Five numbers to check every harvest evening

Five numbers, checked over the last brew of the evening, decide whether tomorrow runs on judgement or on guesswork: tonnes cut, moisture trend, shed space, drier backlog, and what's booked to move. None of them needs a calculator if the day's loads were recorded as they happened. All of them need one if they weren't — and 10pm arithmetic is where harvest records go to die.

Here's each number, why it changes tomorrow's decisions, and where it should come from.

1. Tonnes cut — today, and season against expectation

Today's tonnage tells you whether the plan is on schedule. Season-to-date against what you expected — field areas times a sensible yield estimate — tells you something more useful: whether the crop is doing what you thought. A wheat that should be running 8.5 t/ha coming in at 7.6 is a conversation with the agronomist while the evidence is still standing in the next field, not a surprise in the spreadsheet in October.

Where it comes from: a running total that builds itself as loads are recorded. If someone has to add up tickets to produce it, it will be produced late, or not at all — the case for recording loads as they happen rests almost entirely on this number existing at 9pm without effort.

2. The moisture trend through the day

Not the average — the trend. Loads that ran 14.8% at noon and 16.5% by evening tell you the crop is taking moisture back on and tomorrow's start time matters. A flat line at 14.5% says you can start earlier and stop later. The trend is also your early warning on cost: every point of moisture above spec is roughly £2-£3.50 per tonne to dry off, so a day drifting wet is a day quietly getting more expensive per load. There's a fuller costing in what grain drying actually costs.

Where it comes from: moisture recorded per load, not a single morning sample. Three or four readings through the day is enough to see the shape.

3. Shed space remaining, by crop

Not "the barn's getting on for full" — a number. Tomorrow at 34 t/hr, a shed with 120 tonnes of headroom is full by mid-afternoon, and the where-next decision is far better made tonight over tea than tomorrow with a loaded trailer idling on the pad. This is the number that prevents the classic improvised tip that blends two varieties.

Where it comes from: loads recorded against destination sheds, subtracted from rough capacities you wrote down before harvest. It's arithmetic a system should do, not a person.

4. The drier backlog

Wet tonnes waiting, against the drier's daily throughput. If the drier shifts 100 tonnes a day and 260 wet tonnes are sitting in front of it, you're carrying two and a half days of risk — and if tomorrow is another wet-ish cutting day, the sensible answer might be to cut the driest field on the list rather than the nearest. The backlog number is what makes that call obvious instead of instinctive.

Wet grain sitting in a heap is also a storage risk in its own right, which is why the backlog pairs with keeping an eye on grain temperature once the heap is more than a day old.

Where it comes from: wet loads in, dried tonnes out. Two running totals and a subtraction.

5. What's booked to move tomorrow

Lorries booked, which contract, which shed they load from, and who's loading them. A 29-tonne artic arriving at 8am wants to know the answers before it arrives. This number also runs the other way: shed space plus movement bookings tells you whether you need to ring the merchant about pulling a movement forward — a call that's far easier to make against firm tonnage figures. What those contract movements are worth, and when to move, is grain price territory; the evening job is just knowing what's committed.

Where it comes from: the diary, checked against the shed numbers from item 3, so nobody books grain out of a store that can't spare it.

The rule behind all five

Each number should be read, not calculated. If any of them requires adding up tickets at the end of a fourteen-hour day, it will be skipped by the second week of wheat — quietly, reasonably, and exactly when it matters most. That's a system problem, not a discipline problem: loads recorded once at the pad, totals that build themselves. It's the loop Harvestt is built around, but however you get there, the test is the same — can you answer all five in under two minutes, tonight?

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you track harvest progress?

Record every load as it happens, tagged to crop, field and destination shed, and let the running totals build from that. Then compare season-to-date tonnage against expected tonnage (field areas times a realistic yield) to see if the season is ahead or behind — in crop terms, not just calendar terms.

What should you check at the end of each harvest day?

Five things: tonnes cut today and season-to-date against expectation, the moisture trend through the day, shed space remaining by crop, wet tonnes queued for the drier, and tomorrow's booked movements. Together they cover the crop, the storage, and the money.

Why does the moisture trend matter more than the average?

Because tomorrow's decisions hang on the direction, not the mean. A crop drifting wetter through the afternoon changes stop times and drying cost — at roughly £2-£3.50 per tonne per percentage point, a wet trend is money — while a flat trend says push on longer.

How do you know when a grain shed will be full?

Track loads in against a rough capacity figure per store, set before harvest. Headroom in tonnes divided by the combine's output in tonnes per hour gives you the hour it fills — which turns "where next" into a decision made the evening before rather than a scramble on the pad.