Robert Ramsey said harvest had slowed down due to the wet weather, with half spring barley left to cut.

Yields had been very varied and a little less than average. “They were late going in so some may have come up too early. It was a seed crop, and we were restricted on the number of seeds we could put down, so it was a bit thinner than we would have liked.”

He said the ones that went in properly performed much better so the crop was overall very varied.

There was no difference between the varieties of Wagon, Braemar, and Cocktail, with the only difference in the way the crop went in.

A small field did not make malting but he said Wagon had been a very beautiful sample.

Mr Ramsey was currently struggling to get the last of the Ontario oilseed rape in the ground as conditions were very wet.

“We were ahead of things but now we have slowed back to normal time.”