I farm in a Joint Venture operation with two neighbours in Oxfordshire and we combine over 2,000 ha. crops with two Claas 770 combines. We also have rotational silage maize and grass and farm over an area stretching over 20 miles from one end to the other. Soils are generally fairly light running from gravel through chalk to heavier clay cap plus around 160 ha. of free-draining ‘fen land’.

We have been extremely fortunate in having a good year this year. With our light land we were able to get on with drilling pretty much as normal so our cropping has varied little from other years in as much as we grew no beans but did grow linseed to replace the 40 ha. of OSR that failed. Overall we have over 400 ha. OSR, around 200-250 ha. Winter Barley, 1200 ha. Winter Wheat, 200 ha. Spring Barley. We grow both for seed and commercial crops and also grow about 200 ha. of medicinal poppies on contract.  In addition one of the partners has 1,500 ewes and a few suckler cows.

Because we escaped the worst of the winter weather conditions on our light land we were expecting average crops this year and have, so far, been pleased with our harvest. We were not expecting much from the rape and we didn’t get it!  OSR yields across the farm were below average at about 3.2 – 3.5 tonne per hectare but that was no surprise. We had poor thin stands and some bald patches but the main problem was the three weeks of hot weather we had which stopped seed development to the extent that many of the small seeds slipped through the drying floors.

However, we have definitely had a good year for barley for us: Winter Barley yielded well at around 7.5 tonnes per hectare, up by 0.6 to 1.2 tonnes per hectare on last year. Malting quality that has been tested so far has also been good from Cassata, seed Retriever, giving its best bushel weight ever, and the Spring Barley, which was primarily Tipple.

The Winter Wheat is going well and five or six fine days would probably see it finished, which is a bit earlier than normal. Bushel weights are 75 to 80 off the combine and whilst we don’t know quality yet, yields of Crusoe and Gallant have significantly exceeded expectations at 9 to 9.5 tonnes per hectare (both for seed) and Kielder has given us 10 tonnes. As a 2nd wheat Gallant has done 7.8 tonnes per hectare which is very acceptable. Crusoe as a 2nd wheat suffered a bit from being on the heavier clay cap land with rabbit damage, poorer seed beds, slow growth and higher, colder locations so came in at 6.5 to 7 tonnes per hectare but that is the worst we have had so far.

There has been a definite demand for decent quality straw so we have had no problems shifting that and people have been keen to take it off before it goes elsewhere. We are now about half way through drilling the OSR. We use a conventional drill and a Simba Solo and it is going well so we are about where we want to be with that. I am a firm believer that you can go too early with rape so don’t want to get on too fast, even after last year’s experience, as a warm autumn can get the crop too proud going into winter.

I’d love to know what is going to happen to prices. We shall hold the rape a bit longer and hope that the price continues to recover. As to varieties for next year we plan to stick with Crusoe for all the commercial milling wheat as well as some for seed, Kielder and Cordiale but will probably fade out Invicta and Solstice. We have had a bit of a problem with Solstice over the years as mildew has been quite difficult to control in the Thames Valley. We’ll be trying new varieties Panacea (Winter Wheat) and Glacier (Winter Barley) under contract, which is what the market seems to want for seed.

On the crop protection front we shall be ploughing a couple of fields that have had muck spread on them between 1^st and 2^nd wheats in an attempt to tackle black grass. As we have got through harvest fairly comfortably we may do a bit more ploughing than usual but otherwise we are not planning any dramatic changes this year and we’ll just see how things go and try and do it all better than we did last year.