Tag: harvest

September 23rd – The overcast days seem to be well upon us now, and when I left work this evening, the light was grey, indistinct and the air quality once more very poor. I had to nip over to Stonnall to pick something up, so I ploughed on with grim determination. 

Just off Lynn Lane, on my return, I noted that the last arable crop of the season was being harvested. Maize (a close relative of sweetcorn) which had grown tall and green in the end days of summer was now being shorn off at ground level by a special piece of machinery, which chops the whole plant – leaves, stalk, seed and cob – into chips for use as bulk in animal feed and the like.

I watched from afar with a heavy heart. The smell was remarkable, and with it, the summer passed the final baton to autumn. The closing-in is well underway today, coincidentally also that of the Autumnal Equinox.

August 26th – Even on a grim, grey day, Wall still has a fascination. Riding in via the track that constitutes Back Lane was a challenge, as it’s very overgrown, but such a delight. The fields here have been fully harvested, and look barren dressed in their underwear of stubble.

The village itself is fascinating. The half-cream, half-barebrik place with the odd gables? That was once a pub called the Seven Stars, and is now a lovely looking home.

Once, it stood on the main A5 between Brownhills and Tamworth, but the road was diverted on to a new dual carriageway half a mile to the south, and peace is restored.

A lovely little village.

17th August – At Home Farm, Sandhills, the harvest seems complete, and the wheat in the top field has been harvested. The day before, the straw lay in neat rows; today, it had been baled into neat, cylindrical rolls.

I love to see this, it appeals to my urge to grab order from chaos, and always looks dramatic.

And with this, the season’s mechanism advances another notch – it can’t be a coincidence that the weather is now colder and more changeable.

August 7th – Closer to home, across the spread of Springhill and Sandhills, it’s harvest time. At Cartersfield Lane, wheat was ripe, and ready to be harvested, a process already underway at Home Farm, where the combine was sending up a terrifically dramatic cloud of cereal dust as it worked. Also growing on the lower fields of Sandhills, a healthy and verdant maize crop, now quite tall.

This does seem to have been a most favourable summer for the farmers, but I’m sure they’ll find something to complain about before long…

August 5th – Another saying my Grandfather used to use a lot was ‘It’s always a good year for something.’ On this, the old man – who lived life much more connected to nature than I – was bang on. Every year, every season, is detrimental to something and benificial to something else.

This year we have an absolute wealth of early blackberries. They, sycamore,  horse chestnut and beech appear to have done very well indeed. Oak and fruit seem to have had a very bad year. This is the first acorn I’ve seen – last year, the boughs were heavy with crab apples, damsons, cherries and acorns. This year, very few. Rowan, Hawthorn and cotoneaster seem to be doing reasonably well, though.

I guess it’s just how the weather falls. One late frost and the fruit crops are ruined…

August 3rd – Still laying off the long rides for the sake of my sore foot, I had to run some errands and get some shopping in – so I headed on a sunny, but windy afternoon to Morrisons at Burntwood.

A lovely day, for sure – and the harvest at Home Farm, Sandhills, had started, but the wheat still wasn’t ripe enough. Hopefully, it will be before the next lot of rains midweek…

August 1st – My return journey was weary, wet, grey and warm. Again, it felt like being in the gust from a hair-drier, so warm was the breeze. It was raining steadily, and having popped in to Brum, I returned from Shenstone down quiet, greasy country lanes, dodging a whole host of slippery hazards in waiting, now hydrated. 

I note most of the harvest is done here, but for a couple of fields. In the UK, I guess it pays not to dither, and as I was waiting at Shire Oak I reflected on the wonderful unreliability of the great British weather.

July 29th – The harvest actually started a few days ago, but I was in too much of a hurry that night to get home, there was no time to stop and take photos. This was a field of oilseed rape, on the corner of Green Lane and Mob Lane, just by Grange Farm, in Walsall Wood. The dry plant has been harvested for it’s tiny, black seeds, threshed out of their pots by complex harvesting machinery. The pods, chaff and stalks are shredded, and sprayed back out on the ground to be ploughed back in.

Once the harvest starts, you know the season is marching onwards…

21st July – It’s been a lovely day, but the ride home was hard. I’d been on my feet all day, and to be quite frank, the left one still hurts, and was punishing me on the way back, as were the hills and the wind. All I could do was try to relax, click down the gears and enjoy the sun.

It’s been a good season so far, warm, sunny and not too wet, and this shows in the fields around Grange Farm in Green Lane, Walsall Wood. The barley on the edge of jockey meadows is hypnotic to watch in the breeze, and the oilseed rape on the corner of Green and Mob Lanes is golden. 

Soon, the harvest will be upon us, and a new range of sights and sounds.

October 9th – There must be a good return on parsnips. I watched this mystery crop grow at Home Farm, Sandhills, from polythene covered strip mounds to lush, verdant foliage, from which readers identified the then mysterious crop. Harvesting has been ongoing for a week or two now – not everyday, but I imagine as often as demand occurs. Workers appear to sit in the shed-like trailer picking the root veg by hand, and tossing them onto a conveyor. Debris in one spot shows the crop was large and in good condition.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen parsnips grown in large quantities before. It’s certainly labour intensive to pick them.