Posts by Malcolm Barker

As you read this, you will have noticed how the nights are drawing in. The light nights are slipping away quicker in the autumn than they arrived in the spring, which, I think, is due to the tilt in the polar axis.

The winter barley has now been harvested and the straw baled. I started to use the combine harvester on the 3rd Friday in July, but I had to stop after 50 metres because a bearing on the return’s auger had seized and it took 20 hours of work to replace it.

The upturn in the weather in recent weeks gives anticipation that the harvest of winter barley should commence in the last few days of July.

The relatively dry and warm weather of May gave us the chance to get this year’s crops planted.

Drier weather has enabled me to sow some spring barley, apart from a corner of the field which is still under water.

In his book, ‘A Brief History of Life in the Middle Ages’, Martyn Whittock explains how solar activity affected the weather throughout history.

This has been the wettest winter of the 50 that I have been farming. It is mostly dry in the lambing sheds where I have buckets to catch rain which drips through holes in the roof and can be used to water the sheep in their pens.

The recent request from the council asking farmers to clear the roads of drifts in times of heavy snowfall reminds me of the last time that the village was isolated by drifts, in excess of seven feet!

We are now entering the coldest quarter of the year, with the sun low in the sky and few hours of daylight.

Late Saturday night at the end of Nov. finds me sitting in front of my laptop, pondering, ‘What have I managed to get done during this last month of rain?’