He’s planning to harvest another 24 ha (60 acres) by the end of the week.

“It‘s a bit thin but it’s not bad.”

The wheat is yielding 8.3 – 8.4 t/ha (67 – 68 cwt) and is coming in at 17.8% moisture.

“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.”

Mr Clarke‘s early harvest has allowed him to catch the early markets and thus attaining him a premium.

He is selling his wheat as feed, predominately for chickens.

Mr Clarke also grows Napia Consort and Robigus saying that he may drop Consort next year because it is under performing in comparison to the other varieties.

70% of the pearl barley has already been harvested. However on a field that previously was used to rear pigs on, the barley simply hasn’t turned.

“It‘s very frustrating,” he said.

So far he’s been getting 7.4 t/ha (3 t/acre) on the more heavy land but where there was a lack of moisture in the soil on the lighter gravel land yields fell to 6.2 t/ha (2.5 t/acre).

Mr Clarke said his oilseed rape so far has been very variable.

“We had a couple of thin patches that had 2.8 t/ha (23 cwt) but the rest was more like    3.7 t/ha (30 cwt) – it’s very variable.”

“Some was not bad, but some was not good.”

“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.”