Wet weekend puts harvest on hold for Richard Cobbald
We got under way with the oilseed rape harvest in mid-July and managed just one day before it rained and eventually turned out to be a wet week.
The yield was 3.3t/ha which is to be expected as it was on light land and was hit by pigeons. But the small piece of heavy land rape we did to make up the day ran at 4.1t/ha, so there does seem to be potential in our oilseed rape with a lot better crops to come.
The rain is actually not too much of a problem as it will help the sugar beet, which looks great. To be honest, most of the rape isn’t fit yet so this stops me from being tempted to cut it too early.
As a result of a wet weekend, I had the hardship of sitting in front of the telly with a couple of cans and a curry.
The golf Open was great viewing and it was wonderful to see Darren Clarke beat the elements to win. To top it all, I watched Samoa beating the Aussies in the rugby. A good distraction all round from a non-harvesting weekend. Let’s hope it’s the last one for a little while.
There seem to be many differing reports on yield being bantered around in this area, so I figured I would get to the bottom of all this conjecture and try to hack into all the farmers’ mobile phones. One message was about getting harvest going so he could escape the “Doris” and the “brats”.
The rest covered everything from cricket to lap dancing – whatever that is? Still, if harvest turns out to be a disaster, I’m sure I can get some sort of PR role with the Metropolitan Police.
