Planning for Autumn

Tiffany, it's fair to say that we're now well and truly into harvest.

How are things down in the borders?

We've had lots of hot sunny weather and we have had some bits of rain which I feel like the people who are on harvest have said it's a bit too late for the rain and they could have done with it holding off another couple of weeks just so they could get harvest finished before everything was getting all wet again.

But actually the livestock farmers are very grateful for the rain.

There's a lot of people who've been having a bit of shortage of grass.

There's been a lot of people who've been feeding out in the field already.

So a bit of rain and getting the grass growing again has definitely been long overdue and people are delighted with that.

Harvest seems to be going well.

The yields and things, people seem to be quite happy with what they've produced this year.

I'm not saying it's going to be a bumper crop or anything, but people are content with what they're getting.

How about up in Aberdeenshire?

I always think that Aberdeenshire always gets its own wee weather every year, a set of weather conditions.

Winter barleys are all done, oilseed rapes are, you know, as we speak, the last oilseed rapes are being picked up or or cut.

Folk are now into the spring barleys.

I think over the course, the yields are, you know, they're not bumper, as you said, probably same as the borders.

Average is probably a fair, fair comment.

Quality-wise, certainly winter barleys was quite good.

It had lots of sun.

And they said they're now into spring barleys.

I haven't heard anybody speaking too much about that, but generally they look pretty decent from the crops I've seen.

So I think folk are looking forward to a decent harvest and they're getting the conditions.

I know of somebody that was out moisture testing their crop to see if it was, how far away it was.

And when he took it back to the farm, it was 13 or 14. percent moisture um so that's telling you something the crops are sort of dying in their feet you go around the countryside it's the same with the wheat the wheat has uh it's it's gone from still having a green leaf two three weeks ago to just being dead standard you know it's that time of year again and folk are going on ploughing getting ready for oilseed rape so one crop is one year's harvest is coming to an end and next year's harvest is starting to go into the ground

yeah we've still got a bit of harvest to go here but there's definitely many fields of oilseed rape already planted spray lines are now going out for pre-emergence herbicides as well it's amazing how quickly people turn around