My house backs onto farmland, at the moment there is what looks like barley growing in the fields.  This morning at about 7am there were about 8 men spread out walking backwards and forwards through the crops, I thought they could be beating but there were no gunshots (funny time of year / time of day too) when they were done with one field they moved onto the next.  Does anyone know what they could have been up to ?? curiosity is killing me !!!

They may have been pulling wild oats out of the crop. I used to do this when I was a kid. As the plants are similar to the barley the oats don't get killed when sprayed for weeds so they have to be pulled by hand.

oh really, thats interesting.

possibly pulling weeds if your farmer is organic??? or another poss is that they were men from Defra......we had a visit where they went over every inch of the fields re quoas and stewardship scheme paperwork......or maybe your farmer neighbour has been suspected of growing dope plants??? :) :)

could have been a number of things then - with this weather I dont think the dope plants would be bearing up too well though !!

Many people pull Ragwort in July, although I guess you would have seen if they were pulling something up?!

I didnt really see them stop to be honest, just walking up and down !

not being arable here Im not too up on it however my mothers farm has a lot of arable and I believe they also have "men in suits" walking their crops to decide if they are of suitable quality for a particular end market....in their case flour....just another possibility!