Tag: combine

August 7th – On the way home and travelling through Stonnall after a tiring day of firefights and frustration, I stopped on Cartersfield Lane to watch as drifting smoke obscured the distant pumping station. My astonishment was short lived though when I got nearer and realised it was the same wheat-dust from the same machine working in a different field to the evening before.

Combine harvesters really are the most fascinating machines. 

Harvest must be like the ultimate triumph of the year for an arable farmer, and the hard work and long hours are clear. I bet the dust isn’t much fun in that thing either.

Good to see the harvest home.

October 3rd – The mystery of the bean field is solved. As I cycled past this evening, the farmer was harvesting the crop of beans I considered last week to be lost. I’d been musing on exactly how they were harvested for a while, and it seems the technique is identical to how much local maize is harvested: the whole plant is mown off at about six inches above ground, then chopped into rough chunks by the machinery, where presumably, it’s loaded into a trailer. I’d assume the beans a therefore used as fodder.

That’s a very big machine. Impressive stuff, and a mystery no more.