AFTER a cool start to the week it really felt as though summer had arrived. Some warm sunny days, although not wall to wall sunshine, but again the forecast was not good, ending with a rather damp and dismal day.

Here on Manor Farm we managed to finish harvesting all our winter wheat, despite Richard having to change a belt on the combine and one morning I was sent to pick up some bolts for the blade.

Fortunately the repairs were done early in the day, whilst the grain was too damp to harvest, so there were no delays. Nathan, Richard and Ian took full trailers of the harvested wheat to a local store.

On one occasion I accompanied Richard to see what happened to the wheat at the facility.

On arrival the trailer of grain was driven onto a weighbridge where a long probe on a mechanical arm was lowered through the wheat to get a sample.

The sample was split into three, one analysed with the results shown on a computer screen and the remaining two samples bagged and stored in case of a query at a future date.

The load we delivered weighed 13.06 tonnes (calculated after weighing the trailer empty), with a moisture content of 13.6 per cent and a specific weight of 75 kilogrammes per hectare/ litre.

About half the wheat has been sold and the remainder will be processed and fed to our cows during the months ahead.

Apart from gathering our winter wheat Nathan, James and Richard have been cultivating the stubble fields to be planted again in the autumn.

For this job of breaking up the top layer of soil to encourage the growth of weeds and any shed grain we used our cultivator, which is made up of tines, discs and a roller.

Another job was to spread some more slurry from our large store onto the stubble fields, this will add nutrients to the soil, thus reducing the need for so much expensive fertiliser.

On a particularly warm day of the week, I started the day helping Ian and Richard drive one of the in-calf heifers from a field back to the farm buildings, where her hoof could be examined and the correct treatment given.

I am pleased to tell you that the swelling around her pastern and fetlock has reduced and that she is walking much more comfortably.

The animal in question is called a free martin, which indicates that she is the heifer of a set of mixed twins. Unfortunately the heifer is usually sterile and simply looks female externally, but often lacks internal female reproductive organs as the male hormones dominate via the placenta as the pregnancy develops.

Later the same day I walked to a distant area of the farm where Richard was showing Nathan how he needed to set the cultivator to till the stubble in a field following harvest.

It was such a lovely day with sightings of deer and buzzards soaring high above me taking advantage of warm thermals to gain height whilst using little energy.

I also noticed an abundance of wild flowers along the verges and field margins, including knapweed and scabious.

There were also ripe blackberries in the hedgerows, just to remind us that autumn is not far away.

On Stowell Farm Kevin has been busy making hay, fortunately completing the process during a spell of favourable weather. He has also topped the fields of oilseed rape stubble, to make it easier to incorporate the trash during cultivation.

Another job has been to subsoil and plough a field to be planted with stubble turnips.

Sheep work has included calling the vet to vasectomise some black ram lambs to be used as teasers. Some shearlings (yearling ewe lambs) and four pedigree rams have been sold and a great deal of time has been taken up keeping a close eye on all the sheep for any sign of fly-strike, which seems to be a big problem this year.

During the week I phoned Adele, our daughter who has a dairy herd in North Devon, to find out how their calving season was progressing. She told me that of the first five cows to calve, three had given birth to twins.