The oats have been gathered in from the Great Meadow estate and the other farms around the south of the island who have joined a venture which it is hoped may one day result in a premium Manx oat brand.

Great Meadow is certified organic and farm manager Malcolm Teare said: ’The yield has been approximately 140 tonnes of organic oats from 72 acres which equates roughly to two tonnes per acre.

’That is pretty good for organic and shows we’re getting our soil right.

’The weather hasn’t been too bad for spring oats, as opposed to winter oats, and we managed to get on to planting and harvesting the organic crop fairly early.’

Malcolm and his team, which includes Jeff Faragher who does all the combining, also planted and harvested non-organic oats on land farmed by Paul Costain, John Corkish and William Kelly and this is also safely gathered in.

All the oats are taken into an enormous purpose-built shed at Church Farm on the Great Meadow estate, where it is dried then stored.

The non-organic harvest, around 150 tonnes, is kept completely separate from the organic oats which are enclosed in 10 large bins, each holding about 14 tonnes.

The shed has been fitted with an enormous electric roller door ’to keep the mice out’ and the oats are regularly tested, before and after harvesting, to check their moisture content isn’t too high.

Malcolm explained: ’We go in the morning and take samples of the standing crop and if the readings are low enough we then decided to go and combine.

’It’s tested again several times, before and after drying, whilst in storage: in all at least four times.’

The oats will be sent to Morning Foods in Crewe who process around one third of the oat production in the UK.

Malcolm said: ’The organic oats will go away next week; for the non-organic we are waiting to see what will happen with pricing.’

This will be affected by the fact that UK oat production looks set to be the highest since 1973.

Great Meadow owner Simon Riggall explained: ’The reason is that oilseed rape has this beetle [the cabbage stem flea beetle infestation] and therefore rather than sow rape farmers have been growing oats.

’If you look at the statistics there are £1 million tonnes of oats grown this year in the UK. Last year it was 700,000 tonnes: that’s 300,000 tonnes more.’

Normally the UK exports about 150,000 tonnes to the EU but Brexit is likely to impact on this trade so a surplus of oats is the likely result.

Simon said: ’What’s important for our little farm and for our big initiative, which seems to be taking off which I’m very pleased about, is that we’re looking at prices of around £260 for organic and £120 for traditional non-organic oats.

’Next year we’re bringing two more farmers on board with the scheme so I’m looking for a ploughing man.’