Our harvest is now in full swing with carrots, cabbage, broccoli and cereal all ready at the same time. We were concerned that the summer drought would severely affect our barley but the late rains seem to have helped and the harvest is bigger than we initially expected.

How our weather affects whisky

However, late sowing and slow growth have meant that levels of nitrogen in the malt are higher than normal. Normally these would not be accepted by whisky distillers but as there is nothing else, they are taking it. The result? We might see some cloudy whisky in 10 years’ time!

Smaller cereal harvests – not just locally

Wheat crops are unusually early and the drought has also meant smaller a smaller harvest. In fact, the issues with cereals are much more widespread than Kinross-shire; we can see this globally too.

Decisions, decisions

There are a lot of decisions to make in farming – for example, straw is in short supply so is the priority for bedding livestock or insulating carrot crops? We’ll also be deciding our harvesting programme for the potatoes – we put a lot of work into irrigating these crops over the summer and we’re happy to say that it looks like the hard work has been worthwhile.