this year, which is below his five-year average.

The variety Mayflower was trialled for the first time this year on the farm, but has produced some disappointing results with poor qualities and yields under 5t/ha.

It is assumed that the severe lack of rain in the spring limited development, producing smaller grains than usual.

This year’s spring and winter barley has performed well, with both producing average yields of 7.5t/ha. Laureate has been good quality and met malting standards.

The only crops left to cut is a block of Vespa winter beans, which Mark predicts will not perform overly well due to the crop being hit hard with aphids back in May,

Next year, Mark hopes to bring oilseed rape (OSR) back into the rotation, after not growing the crop on the farm since 1997.

He hopes OSR will perform better on the chalky soils compared to beans and offer a more profitable break crop.

Titch Hill farm is a 350ha mixed arable and livestock estate, comprising 47 pedigree Sussex cattle, 200 Texel x Southdown sheep with following lambs.

It also has 10ha of vineyards which are processed on site into Titch Hill Wines.