Andrew Craig, who farms near Telford, Shropshire, is “a bit frustrated by the weather – it‘s just miserable.”

Mr Craig missed the brunt of a storm last night but there was enough rain for him not to be able to continue combining on Wednesday (Aug 4).

He hopes to carry on cutting the remaining 52ha (130 acres) of rape tomorrow saying “we‘re going to harvest even if we have to dry it. I’d just prefer to get it all into the shed.”

So far, 80 ha (200 acres) of rape has been combined with “variable results”.

He found that his Winner was disappointing, yielding the least at 3.46t/ha (1.4 t/acre).

He was more impressed by 8 ha (20 acres) of the new variety Caracas, yielding 4.08t/ha (1.65 t/acre).

His Courage and Winner went flat but the Caracas (a low biomass variety) stayed standing meaning “it was a lot easier to combine” he says.

“We had good germination – none of the crop failed at all, but we did suffer from a little bit of pigeon damage.”

Mr Craig had a very average barley harvest so farm, with the Pearl varying between 5.93-7.41t/ha (2.4-3 t/acre) and 16% moisture.

Mr Craig believed the main reason for the variation was the dry spell in May.

The wheat is still another 10 days away on his 607ha (1,500 acre) farm, which lies on heavy clay to medium loam.