The weather decides everything else.
A dry April on Cotswold brash costs more than any agronomic decision made all year. In 2025 it turned a planned thirty-seven thousand pound profit into a five thousand pound loss.
Why we take this so seriously.
Fifteen to forty-five centimetres of stony soil over limestone holds almost no water. When it stops raining in April, there is no reserve to draw on and the crop simply stops.
That is what happened in 2025. Wheat down thirty per cent, barley down forty, durum wheat coming in under two tonnes a hectare against an expected six. Clarkson wrote about it plainly in his column: "in the farming year of 2024-25 I’ve lost about £5,000... pretty gruesome considering that last year, when it didn’t stop raining, I made less than £15,000."
Too wet one year, too dry the next. That is not bad luck. That is arable farming, and it is why the sensible response is diversification and scheme income rather than optimism.
Where the weather data comes from.
| Source | Cost | Terms | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Met Office DataHub | Free tier plus API key | OGL-style | Recommended for production |
| Open-Meteo | Free | CC-BY, non-commercial friendly | Good for development |
| WeatherAPI.com | Freemium | Paid commercial licence | An alternative |
| OpenWeather | Freemium | Paid commercial licence | An alternative |
Rainfall
The variable that matters most.
Temperature
Later, colder springs at 180–230 metres.
Wind
Which decides whether spraying happens at all.
Sunshine
For grain fill, in the weeks before harvest.
Watch it happen.
Cameras on the fields, running through whatever the weather does.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
The seasonal state at the top of every page is the short answer, and the farming year is the long one.
Not on foot, most of the year — it is a working farm with machinery in it. The cameras, the virtual walk and the footpaths are the honest alternatives.
The honest version, fortnightly
No campaign calendar, no filler. When there is nothing to say we do not send anything.
