Well I have been holding off for some good news to share with you all, but alas, it seems to be in short supply at the moment. Harvest 2023 thus far, has been tricky. We do, however, have a bumper crop of mushrooms growing in the paddock and garden! But for the other crops, harvest has been challenging. Earlier on in July, we cut our oil seed rape, which did look fantastic but the yield was disappointing.
There was not enough rain earlier on in the year (during the critical period for seed filling ) which is ironic because there has been plenty of rain since! Richard has been on standby and glued to weather forecasts for the last 2 weeks. As soon as there looks to be a break in the rain, he is straight down the field with the combine to grab as much as he can before the next rain-shower arrives. It's not just us that is struggling this year; haymakers still have uncut hay, straw balers have sodden straw which won't bale, dairy cows are knee deep in mud and so it goes on.
The 15th July was St Swithin's day, and it rained. Folklore states that 'whatever the weather is like on St Swithin's Day - whether rain or shine - it will continue for the next 40 days and 40 nights'. We are only 23 days in - I do hope it's not true! It is incredible to think that this time last year we had a drought and the ground was so hard we couldn't get cultivator points into the ground! The vagaries of global warming I fear.
Richard recently put up a new weather station - which actually does confirm the rainfall (!) but also lets us know air temperature, wind speed and direction, and relative humidity.
This morning it felt like a September morning - with a really heavy dew and our windows had condensation on them. That 'September feeling' is usually due to higher relative humidity and a drop in ambient temperature.
You can see, that last night ( green figures on the left ) , after a huge down-pour, we had a relative humidity of 90% and a temperature of 12.6C. As I write this, the relative humidity is coming down ( currently at 62 % ) and it is getting warmer!
A don't want to bore you with the science - but farmers use charts like the one below to estimate how wet the grain in the field will be. This will give them an indication of how difficult it may be to combine and how much drying the grain will need. As you can see , at 62% , and 15C - chances are our wheat will come in with an approx moisture content of 14.5% - which won't require too much drying.
Hopefully, as the day progresses and the temperatures continue to rise - we could be combining by this afternoon - fingers crossed! This is why many farmers can't combine early in the morning. Very often it is lunchtime before the grain is dry enough to get started. If the weather is nice, the humidity will keep falling , allowing farmers to cut into early evening ( or very late evening if conditions allow)
Keeping It In The Family.....
It's lovely to have our 18 year old daughter Eleanor helping us out this harvest with corn-carting. She is on a 'gap-year' before heading off to Uni in 2024 so we are hoping to make the most of her this year. She is looking quite at home in that tractor!
Well that's all from me today
Enjoy your birds
Thank you very much for your custom
With Best wishes
Lesley
Countryside Stewardship 
