The grain harvest in the Marlborough area is in full swing with teams working late into the night. It began as a stop-go affair with rain delaying the start and then interrupting the first days in the fields.
A farmer to the east of Marlborough described how one of last week’s heavy, fifteen minute showers with a good wind behind it, kept his combine team out of the fields for three nerve-wracking days.
Up on the downs to the north of the town, Chris Musgrave told Marlborough News Online his harvest was about a week behind schedule – mainly due to very wet and cold weather earlier in the season, but also to last week’s rain.
“Now it’s going well. This is the first long dry stretch since 2008. This is real summer.”
“We’re all working long hours – we’re all very tired. It’s a great team effort and there’s a good atmosphere.” Last Monday (August 26) they were combining until half-past midnight – fortunate enough to have little dew at that time of night and so moisture levels in the grain were well down.
Based at Temple Farm just beyond Rockley, Chris Musgrave manages Temple Farm, Barbury, Manton and Maizey. That’s a total of 7,500 acres, 2,500 of which are growing barley, wheat, linseed and rape.
He’s expecting to harvest 2,500 tons of wheat, 3,500 tons of spring barley, and 400 tons each of linseed and rape. At present they are cutting the spring barley.
This year many farmers in England found the fields were too wet to get machinery onto and plant wheat, so they switched to spring barley. This has brought the price of spring barley tumbling down – as Chris Musgrave puts it “It’s fallen big time.”
The price is currently down by a quarter. That is not going to hurt Chris Musgrave’s annual figures too much – he had sold ahead 87 per cent of the barley at the old price.
He plants a variety of malting barley called Tipple – appropriately enough most of it goes to make Carling Black Label.
Combining and selling are key parts in the production of good grain, but equally important is the drying of the grain. All the grain goes through the drier – which first of all cleans out any extraneous matter.
When Chris Musgrave’s team was harvesting into the small hours the moisture content was just 16 per cent, but when they set out the previous morning – “a very dewy and cold morning” – it was right up at 21 per cent. Grain has to be kept and sold at 14 per cent.
With harvesting at full tilt and with two combines in the field, the drier – sophisticated and computer controlled as it is – has to be ready to take the fast rotation four trailers each bringing in fifteen tons of grain. It needs to be manned round the clock and its fuel consumption is a major cost of growing grain.
The day we were at Temple Farm, Mick Rae had been on duty since 4.30 am. He will check in every load and record its moisture content on arrival and after drying.
He has to watch the controls very carefully as drying it too hot will ‘bake’ the barley so that it won’t begin to germinate and germination is a vital part of the fermentation process in the production of beer.
The spring barley is giving a very good yield – so good Chris reckons it will stand at about third or fourth place in a rolling twenty year cycle. It certainly makes up a bit for the disasters and disappointments of last year’s harvest.
Still to come is combining the wheat. Chris grows high quality malting barley, but wheat that is feed quality and doesn’t mind a slightly later harvest.
No sooner has a field been harvested than preparations begin for the next year’s harvest. Up on the downs they are already drilling rape seed – and using some new and very complex gear. And on some farms they’ve begun cultivation for planting wheat before the rains come again.
Chris Musgrave is still watching the special farmers’ forecasts very carefully indeed – with about as much trepidation as he waits for reports of a broken down combine or a trailer with a puncture. He needs a good few more days of dry and sunshine before he can declare this year’s harvest not just good but a real success.
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