Cambridge
Farming just outside Cambridge, James Peck started combining on July 6 and is just scratching the surface of his 1,100 hectares of Belfry winter barley and 538ha of Ambassador oilseed rape.
He says: "We are combining the barley at under 15 per cent moisture, and so far we are averaging at 9.1 tonnes per ha, which is higher than last year."
Mr Peck says his barley does have a few sections that have lodged, but this has not yet caused any problems. However, the increased rainfall might raise some challenges moving forward, he adds.
"The barley straw is green at the bottom, which has been a bit challenging as we are using a lot of diesel to cut.
"This has reduced the output capacity to roughly 60 per cent of what the combine would normally do, purely because of the green in the straw."
Suffolk
Olly Pratt farms six miles south of Stowmarket in Suffolk and began combining his SY Kingsbarn hybrid winter barley last Monday, July 10.
He says: "We have harvested all of the winter barley we had ready; a total of 55ha that we managed to cut at 13 per cent moisture."
Mr Pratt harvested his crop early last year, and was an extra day earlier this year.
He says: "We have got a good sample; the grains are small, and it is not the heaviest hectolitre weight but we are putting that down to a lack of rain when the crop was at the grain fill stage."
The crop has yielded slightly above average at 9t/ha, even with evident tramlines where repeat fertiliser applications had been applied due to the dry spring.
Somerset
With 40ha of OSR to harvest in total, Richard Payne from near Taunton, Somerset, has completed just over 26ha so far, with the crop currently yielding an average of 3.9t/ha despite reducing his nitrogen inputs.
Mr Payne says: "The yields are not a disaster but not great, but we have only used 150kg N/ha this season, which is a big cut back from normal [200kg N/ha]."
The OSR area is made up of InV1035 and Aardvark varieties, and Mr Payne says the two crops are yielding the same.
"The farm never looked better from autumn to winter. We had the perfect crop establishment and density of plants, but the drought issues have been crippling."
Wiltshire
Across in the South West, David Butler, based near Marlborough in Wiltshire, has combined a third of his winter barley, with his total barley area spanning 850ha.
Growing KWS Tardis and SY Kingsbarn, he is very happy with current harvest progress but has concerns what the catchy weather will mean for grain yields moving forward.
He says: "Tardis has been yielding high 9s [t/ha] which is very good for us. It has been a good start, but the next two-thirds of the crop might halve the yield as we could find half the heads on the floor."
"SY Kingsbarn being a six-row barley, the quality will be deteriorating as the crop is very thick - we will start to lose bushel and specific weights, which is a concern."
