Jeremy Clarkson is having a remarkable effect on farming, says Rosemary Goring

In recent days tractors, their trailers heaped with grain, have been rumbling past our windows from breakfast to 11 at night. With revolving orange lights on their cabins, they could be emergency vehicles on a rescue mission. And, to some extent, that’s what they are. Following forecasts of rain after an exceptionally dry spell, the farmer whose land lies by the village has been racing to get everything in before it turns to mush.

This past month, the soundtrack to life in the Borders has been the whine of combine harvesters and the rattling of gargantuan farm machines squeezing down narrow country lanes, leaving a trail of broken branches and leaves in their wake. Anyone foolish enough to race around a bend at this time of year risks embedding their car in the front of a vehicle as invincible as a tank.

All around these parts, shorn fields the colour of butterscotch are dotted with bales of straw. It’s one of the loveliest sights of late summer: not just beautiful to behold but an assurance that barns will be filled with fodder to tide livestock over the winter.

But while there has been unbroken sunshine for weeks – perfect, you’d think, for producing a bountiful crop – in many parts of the country farmers have been warning of worryingly low yields thanks to lack of rain during the growing season.

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