We kicked off our cereal harvest on August 20, and have now been cutting for over four weeks, though it feels like four months.

We started before the crops were 100% ripe just to make a start and utilise the harvest workers who had started with us, and we are now very glad we did.

The weather has been awful – we had 17mm of rain on Friday, August 30, and 38mm on Saturday, August 31, which halted any harvest activities for eight days.

We were then stopped by rain for another five days after getting 25mm on September 9. Overall we have had 124mm of rain in August and so far in September we have had 40mm.

As things stand, only the Sassy malting barley has all left farm, averaging 2.9 t/acre once dried and loaded onto lorries.

We still have two fields of Laureate malting barley to cut, and so far such crops seem to be yielding well.

We also still have Diablo seed barley to cut, having harvested about two thirds of it so far.

The majority of our grain was sold on contracts, but I did sell one load at spot price of £135/t earlier in the harvest – a disappointing price but we needed to make shed space.

So far all loads which have gone for malting have had low nitrogen and below 5% skinnings, however, crops are now over-ripe which may have a negative effect on quality.

Specific weights have been lower than normal across all varieties of spring barley.

OSR finally all left store at the end of the first week of September, over a month after it had been harvested. Though unhappy with the slow uplift, we were really happy with the crop’s yield, averaging 1.75t/ac, one of the best yields we’ve ever had.

With the lift in OSR price and having had a good yield this year, we wonder if we made a mistake in not drilling any OSR this autumn, but the way the weather has been and the field earmarked for OSR in the rotation being called ‘The Bog’, we feel we made the right decision.

Travelling on fields has become extremely difficult due to the wet and we are having to empty our wheeled combine before it attempts any kind of incline or wet patch to have any hope of it not getting bogged.

Many growers we buy straw from have been experiencing the same issues and have therefore decided to chop both wheat and barley straw which we would normally buy as they don’t feel the balers would manage to travel.

Lots of straw has been lying for more three weeks but we hope with the good forecast this week we will be able to use the Fransguard swath lifter we bought in 2017 to move straw and get it baled in good condition, provided the balers can travel.

Though the harvest has been pretty miserable with bad weather and poor prices, we try to find something to have a laugh about every day.

We are also greatly cheered up by the meals on wheels deliveries made each night by my Mam, Caroline.

She cooks a two course meal for up to eight people a night and delivers within a 15 mile radius, including a roast dinner every Sunday.

We get proper plates, cutlery, cartons of juice and even napkins, though it’s more ‘a la cab’ than ‘a la carte’ – thanks Mam!

FACT file

Rachel farms at her

family’s 350-hectare

Ballicherry Farm, in

the Black Isle, with

her parents, Brian and

Caroline Matheson. It is

mainly arable, growing

spring barley, wheat and

oilseed rape, though they

also have 150 Texel cross

ewes.