Some of his wheat has started to sprout in the ears, with Robigus being particularly bad he notes.

Also the milling wheat‘s have deteriorated in quality. “Hagberg‘s have gone through the floor.”

Mr Macfarlane attributes the sprouting in the wheat to humid conditions because of mist coming off the sea.

“A bit further inland they had scorching sunshine when we got mist for 2 weeks solid.”

However he has been quite lucky in missing many of the heaviest thunderstorms.

Mr Macfarlane has another 135ha (330 acres) still to harvest and hopes he can get the crop off the field quickly to prevent quality dropping further.

He predicts he has another 10 days of harvesting to do, but hopes to cut this down if he gets help from a neighbouring farmer.

The spring barley has suffered from an array of problems, namely sprouting, high nitrogen contents, as well as low yields.

One of the main worries for him now is the drilling of next year‘s oilseed rape. The ground is far too wet to do anything with and if the rape is sown too late then it could really suffer if there was a cold spell in the autumn.

“I‘m going to drill as much as I can, but I think I‘ll be having much less rape than usual next year.”

“It seems every year we get more extreme weather. It just makes you feel incredibly helpless.”

However he tries to remain optimistic, for there are other farmers in Northumberland who are in much worse situations.

“At least we managed to get something in.”