Opinion: The true beauty of a bright, harvest day

Forget about the politics of farming, all that tillage farmers want to do is enjoy the pleasure of a bright harvest day. It takes a lot of time and effort to get crops to a stage when the combine gets to work and the real rewards of a full year’s work can be fully assessed. And where harvest 2026 is concerned, we have reached this stage in the case of winter barley crops. Winter oilseed rape will follow, and then it’s on with the winter wheat with spring crops following in their natural order. The weather forecast for the next few days is good. So, the odd breakdown apart, growers will be able to get on with their daily harvest routines from dawn to dusk. It all adds up to an almost perfect scenario, particularly when one remembers all of those wet harvests that Irish grain growers endured back in the day.