Sunday 1 September 2013

Harvest time

It's a privilege, living in Wiltshire. Especially at this time of year.

Our huge fields are patterned - combine harvesters have swept up and down, up and down, weaving round trees and over ditches, bringing in the crops. Rabbits and mice and little voles run around like mad things - all protection gone. The air is full of dust, and bits of straw.

Harvesting begins the second the dew dries in the morning and continues long into the night. Headlights, like giant eyes, creep across the hillsides. And you know that some farmer is making the most of sandwiches for he'll be too tired for supper tonight - all to bring in wheat for my bread or barley for my beer.

The street where I live, on the edge of a market town, is lined with parked cars. At this time of year trucks thunder up and down, trailers laden with straw - which scatters across the cars and onto front doorsteps. There's so much straw you can taste it in the air. Children cling to railings as they pass, as they are huge and sometimes it seems that the mountains of straw must topple to the street crushing cars and small children. It's untidy, of course, all these bits of straw - but it's part of the season, part of living where I do, evidence that farmers are doing what farmers have done for centuries.

And sometimes it's truly entertaining - when the combine harvesters try to get down the street. It is the main route from the farms to the combine harvester menders, and so every year we have one or two who must make it between the lines of cars to the garage. The driver sits twenty feet or more in the air. Wheels over six feet high. Barely two inches each side (even less if someone has parked carelessly) for the machine to get through safely. Someone walks in front, waving the driver - an inch this way, an inch that (left hand down a bit, so to speak). The noise is wonderful - the growl of the engine as the machine edges its way, bit by bit down the street. With, of course, an audience - most of us who live here are out there, watching the entertainment. I don't have a car, but those who do bite their nails as it seems impossible their precious heaps of metal might be scratched. Occasionally we gather together to bounce a carelessly-parked car onto the pavement. And I've never seen the combine harvesters scratch a single car. (The big tractors - they've been known to clip a wing mirror or two!)

Are we too easily pleased - if this is our idea of excitement?

16 comments:

  1. What an evocative post Jo...and I love the line "Headlights, like giant eyes, creep across the hillsides. "

    That's exactly what it's like too here in rural Leicestershire. Harvest is such a special time of year, for so many reasons....and it's such a joy this year that the weather has held for so long.

    Farmer Phil who lives around the corner comes along our lane with his combine...and he's so high up, and my cottage is so low, as I look out from my bedroom window, we're on the same level...and he waves!

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    1. I love the idea of Farmer Phil waving at you as he passes- country living at its best!

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  2. Great description of harvest time, Jo. It made me think of scenes from Thomas Hardy, but without the mechanisation. The little animals running away catch my attention, but here in Australia it would be snakes or kangaroos making the getaway.
    PS thank you for visiting my blog!

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    1. Would love to see Australia in harvest time - those huge fields. (It was springtime and a drought, when I was there - everything was brown!)

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  3. Oh Jo, I love this! I didn't see your post come up on my latest blog list, so missed it yesterday. This is so real and so true. The rumble of the combines starting so early and going on so late. Lovely, evocative writing. In the village where I escape, we have the same nail biting experiences. But like you, I wouldn't miss it for the world. It's part of the cycle of the seasons, and I love it. Sometimes the thunder of the tractors causes cracks in our houses and sometimes it even shakes pictures off walls! But everyone accepts the annual crack filling, cars covered in dust and as you've said, the occasional clipped wing mirror.

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    1. The cycle of the seasons - that's it exactly. There are those who grumble about all the tractors slowing up traffic, but it's part of the turning of the earth - and so reassuring!

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  4. Hi Jo .. no this is the best of England .. those golden fields being harvested - yet those enormous trucks and tractors do bring delight too ... with their low frothy growl ...

    I'd love to live in your street .. and this year we have perfect harvesting weather .. it's a glorious Indian Summer ...

    Love your story telling ... cheers Hilary

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    1. Hilary - it's been the best possible weather for the harvest this year, and I agree - this is the best of England!

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  5. You bounce cars?!! I love it. And given that I live near an airport and hear plane noise all day, your tractor rumbles sound perfectly dreamy.

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    1. Yes, Laura - I bounce cars, and probably shouldn't be proud of it. And I wouldn't swap my tractors for your planes, sorry!

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  6. Your grandchildren must love watching that sight. Huge trucks and farm machinery are so interesting to watch. When my son was about two a bowling green and clubhouse was being built outside our house ,we lived two stories up at the time and it provided endless entertainment,I got lots of housework done while he sat at the window watching the, trucks and diggers etc. I was quite sad when it was finished. How lovely to smell the newly cut hay.

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    1. Indeed the grandchildren love the tractors - though they've never seen little ones, so I'm not sure they realise what monsters these are. I had a painter doing the outside of the house when C came to stay - I didn't know there could be so many questions about paint!

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  7. My experience of those night time harvester machines is fixed in my head; weird, monster-like creatures but then as you might guess, I'm not a country gal. When I met Mr A he lived in a village. The first time I visited him, a muck spreader drove past his cottage door as I was ringing the bell. A splat of muck slapped his wall narrowly missing me. I was so traumatised it took a sit down and a strong cup of tea for me to recover. This is why he moved to where I live in the City rather than the other way round!

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    1. You're not a country girl, are you Ros. There are some serious pongs around here at the moment - best you stay away from Wiltshire till it smells sweeter!

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  8. This is a beautiful description of Wiltshire Jo. Mak. me want to go there! I love watching a UK tv show...Escape to the Country just to look at the lovely scenery. Northumberland coast last night.

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