Fires have recently been making headlines. Combines and balers have been catching fire, setting alight fields of standing crops.

A friend was hauling bales of straw back to his farm when in a neighbouring field the combine harvesting the grain was suddenly forced to make a hasty exit as the crop around it began to burn, sending up palls of thick grey smoke.

Little could be done, as a large portion of a 190 acre field of barley was destroyed.

A few days before the fire my friend and I had gone to look at the crop of straw, before it was baled, on a farm on the Marlborough Downs.

It was a wonderful spot to be stood, from where we had panoramic views of the surrounding Wiltshire countryside, to the south west we were able to see Milk Hill near Alton Priors, east of Devizes.

It is the highest point in the county at 295 metres above sea level. Apparently nearby is the Alton Barnes white horse. Wiltshire is renowned for its white horses, carved into the chalk of rolling hills. There were originally 13, but now only 8 are visible.

Returning to Manor Farm, our 2022 harvest has been completed, with our spring barley being the last crop to ripen. Kevin and Ian decided that it would be better to harvest this crop in the late evening, as the grain was far too dry and would have been very hot to store without cooling.

They did have a fire start in the exhaust of the combine. Fortunately Ian, who was out of his tractor could smell burning as he walked towards the combine. He had water on standby so the fire never took hold. The fire was soon extinguished and harvesting was finished without further incidents.

Ian has spread some manure onto stubble during the week and has also lightly cultivated a few of the fields to encourage weed growth, in the event of rain! Kevin has at last been able to make hay out of some areas in the park, which are in a countryside stewardship scheme.

In these areas the grasses have to have flowered and the seeds matured and fallen to the ground before the grass can be cut.This year farmers could. apply for a derogation to alter the management of stewardship areas due to the heat and drought. Kevin has made hay in the park and it has been brought back to the farm.

Last week Kevin graded 93 lambs as finished. Fifteen of these were the last of the January born lambs and 78 were from the March lambing flock.

The price is still quite good, although it has dropped a little it usually does at this time of year. The remaining lambs are in a field ,but due to the lack of grass are being fed on hay and some concentrate. Another job Kevin has been doing is thoroughly cleaning the pop-up tunnels ( known as pods )So far he has got three ready for use during next lambing season.

Part of our recent visit to Wyke Farms was to see their Green Energy Centre. Here there are five large tanks , four of them are anaerobic digesters and one is for storage. These digesters are like big stomachs, so you have to feed them a good balanced diet.

In this case some solid, consisting of bread waste, a little maize or rye and cereal waste, also liquid waste consisting of whey (from their cheese dairy) and cow slurry.

Bacteria then use the waste to produce gas . The biogas is used to power generators to give combined heat and power. After 45 days the contents of the digesters are fed into the storage tank. The digestate, rich in phosphate, is spread onto farmland, taken by lorries to satellite stores for spreading over a 25 mile radius.

Wyke also has a gas to grid unit. The biogas for this is cooled to 9 C, moisture is then removed before being passed through carbon filters to get rid of hydrogen sulphide.

The gas then goes through a compressor, where membranes take out the carbon dioxide (40 per cent of the total ) leaving methane, which is natural gas.

The methane has to meet the natural gas quality standard, therefore it has to have an additive such as propane so it meets the specification.

A kayaker who was paddling off the coast of Fowey in Cornwall on August 8 was thrilled to record the moment when a minke whale came close to him.The video, by Rupert Kirkwood, shows a fin appearing near the kayak, as the whale partly emerges from the water.Kirkwood told Devon Live that the whale circled around him for approximately 20 minutes as he paddled offshore. He said: “Whales are very difficult to spot because they just roll off the surface without a splash and then they go.”“Many of the creatures come towards a kayak because it breaks up the boring monotony of the sea,” he said.Kirkwood documented the experience on his blog, The Lone Kayaker, where he regularly posts updates of his adventures on the water. Credit: Rupert Kirkwood via Storyful

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