A Farming Tutorial.

The Shire was a hive of noisy activity this pleasant autumn Sunday. The farmer who owns the fields to the west of my house was taking the last cut of silage while there’s still daylight enough to get a good working day in. And because I know that everybody really, really wants to know how it’s done, I’m going to tell you.

First, a tractor comes along with a mowing machine on the back and cuts the grass. He’s followed by a second tractor fitted with a contraption that looks like a big, circular lawn rake. As it drives across the grass, the circular thingy rotates and pushes the grass sideways to form long, parallel mounds. When the whole field has been done, it looks like one of those suburban lawns you see on grass seed packets. It has stripes! But not for long.

The piece de resistance is when two vehicles come along working in tandem. There’s the big harvester which picks up the grass and blows it out of a funnel mounted on top. The funnel is directed downwards so that its cargo is discharged into a trailer being towed by a third tractor running alongside.

Neat, functional and fun to watch.

I spent fifteen minutes watching them today while I was taking a break from my own labour. That consisted of cutting tree branches in places that were hard to get at, using loppers and a pruning saw. Poor people like me don’t have chain saws. We have to rely on muscle and shoulder power, even though the muscles aren’t working at optimum effort at the moment, the shoulder is a frozen one, and energy levels are generally not up to much. Nevertheless, it had to be done.