My father has been recording rainfall for almost forty years, and he now possesses a bank of data which allows him to produce some fascinating statistics. Interestingly, the freak events we have these days are often no worse than they were in previous years, but what is most telling is how often they now come; events which perhaps occurred once or twice in a lifetime are now hitting us every couple of years. The latest is the continuous rainfall; in the last three months we have received more than half an average year's rain. We have actually had wetter periods (most of which have occurred in the last five years), but the major difference is that, at the time of writing, it has rained every one of the last 38 days. Father's previous record was 18 days on the trot, so it has not just been broken, it has been smashed!

Until recently, the crops had been taking this weather remarkably well. We have good drainage on much of the farm, and close attention to soil management over the last forty years has helped with our ability to infiltrate water. Unfortunately, the plants don't like being wet all the time, and it is starting to hamper growth and to encourage disease. The winter beans have just started to suffer from chocolate spot, a fungal disease where dark brown spots appear and grow on the leaves. If unchecked, the necrosis of the leaves will eventually cause crop failure. It is theoretically simple to treat, but we can't travel with the sprayer because it is too wet, the field is on a steep bank, and typically such applications need to be on to a dry leaf.

Happily, the cereals look much better, but they too will soon need some dry weather, and we need to get on with the first fertiliser application. With waterlogged ground and the risk of further rain, it is not just a question of being able to travel, but the risk of highly soluble, and very expensive fertiliser running off into watercourses is too great for us to be able to justify starting. If it were to stop raining today, we need at least two weeks of drying weather before we can get going. Spring drilling is also likely to be delayed - by this time last year we had finished most of it.

This week we finished the first stage of an experiment on part of our wheat ground. We have grazed the crop with our sheep; a technique which would have been familiar to my grandfather, but one which had not been used in my father's time. The obvious benefit is that it provided some much-needed extra fodder whilst our pastures continued to recover from last year's drought, but it should also benefit the crop. The theory goes that grazing removes the older leaves, which are the ones most likely to succumb to fungal infection, so we should see less disease pressure in the spring.

Plants under duress also tend to pile sugars into the roots, storing them for regrowth, and root growth can be promoted. This should mean a strong bounce-back now the sheep have been removed, so we wait with bated breath - hopefully we have not grazed the crop too hard! The next part of the experiment will be to observe the comparative development of the crop and the disease pressure between the grazed area and a couple of tramlines we left ungrazed - the pictures show the difference as it was when we took the sheep off. One of next week's job then, aside from praying for dry weather, is to take up a couple of miles of electric fence.