Philip Gorringe hasn’t cut a single blade of cereals at Lower Blakemere Farm, Blakemere, Herefordshire, with nothing yet quite ripe.

“We’ve done 40ha of grass seed, and have one field left of that – then we’ve got a couple of blocks of wheat which are barely ripe,” he said.

Grass seed had performed quite well, considering the wet growing season, and the cereal crops looked surprisingly well.

“The wheat, drilled in November, is ridiculously short and not thick enough, but at least it’s even and the quality will be there,” he added.

The rest of the wheat went in in February, with winter barley drilled right up into April.

“We’ve been drilling Saffron, Cassia and Tower after sunflowers for a few years – we wanted something that we could drill from December onwards that would yield well with lots of straw,” said Mr Gorringe.

“They do just as well drilled late as they do drilled in the autumn, and take less fertiliser and weed killer – it just means that even now the crop is still very green.”

A couple of extremely heavy fields were drilled particularly late, and were barely headed, he added.

“They look very strange, and either we’ll be combining in November or will sell them as wholecrop.”