The harvest has finished for Barty, but he says he has not seen as many fields left to be cut in his area since 1994.

He is now catching up on maintenance before the autumn planting begins in addition to cleaning down machinery and trailers after the harvest.

He was looking forward to the nice weather this week which was badly needed, although he does not have much fieldwork left to do.

The spring malting barley averaged 2.8t/ac at a moisture content of between 18.5% and 20%. Protein was low and all loads passed for malting.

Barty had predicted low protein earlier this year due to the reduced nitrogen input and the incessant rain last winter.

Barty made the distilling grade with 40% of his barley, with the remainder for brewing. About one third of the barley passed under the lower KPH specification, which will come with a €25/t price deduction.

Barty was a bit disappointed with the flat rate deduction that Boortmalt imposed. He feels it would have been fair to have a small deduction for each percentage point, as is standard practice in many other instances.

He says that the maltsters and farmers both need each other, so agreements need to be made for everyone’s benefit.

Looking back at the spring barley growing season, Barty says there was potential in the crop, but the reduced nitrogen rates due to late planting meant that this potential wasn’t realised.

So, while increased nitrogen rates might have made sense this year, this will not always be the case, especially with late planting. Barty has all of his straw baled too. The spring barley produced four 8x4x3 square bales/ac, and these have all been stored or sold.

Stubble cultivation was then carried out and a cover crop of leafy turnip and forage rape planted. This cover crop should still produce some biomass despite the late sowing date.

The combine finished up last week for Alistair, but he is already planning on planting winter cereals this weekend.

The winter wheat performed very poorly, and it seems to be the same for most people in his area. While he is averaging 3t/ac, the crop is yielding very well in straw, with six 8x4x2.5 bales/ac, with each bale weighing 350kg.

Some of the wheat was very grassy, as Alistair couldn’t get out with a herbicide earlier this year. This reduced the yield and made the crop hard to harvest.

One field was so grassy that Alistair cut the crop as high as possible. This produced four bales/ac.

He then came back in with a mower to cut the grassy stubbles. He baled and wrapped this and it will be used as a dry cow feed. He says that every bit of fodder is needed this year.

Alistair has also baled his oilseed rape straw. It had been lying there for a month, but it baled up dry, with four square bales/ac.

On both crops, Alistair is putting the large amounts of straw but low grain yields down to crops that had potential but received a lack of sunshine. The beans and maize won’t be ready for the forage harvester until the middle of October.

Loading winter oilseed rape straw in Derry.

The winter oilseed rape that Alistair planted has taken its time to emerge. However, the companion beans are establishing excellently.

There are quite a few grasses coming through, but a herbicide will look after those later in the season.

Alistair is hoping to plant winter forage rye with wheat and oats this week and will move on to winter barley once this is completed. This will be his 10-way variety mix. As it is home-saved seed and to help increase establishment over the winter, Alistair will be increasing his seeding rates.

To prepare for planting, he has been spreading farmyard manure and cultivating fields over the past week.

The harvest continues in Dublin, with Tony starting to harvest his spring beans on Monday. He could not give yield estimations but says that some pods were a bit shrivelled and seem to have lacked moisture during pod fill.

The spring wheat yielded 2.95t/ac at 18% moisture last week. Tony was delighted and actually shocked, given it was planted on 22 April and it was a low input crop.

There were some shrivelled grains, which Tony thinks may be due to BYDV, given his proximity to the coast. It was baled the next day and produced 2.8 8x4x4 bales/ac.

Tony thinks that the timing of the second fungicide could have been better and maybe a stronger head spray was needed, but still expects a gross profit of €750/ac from the crop.

He says the amino acids he applied improved tillering, in addition to the compost applied before planting.

Tony says that this year proves that rotation is still king, and that removing the plough from the equation has greatly helped lower his costs, with only 9l/ha of diesel used to plant the wheat.

The cobs are yellow on the earliest planted maize. Tony says pollination finished around 25 August, and given that harvest usually takes place 50 to 55 days after this, it is about four weeks away.

Slurry was applied before planting on one block, which is helping the maize thrive and will probably produce a high yield.

Tony thinks that tillage farmers should be incentivised to take in slurry and farmyard manure and supply the nutrients back to the livestock sector in the form of high-quality feedstocks.

Tony is doing this through his maize, but also his triticale, which has been planted at 160kg/ha over the past week. Compost was spread on the land, and while some fields were subsoiled beforehand, others were direct drilled.

This will make an excellent high energy forage for dairy farmers next April and help to fill the forage deficit that the country is facing.