In the 50 years I have been keeping records, this was our second warmest August, with a mean temperature of 19.6°C and one of our driest, with 22.5mm of rain.

Statistically, August is generally our wettest month with an average of 53mm, just over 2ins.

August has been a busy month with the harvest; we’ve benefitted from it being dry, which doesn’t happen very often. Yields are better than expected, but still a little below average. The yield of our grain crops depends on how much sunshine we have when the crop is in flower; yes, the wheat, barley and oats do come into flower!

The last leaf of the plant, called the flag leaf, comes out while the crop is in flower and it is the flag leaf’s job to turn sunshine into energy, to fill all the grains in the ear. To be able to fill all the grains, it has to be kept green. There are foliar diseases such as rust and mildew, which are always present on the plants’ lower leaves. We can spray the crop to prevent them moving up the plant; this year was a bad year for rust, due to the first half of June being so wet.

Our sprays did their job, but all our organic crops, which of course we are not allowed to spray with chemicals, suffered from rust which reduced their yield considerably. The rust spread up the leaves on the organic crops and covered the last flag leaf, which stopped it receiving sunshine.

Robert and Lucy have been busy digging potato samples from a 2m length in each field once a week to see how they are yielding and to see the size of the potatoes. When we send them to be packed, we don’t get paid for any potatoes that won’t go through an 85 mm riddle, so it is in our interest not to let them get too big. However, all these oversize potatoes are taken off the line and get bagged up to sell in our Farm Shop.

The potatoes that are destined for shops must look attractive, have a nice shape and the skin free of scabs and other blemishes – otherwise the consumers won’t buy them. For the chipping market, there is no size limit – the bigger the better and we get a bonus for a large sample too. The chip factory also doesn’t mind what they look like, they are concerned about what is under the skin. If they are too watery, they will not fry well and absorb too much fat or oil.

Different varieties of potatoes have different characteristics; we have to grow varieties that make good chips and these will be different to those that make crisps. Whatever market we are growing potatoes for, they must be kept at the correct temperature – for chips and crisps that’s 8°C and for sale to shops, it must be 3°C.

As well as harvesting our crops, we are also preparing our fields and buying seeds for the next crops. We’ve already bought the potato seed for planting next April, which we may not sell until May or June 2026. However, it won’t need to be paid for until it is delivered in January or February next year. The fertiliser for use next spring has already been bought, paid for and delivered.

Swallows

All our garden and farmland birds have finished breeding now, except Swallows, House Martins and Wood Pigeons. Swallows and House Martins are still able to find enough insects to feed their young as they live on the last stage of the insect’s life, the flying stage. Most of our small birds are not able to catch flying insects, so they finish breeding by the middle of August. Swallows can go on feeding their young in areas where there are a lot of stock farms, until nearly the end of September.

Unfortunately, here in the Fens we don’t have many animals and our Swallow population is very low. However, we have been seeing more Swallows lately, but these aren’t ours, they are on migration, going southwest and stopping off where there is a concentration of flies. That is the advantage of a migrating bird – they can stop off anywhere there is plenty of food.

Our resident birds have to live on what we have here on our farmland – insects and weed seeds. But the availability of this food is rapidly decreasing and I believe that there are only 10% of our resident birds around that there were when I started keeping a wildlife diary, in 1960.

The winners are Wood Pigeons and those birds that can live on what we throw away or kill on our roads. Wood Pigeons, Collared Doves and Stock Doves do not have insects in their diet, they eat grains, wet or dry and then go for a drink, so their digestive system gets to work to make pigeon milk. They only lay two eggs because their digestive system will only work fast enough to provision one chick, two adults and so two chicks. They lay a white egg because they don’t need to lay a camouflaged egg, as they will remain sitting on it and then lay the second egg the next day. If you were to see a Wood Pigeon’s nest containing young, one young will be a bit bigger than the other, as it is one day older. They will continue to breed during September and through most of October. If you have a water feature in your garden, you may notice that Wood Pigeons do a lot more drinking in the autumn.

There is one other species that is still nesting and that is the Barn Owl. Their numbers are down this year, due to the wet weather over the previous 12 months. Barn Owls feed on voles who like dry weather and as there are a reduced number of Barn Owls, vole numbers have been able to increase. We usually have 15-18 pairs breeding in the boxes we have on the farm, but this year we only have 12 pairs that reared an average of two young per box earlier in the year.

The weather over the last four months has been suitable for the voles and they have increased in numbers, which has triggered the Barn Owls to have a second brood, eight of the 12 pairs in our boxes have laid a second clutch of five or six eggs. In a way this is good news, but if most of these eggs turn into fledged young, they will eat all the voles up which will lead on to a poor breeding season next year.

The Turtle Doves that we overwintered have been released and three trackers have been fitted to them so that we can see where they go; right now they are all still around the farm. More about them next month!